ABSTRACT

Vacant land and property have periodically been the focus of urban research but remain undertheorized. However, a recent resurgence of scholarly interest has reinvigorated the topic and offers an opportune moment to critically advance theorization. The paper positions vacant land and property – normatively characterized as “surplus”, “waste”, or “empty” space – as active, lively, and contested within urbanization and urban political processes. It proceeds in three parts. First, it shows how vacant land and property have historically constituted a lacuna in urban research, variously conceptualized as passive within urbanization or active outside urbanization. Second, it summarizes how recent work on, and intersecting with, vacancy has begun to fill these conceptual and empirical gaps. Finally, the paper concludes with a heuristic of producing vacancy, maintaining vacancy, and removing vacancy to outline a research agenda that positions vacant land and property as central to the analysis of urbanization, urban politics, and urban governance.

摘要

空置土地和财产定期成为城市研究的焦点，但仍然缺乏理论依据。然而，最近学术兴趣的复苏重新激活了这个话题，并为批判性地推进理论化提供了一个合适的时机。该论文将闲置的土地和财产——通常被描述为“剩余”、“浪费”或“空置”空间——定位为城市化和城市政治进程中活跃、活跃和有争议的空间。它分为三个部分。首先，它显示了空置土地和财产在历史上如何构成城市研究的空白，被不同地概念化为城市化内的被动或城市化外的主动。其次，它总结了最近的工作，以及与，空缺已经开始填补这些概念和经验上的空白。最后，本文以产生空置、维持空置和消除空置的启发式总结，概述了一个研究议程，将空置土地和财产定位为城市化、城市政治和城市治理分析的核心。