The Financialization of Housing as a Growth Model: New Property Relations and Massive Suburbanization in Toronto/Brampton and Istanbul/Gktrk

The financialization of housing has become a crucial discussion point since the financial crisis of 2008. This dissertation aims at focusing on the financialization of housing in the Greater Toronto Area and Istanbul Metropolitan Area. While the existing literature tends to describe the financialization of housing as the increasing impact of finance capital on the production of space, in this dissertation I argue that the financialization of housing appears as an economic growth model that transforms the socio-economic conditions of households at least in certain countries.

The dissertation examines the cases of Brampton in GTA and Gktrk in IMA (Istanbul Metropolitan Area) in order to underline the ongoing property relations and the rise of suburban-financial nexus as an economic growth model. The financialization of housing occurs in many different forms in different countries. In certain countries it appears as a simple dynamic of the housing market, i.e. it is just a matter of mortgage credits and the banking system linked to the global financial investments. In certain countries, it appears as the financialization of rental housing systems (e.g. Germany), and in certain countries it appears as the dominance of finance capital in order to speculate the investments in securities. In fact, the financialization of housing began to become the dominant economic growth model in certain countries. Canada and Turkey can be examined as the economies that pursue the strategy of using the financialization of housing as a boosting tool for economic growth. In these two countries, the real estate market and its connection to the financial flows have become the key growth engine of the economy. In this dissertation, I examine how in these two countries, the financialization of housing has become the leading economic growth strategy and how this process transforms the cities. The cases in this dissertation aims at contributing to this argument by going into details of how finance capital transforms the socio-spatial reality.