Reasserting state power by remaking markets? The introduction of real estate investment trusts in France and its implications for state-finance relations in the Greater Paris region

Abstract

Taking as its focus the growth of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in France, this paper explores the remaking of the French property market in both conceptual and concrete terms. In doing so, it reconstructs how public bodies of the national state, in interaction with domestic property companies, have reconfigured the French urban property sector by (i) introducing new market regulations and tax decrees; (ii) enabling French REITs to engage in property development; (iii) creating a REIT within the state; and by (iv) initiating the large-scale urban redevelopment project of Grand Paris in which French REITs manifest themselves as urban partners. By paying attention to the relative importance of national regulatory state power within, what is after all, a multi-scalar state system, the paper unravels how the introduction of REITs has shaped and reshaped (i) finance and property markets; (ii) the urban built environment; and (iii) the state apparatus itself. The paper concludes that the French state has created a financialized urban governance regime in which REITs, of which one is publicly owned, exercise considerable autonomy. As such, it makes a historical-analytical contribution to the debate on the financialization of urban development, and the role of the state in this process.