Subverting speculative urbanism: Cityscape in New York 2140

Abstract

This article is divided into two parts. The first part foregrounds the logic of contemporary financial capitalism, emphasising the increasing role of ‘speculative urbanism’ in urban transformation. While the literature on the ‘financialisation of the city’ often highlights the commodity as the paradigmatic social form in urban settings, I argue that this perspective no longer fully captures the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. The second part contends that urban studies can significantly benefit from engaging with speculative fiction. Through its imaginative and projective capacities, speculative fiction mirrors empirical social and technological trends, while also illuminating the logical and structural relationship between speculative financialisation and urbanisation. Analysing Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140, the article demonstrates how the novel helps us understand the devastation caused by financial capital, while also presenting a city where people engage in horizontal forms of resistance against speculative urbanism. Ultimately, the article proposes that for urban studies to develop a pertinent theory of futures in the 21st century, it must engage deeply with the mechanisms of speculative financial capitalism and incorporate the critical potential of speculative fiction to analyse and understand speculation as a key aspect of financial capitalism, while uncovering suppressed contradictions and potentialities.