Ungating community: opening the enclosures of financialised housing

Yuile, Laura (2022) Ungating community: opening the enclosures of financialised housing. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

An ideology of globalisation and neoliberal progress has led governments across the world to enable and encourage investors and property developers in constructing real estate projects that appeal to a mobile, global elite. This thesis examines four topologies of financialised housing and the ways in which they construct borders and form exclusions within their cities, arguing that each one is a variation of the gated community. The gates – both real and affective - consist of spatial, social and political infrastructures that work together to produce homogenised spaces of exclusion. Firstly, the luxury investor-focused property that we see in abundance in major cities across the globe. Secondly, private student housing that caters to a community of short-term international students looking for maximum convenience. Thirdly, the ‘co-living’ complex that rebrands the precarity of contemporary labour and the insecurity of a private rental market in crisis, capitalising on these characteristics towards selling a lifestyle of flexibility and the illusion of togetherness. And finally, the ‘expat’ compounds in China that aim to attract international professionals through the construction of convenience and familiarity: a smooth transition from one context to another. Interrogating these four housing topologies – which have to date not been examined in relation to each other - I will argue for their ungating: the constructive interruption and dismantling of their borders, barriers, exclusions and divisions via strategies of collectivisation, intervention and the radical imagination, as demonstrated by four case-study projects I will outline as examples of ungating. This is important work that must be done towards transforming the exclusionary mechanisms of financialised housing and establishing communities and spaces that are inclusive of difference. My research is presented in three parts: this written thesis, my project ASSET ARREST, and two films titled Gated Community. Each part works in dialogue with the others, using artistic, performative, action research and theoretical methods. Overlapping at points, the research is conducted and performed from positions that move between the embedded and the distanced. My aim in positioning these three parts alongside each other is to construct a multi-dimensional and fragmented image and exploration of financialised housing that generates and presents knowledge in different ways: an approach that is vital towards developing a theory and practice of ungating.

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