Land Commodification and Housing Affordability under Capitalist Urbanisation. Global dynamics and local resistance in Peru, the United Kingdom and the United States

This initiative facilitates a global North-South exchange of ideas to enrich the debate on how the commodification of land under intensifying capitalist accumulation generates complex urbanisation dynamics in different regions, particularly vis-à-vis the dynamics of global urban development (Peck et al., 2009; Soja, 2010). Despite the diverse spatial context, one pervasive effect emerges: limiting access to housing for most social groups (Rolnik, 2017; Aalbers, 2016). It proposes a comparative analysis of urbanisation processes in the 21st century in Latin America, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The exchange will shed light on the similarities and differences between the legal and planning systems governing urban development, the diversity of land tenure and its impact on everyday life, the emergence of local resistances, and the articulation of alternative epistemologies regarding the conceptualisation of property.Global urbanisation is profoundly shaped by financial capital, which makes land a valuable commodity for wealth accumulation (Harvey, 2015). In multiple contexts, this phenomenon has exacerbated global capital flows and speculative real estate dynamics tied to money laundering, white-collar criminality, and the growth of urban mafias (Chiodelli, 2018). In the United States, investment funds and large real estate corporations impose structural barriers to housing access (Madden & Marcuse, 2016), while state apparatuses retreat from regulating housing speculation (Slater, 2021). In the United Kingdom, the national government aims to expand housing supply through devolution and radical planning reforms (Gibb, 2021; Gibbs et al., 2023). In Latin America, actors such as drug cartels (Birch et al., 2016; Canettieri, 2024; Corantin, 2024) and informal land developers (Dammert-Guardia et al., 2024) have turned housing access into an exceedingly inequitable landscape. Although the systems governing urban development are different, the result is the same: deepening precariousness in housing access and a worsening affordability crisis.The penetration of these new actors and their practices into most spheres of everyday life has generated forms of local and community resistance that need to be disentangled and shared across national and regional contexts. In Latin America, social movements and housing cooperatives have pioneered alternative models that challenge the speculative logic of markets (Holston, 2008; Friendly, 2017). In contrast, in the United States and the United Kingdom, resistance strategies have centred on addressing gentrification and eviction through legal and media tactics to counteract the influence of large investors (Fields, 2017). In parallel, critiques of capitalism from feminist intersectional perspectives have highlighted the importance of prioritisinghousing’s use value and care infrastructures (Collins, 1990; Gagó, 2014; Summers & Fields, 2024).Indigenous epistemologies also provide transformative perspectives to resist and subvert land commodification. Concepts such as Buen Vivir (Cusicanqui, 2011; Gudynas, 2011; De la Cadena, 2015) and alternative notions of property (Nichols, 2018) challenge private ownership hegemony. In the United States, Indigenous peoples have developed territorial models combining traditional practices with contemporary strategies, reframing property as a collective, intergenerational right (Coulthard, 2014). These conceptions offer an ethical framework to rethink property as a common rather than an exchangeable object.This dialogue will explore the two sides of the phenomenon of land commodification under capitalist urbanisation. On one side, it will debate the nature of speculative real estate dynamics and the emergence of new interests and mechanisms that support the actions and decisions of questionable actors, such as those linked to nontransparent practices. These discussions will also compare the policy and planning structures of urban development such as: market-led (US), planning-led (UK) and regulatory flexibility (Latin America). On the other, it will discuss how social movements, organised communities, and individual actors in the three geographies develop strategies to resist, reimagine hegemonic urbanisation models, or survive within structures of inequality. These conversations aim to identify convergences and divergences between these experiences and to develop a conceptual framework that links local resistances to global structural dynamics of urban development. The framework is expected to challenge the individualistic logic of property by considering alternatives that prioritise collective territorial connections and recognise sociospatial collective rights.This dialogue sits at the intersection of key theoretical-policy-practice debates that will be animated by four key questions: What are the logics at play in speculative real estate dynamics? How policy, legal and planning structures facilitate and strengthen the actions of actors involved in illicit practices of urban development? Why are some communities able to resist, choose not to resist, or engage in different ways with these global trends of capitalist urban development based on land commodification? How can these agencies, movements, actors, and practices inform ways of countering these dynamics at the local level and across different contexts?