The financialisation of contemporary urban planning policy discourse: insights into Serbian and Irish planning legislation

Abstract

While existing literature highlights the role of private real estate interests in shaping urban policy agendas, few studies have examined formal changes in planning legislation as a key site of influence. This paper investigates planning legislation reforms in Serbia and Ireland as illustrative cases of a broader trend of reducing investment risks and enhancing the financial viability of real estate development. Employing critical and context-sensitive narrative analysis of policy change, we present three key insights. First, we reveal how planning has been transformed into a tool for creating real estate assets driven primarily by financial considerations. Second, we demonstrate that public interest is often subordinated to private interests under a policy narrative dominated by financial sector logic and document how legislative and policy changes frequently introduce new barriers that restrict democratic engagement in planning policy formation. Third, we identify an increasing centralization in planning administrative structures, which undermines the principle of subsidiarity and provides opportunities for certain lobby groups to exert undue influence over policymakers. As the financial sector's influence on built environments grows globally, this study calls for more research into how real estate finance and planning systems affect each other, and how this plays out in practice.

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