FIRE - finance, insurance & real estate.
With real estate as the primary commodity, revenue stream, and political priority; urban planners are increasingly tasked with using their power over land use, regulation, and incentives to increase land values (Stein, 2019). The Development Order for the Kingston Metropolitan Area was the first attempt to guide the urban development and growth of Jamaica’s capital city since 1966. The Provisional Development Order, released in 2017 and confirmed in 2023, radically increased the allowable densities across most of the metro area. The resulting land speculation and ballooning price of housing is not simply an unfortunate byproduct or inevitable result of market forces at play but the intended result of planning policy.
The housing crisis across many Caribbean cities, and indeed globally, is often reduced to a matter of supply and demand economics, but is actually a political process, with the government marshaling investment, boosting land values, attracting desired residents and industries [and] chasing away threats to profits (Stein, 2019).
In this webinar, we chat with Prof. Raul Bartolomei about the rise of short term rental platforms like Airbnb and VRBO in Puerto Rico and how government policies are making housing unattainable for its residents.