Manuel B. Aalbers 
Subprime Cities 
The Political Economy of Mortgage Markets

Subprime Cities: The Political Economy of Mortgage Markets presents a collection of works from social scientists that offer insights into mortgage markets and the causes, effects, and aftermath of the recent ‘subprime’ mortgage crisis.

* Provides an even-handed and detailed analysis of mortgage markets and the recent housing crisis

* Features contributions from various social scientists with expertise in critical social theories who have assembled and analyzed detailed empirical information

* Offers a unique and powerful rebuttal to many of the misleading popular explanations of the crisis and its aftermath

* Reveals how racial minorities and the neighbourhoods inhabited by them are more likely to be targeted by subprime and predatory lenders

Table of Content

List of Figures vii

List of Tables viii

Notes on Contributors ix

Foreword: The Urban Roots of the Financial Crisis
xiii

David Harvey

Series Editors’ Preface xx

Acknowledgments xxi

Part I Introduction 1

Subprime Cities and the Twin Crises 3

Manuel B. Aalbers

Part II The Political Economy of the Mortgage Market
23

1 Creating Liquidity Out of Spatial Fixity: The Secondary
Circuit of Capital and the Restructuring of the US Housing Finance
System 25

Kevin Fox Gotham

2 Finance and the State in the Housing Bubble 53

Herman Schwartz

3 Expanding the Terrain for Global Capital: When Local Housing
Becomes an Electronic Instrument 74

Saskia Sassen

4 Building New Markets: Transferring Securitization,
Bond-Rating, and a Crisis from the US to the UK 97

Thomas Wainwright

5 European Mortgage Markets Before and After the Financial
Crisis 120

Manuel B. Aalbers

6 The Reinvention of Banking and the Subprime Crisis: On the
Origins of Subprime Loans, and How Economists Missed the Crisis
151

Gary A. Dymski

Part III Cities, Race, and the Subprime Crisis 185

7 Redlining Revisited: Mortgage Lending Patterns in Sacramento
1930-2004 187

Jesus Hernandez

8 The New Economy and the City: Foreclosures in Essex County New
Jersey 219

Kathe Newman

9 Race, Class, and Rent in America’s Subprime Cities
242

Elvin Wyly, Markus Moos, and Daniel J. Hammel

Part IV Conclusion 291

10 Subprime Crisis and Urban Problematic 293

Gary A. Dymski

Glossary 315

Index 324

About the author

Manuel B. Aalbers is Associate Professor in the
Department of Geography at the University of Leuven,
Belgium. He is the author of Place, Exclusion and Mortgage
Markets (2011) and associate editor of the Encyclopedia of
Urban Studies (2010).