Research Projects

This project analyses the recent switch in the financing of 'green' urban development from conventional loan mechanisms to municipal debt financing in Finland, how this trend relates to a shift from a local entrepreneurial welfare state to a green entrepreneurial one, how it is embedded within neoliberalism combined with sustainability policy. Finnish municipalities and Municipality Finance Plc (MuniFin) have taken a frontrunner position in the issuing green municipal bonds for green urbandevelopment. Recent research has shown that while it is unclear to what extent actual green financed projects contribute to a systemic sustainability shift, little concern has been paid to the risk of unequal redistributive outcomes. Thus, the green financialization of urban development led by local states may represent a shift towards a green entrepreneurial local welfare provision signified by unequal

distribution. How the emergence of local state-led green financialization in Finland potentially reorients the local welfare state has not been studied. This project contributes to fill this knowledge gap by examining the use of green municipal bonds in two case study projects (sustainable buildings and sustainable public transportation), from three theoretical strands: local state theory, urban entrepreneurialism, and financialization of urban development. The research is carried out with qualitative methods including document analysis and interviews with public officers and project managers engaged in issuing green municipal bonds and the planning of the green urban development projects. The research project is funded by TIAS (Turku Institute for Advanced Studies).

  This research aimed to analyse how global processes of housing in the form of financialisation, experienced in cities of the Global South, manifest at the local level in the case of İstanbul, Turkey. The  research examined the role of the state in housing and financialisation in order to reveal different forms of consent created for different groups of society to be included in the financialisation process. The construction of consent carries importance in understanding how and to what extent the ‘right to housing’ is institutionalized, as well as tendencies toward depoliticization of the social movement for housing during the last decade. The research project was funded by Swedish Institute.

This research aimed to examine neighbourhood forums in Ankara that began to convene during the Gezi protests in 2013 and lasted about three years. The urban commoning practices in the neighbourhoods were the focus of this research in terms of suggesting and developing new set of demands and methods of local activism. 

This research project was funded by Raoul Wallenberg Institute.