Subprime Cities: The Political Economy of Mortgage Markets presents a collection of works from social scientists that offer insights into mortgage markets and the causes, effects, and aftermath of the recent 'subprime' mortgage crisis. Provides an even-handed and detailed analysis of mortgage markets and the recent housing crisis Features contributions from various social scientists with expertise in critical social theories who have assembled and analyzed detailed empirical information Offers a unique and powerful rebuttal to many of the misleading popular explanations of the crisis and its aftermath Reveals how racial minorities and the neighbourhoods inhabited by them are more likely to be targeted by subprime and predatory lenders

Subprime Cities: The Political Economy of Mortgage Markets presents a collection of works from social scientists that offer insights into mortgage markets and the causes, effects, and aftermath of the recent 'subprime' mortgage crisis. Provides an even-handed and detailed analysis of mortgage markets and the recent housing crisis Features contributions from various social scientists with expertise in critical social theories who have assembled and analyzed detailed empirical information Offers a unique and powerful rebuttal to many of the misleading popular explanations of the crisis and its aftermath Reveals how racial minorities and the neighbourhoods inhabited by them are more likely to be targeted by subprime and predatory lenders

Recognizing the deep relations between politics, finance, cities and citizens, this book argues for a rejuvenated account of urban theory. The book emphasises the need to understand the importance of the 2008 global financial crisis and how the crisis affects cities nested in a variety of political economies. Situating urban theory in the current economic climate, it powerfully illuminates the dynamic between history, theory, and practice. Stressing how catastrophic social and economic calamities under the crisis lead to reorganised city structures, city life and city policies and hence new urban experience, it calls for theoretical perspectives that can speak to these challenging changes. This groundbreaking title is a must for anyone interested in urban life and its rapid movements. It will be especially useful for students and researchers in urban sociology, planning, geography, urban and regional development and urban studies

Subprime lending serves those with relatively high credit risk and therefore entails higher borrowing costs. This market has grown tremendously over the past decade, although with substantial variation in growth rates across the central cities of metropolitan areas in the US. Previous research has focused on specific cities and has shown that subprime lending historically occurs disproportionately in areas with higher risk, lower income and larger shares of minority households. This paper extends the literature by conducting a nation-wide study of how subprime lending patterns have changed over time across all US central cities. We find subprime lending growth is higher in urban census tracts with higher percentages of Hispanic population, lower levels of educational attainment, and, ceteris paribus, higher median family incomes.

The rise in subprime and predatory lending has put many families and neighborhoods in financial jeopardy as default and foreclosure rates skyrocket, particularly in minority and low-income areas. Reform of predatory lending practices is a necessary first step, but a comprehensive approach must take into account the connections between the evolution of financial services and rising inequality, particularly as they affect mortgage lending in the United States. Ameliorating inequities in the provision of financial services is unlikely without addressing the structural sources of inequality. Public policies and private practices have shaped the uneven development of metropolitan areas, and alternative policies and practices can ameliorate those patterns.

Examines the ways in which austerity policies are transforming US cities. Across the world’s most industrialized economies, the financial crisis of 2007 caused a contraction of state budgets and stimulated attempts to reform debt-burdened governments. In the United States, a system of fiscal federalism meant this turn towards austerity took a uniquely fragmented and geographically diverse form. Drawing on case studies of recent urban restructuring, Cities under Austerity challenges dominant understandings of austerity as a distinctly national condition and develops a conceptualization of the new US urban condition that reveals its emerging political and social fault lines. The contributors empirically detail the restructuring that is taking place across the United States, its underlying logics, its local impacts and the ongoing processes of challenge and resistance that influences how it is shaping the lives of citizens. The new American political economy, it is argued, needs to be understood as composed of a mosaic of urban experiences that both build upon a differentiated foundation and creates new divergences. As state reforms continue to interact with this diverse urban political economy of the United States, this collection provides a state-of-the-art survey on how postcrisis convergences and divergences in urban economies and urban politics have laid the foundations for the new political geography of the United States.

Cities have become the major habitat for human societies. They are also the places where the starkest social inequalities show up. Income, social, land and housing inequalities shape the built environment and living conditions of different neighborhoods of cities, and in return, unequal access to services, environmental quality and favorable health conditions in different neighborhoods and cities fuel the reproduction of interpersonal inequalities. This book examines how inequalities are produced and reproduced both within and between cities. In particular, we review land rent and social segregation theories from diverse disciplinary references and through examples taken from around the world. The attraction of urban centralities, which is further reinforced by the growing financialization of property and urban capital, is also analyzed through the lens of its influence on rent-seeking mechanisms and the ever increasing pressure of population migration.