From Boom to Bubble : How Finance Built the New Chicago / Rachel Weber.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weber, Rachel, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Urban renewal--Illinois--Chicago.

Urban renewal.

Real estate development--Illinois--Chicago--Finance--History.

Real estate development.

City planning--Illinois--Chicago.

City planning.

Creative destruction--Illinois--Chicago.

Creative destruction.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (287 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

During the Great Recession, the housing bubble took much of the blame for bringing the American economy to its knees, but commercial real estate also experienced its own boom-and-bust in the same time period. In Chicago, for example, law firms and corporate headquarters abandoned their historic downtown office buildings for the millions of brand-new square feet that were built elsewhere in the central business district. What causes construction booms like this, and why do they so often leave a glut of vacant space and economic distress in their wake? In From Boom to Bubble, Rachel Weber debunks the idea that booms occur only when cities are growing and innovating. Instead, she argues, even in cities experiencing employment and population decline, developers rush to erect new office towers and apartment buildings when they have financial incentives to do so. Focusing on the main causes of overbuilding during the early 2000s, Weber documents the case of Chicago's "Millennial Boom," showing that the Loop's expansion was a response to global and local pressures to produce new assets. An influx of cheap cash, made available through the use of complex financial instruments, helped transform what started as a boom grounded in modest occupant demand into a speculative bubble, where pricing and supply had only tenuous connections to the market. Innovative and compelling, From Boom to Bubble is an unprecedented historical, sociological, and geographic look at how property markets change and fail-and how that affects cities.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: Why We Overbuild

1 The Rhythm of Urban Redevelopment

2 Fast Money Builds the Speculative City

3 Out with the Old: How Professional Practices Construct the Desire for New Construction

4 Downtown Chicago's Millennial Boom

5 Who Overbuilt Chicago?

6 Making the Market for Chicago's New Skyscrapers

7 The Slow Build

Epilogue: Why We Will Continue to Overbuild

Appendix

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

0-226-29451-X

OCLC:

925478619