Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Mike Douglass, Asia Research Institute, and Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

Anne Haila will talk about her new book Urban Land Rent: Singapore as a Property State, to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2016. The book develops an original theory of urban land rent with important implications for urban studies, urban theory and urban policies. A theoretical basis of the book is a comprehensive analysis of rent theory (starting from the works of David Ricardo in the 19^th century and continuing to the modern applications of land rent theory), compared with the today popular theory of property rights. The question of land is examined from a variety of perspectives: as a resource, ideologies, land reforms (with eminent American land reformer Henry George as an important case), interventions in the land market, actors in the land market, the global scope of land markets, investments in land, and the fusion of real estate and financial markets. The analysis of land is culminated in the concept of land regimes, which are studied from historical perspective by identifying types of land regimes ranging from an indigenous type to contemporary financial type. Although the book is comparative, one case is discussed more than others. This is the city-state of Singapore that has developed a successful model with 90 per cent of land owned by the state, more than 80 per cent of the population living in public housing flats and where despite all this development companies have grown to profitable global companies. Singapore’s public housing, public provision of industrial space (one of the reasons behind Singapore’s success as a global city), development industry, government-linked real estate companies, real estate market, real estate investment trusts, sovereign wealth funds investing in real estate and particularly the state intervention in the real estate market are analysed and compared to other contemporary regimes, for example, the tycoon model in Hong Kong. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118827678.html

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Anne Haila is Professor of Urban Studies, the Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki, Finland. She teaches urban studies, comparative urban research and urban development. In recent years her research has focussed on property rights, property markets and the role of state intervention in regulating property market. Cases of her research have been particularly Singapore (where she taught urban economics for two years at the National University of Singapore), Finland, China and Hong Kong. Among her publications are: Urban Land Rent: Singapore as a Property State, Wiley-Blackwell 2016, The Market as the New Emperor in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2007, Real Estate in Global Cities: Singapore and Hong Kong as Property States in Urban Studies, 2000, Four Types of Investment in Land and Property in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 1991.

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