Subverting speculative urbanism: Cityscape in New York 2140

Cities of Speculation

We live in a world where wars, pandemics, and climate crises dominate the headlines, but there’s another powerful force operating in the background: financial capitalism. Think of things like bitcoin or the wild swings of the stock market. These aren’t just abstract concepts—they have real consequences, shaping how cities grow and how people live. My work looks at the implications of speculative urbanism, a system driven by risks, bets, and predictions. While it might seem far removed from everyday life, it profoundly impacts our cities.

I became interested in this topic because it connects big-picture economics to the spaces we live in. At the same time, I’ve always been drawn to speculative fiction—stories that imagine new futures. Films like Blade Runner 2049 and books like Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 made me wonder: What if fiction could help us better understand the financial systems shaping our world?

What My Paper Does

In my paper, I argue that speculative urbanism is more than just numbers on a screen—it’s a spatial problem that transforms cities and everyday life, often in ways we don’t notice. Urban studies, the field that examines cities and their complexities, has tackled financial topics before, but it often focuses on straightforward issues like mortgages or housing crises. I believe we need to dig deeper, exploring how speculative finance affects the very fabric of cities—how it makes some spaces thrive while others are left behind. Financial capital thrives on things like mobility, liquidity, and arbitrage, meaning it moves across borders and locations. The value of a place isn’t fixed; it shifts based on speculative finance. This system shapes both markets and our everyday lives, often benefiting global markets and the wealthy while leaving local communities behind.

Take, for example, the rise of luxury residential properties used as vehicles for asset storage. These “ghost apartments” are becoming more common in major cities. In Istanbul, it’s estimated that between 6.9% and 11.5% of homes are vacant—well beyond the “healthy” rate of 3% to 5%. With 6.5 million residences in the city, between 450,000 and 750,000 houses sit empty. This housing crisis is a concrete example of speculative urbanism’s impact, one that Kim Stanley Robinson connects directly to global financial governance.

Urban studies can greatly benefit from engaging with speculative fiction, especially when imagining a better urban future in a world dominated by speculative finance. Speculative fiction isn’t just a reflection of our current trends—it also explores how financial forces shape cities. My paper looks at New York 2140 (2017), which illustrates the damage done by financial capital while depicting a city where people fight back against speculative urbanism. The novel offers a “utopian possibility,” a way to challenge the grip of financial urbanism. As Fredric Jameson put it, this kind of fiction can “jumpstart the sense of history,” offering hope for change and a different future.

Why It Matters

Speculative urbanism is crucial because speculative finance is no longer confined to Wall Street—it’s infiltrating our neighborhoods, influencing rents, infrastructure, and even public spaces. Understanding this isn’t just for economists or academics; it’s for anyone concerned about the future of cities. This is where speculative fiction comes in. It offers two key advantages: first, it taps into imagination to create stories that reflect real social and technological trends, using familiar elements in exaggerated ways. Second, speculative fiction allows us to apply the concept of “cognitive estrangement”, helping us see the world from a fresh perspective and uncover aspects we might otherwise overlook—particularly how speculative finance shapes our cities.

I see urban studies evolving to tackle these challenges head-on, blending economics, geography, and even creative tools like speculative fiction. By doing so, we can better understand the hidden forces reshaping our cities and use that knowledge to build fairer, more sustainable urban futures.

So, the next time you walk through a city, take a moment to think about the forces that shaped it. What’s been built, what’s been left behind—and who’s making the decisions? These are the questions that drive my work, and they’re questions we all need to start asking, just like we might in speculative fiction, where imagined worlds help us see our own more clearly.

Read the full article on Urban Studies OnlineFirst here.