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

From Boom to Bubble

How Finance Built the New Chicago

By: Rachel Weber

Hardcover | 20 November 2015 | Edition Number 1

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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.
Industry Reviews
"From Boom to Bubble is a careful, convincing, and very readable account of how the real estate bubble that fueled the Great Recession happened, and Weber indicates, could well happen again. Weber builds a case for how all the stakeholders in the process - developers, mortgage brokers, real estate brokers, appraisers, building managers, real estate lawyers, permit expediters, mayors, and planners - face incentives to fuel a boom to such an extent that it becomes a bubble, with real estate investment continuing unabated even when demand no longer exists and vacancy rates are high."-- "Planning Perspectives"
"Weber gives us a compelling book that cements her reputation as one of the top urban planners in the field of urban political economy. Her sophisticated and nuanced understanding of complex systems like global finance and real estate markets is conveyed easily and accessibly to those both inside and outside of academia. From Boom to Bubble is a major contribution, one that will most certainly be widely read and discussed for years to come."-- "Joel Rast, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee"
"Weber offers an innovative and valuable approach, contributing important new insights and understanding to a multidisciplinary audience. From Boom to Bubble will be widely read as it contributes to the long standing and enduring scholarly focus on Chicago as the paradigmatic city and as a timely explication of financialization, the defining moment of the twenty-first century. Weber has an extraordinary depth of knowledge and she writes in an engaging and readable style that explains complex material in an accessible and understandable manner. This book solidifies Weber's position as one of the leading scholars of the urban built environment."-- "Robert W. Lake, Rutgers University"
"Weber's From Boom to Bubble will appeal to planners, geographers, sociologists, political scientists, and historians who appreciate a critical perspective on global real estate and capital flows and those who study global financial crises. This is outstanding scholarship, and offers deep insights into the dynamic real estate markets of this Millennial era."-- "Journal of the American Planning Association"
"Weber's recent book offers a landmark contribution to the scholarship of urban studies. Written in a sharp and vivid style, and drawing from an intimate knowledge of Chicago, From Boom to Bubble constitutes an impressive work. Combining empirically-rich material with theoretically-informed research, Weber achieves the feat of bringing a strikingly new perspective to the much-debated question of why urban development is prone to overbuilding."-- "Planning Theory and Practice"

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