The doctoral thesis aims to analyse the relation between political and economic actors in the capitalist housing real estate development. The core interest is to analyse concrete materialisation of the general separation of political and economic in particular location, particular time and in concrete social practice. The dissertation builds on the assumption that political and economic actors must address real estate development jointly, since they are both autonomous and at the same time co-dependant on the successful execution of the projects. Political actors must collaborate with economic actors since the latter possess key resources for the development of the locality, while economic actors must collaborate with political actors due to the uncertainty of real estate development. In its theoretical part, the dissertation builds on the separation of the political and the economic, which is at the basis of speculative development of real estate as fictional assets, whereas the neoliberal reorganization of society further deepens the above-mentioned separation. The second pillar of the dissertation consists of the different stages of real estate development, which depend on locally specific institutional structures. The third pillar consists of an analysis of powers at the local level, which are extensively associated with relations between economic and political actors. The theoretical deductions of the dissertation are given concrete expression with the analysis of real estate development in Ljubljana since 2004. The analysis is founded on the comparison of two real estate booms (2004–2008; 2016–), their industrial structure developers, types of real estate projects, and cooperation arrangements between the municipality and developers. The comparison is contextualized within a broad analysis of the structure and history of real estate development in Slovenia and specifically in Ljubljana. The dissertation bears two key scientific contributions. The first, empirical, contribution is the first ever analysis of the development of real estate in Ljubljana, which offers a collection of compiled data on the industrial structure of developers and projects, as well as an analysis of the relation between the municipality and the developers. The second, theoretical, contribution supports the arguments, founded in the separation of the political and the economic, in the relative autonomy of both fields and their co-dependence.
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