ACSP Meet the Author: Rachel Weber
October 20, 2023
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM America/Chicago
Location
Palmer House Hilton - ACSP Community Cafe
Address
17 E Monroe Street, Chicago, IL 60603
Calendar
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Are you registered to attend the 2023 ACSP Conference? Please stop by the UPP lounge in the Community Cafe and join us for our lunchtime Meet the Authors Series!
On Friday, October 20th, Rachel Weber will be in the lounge to discuss her new publication, From Boom to Bubble: How Finance Built the New Chicago (University of Chicago Press).
In From Boom to Bubble, Rachel Weber debunks the idea that booms occur only when cities are growing and innovating. Instead, she argues, even in cities experiencing employment and population decline, developers rush to erect new office towers and apartment buildings when they have financial incentives to do so. Focusing on the main causes of overbuilding during the early 2000s, Weber documents the case of Chicago’s “Millennial Boom,” showing that the Loop’s expansion was a response to global and local pressures to produce new assets. An influx of cheap cash, made available through the use of complex financial instruments, helped transform what started as a boom grounded in modest occupant demand into a speculative bubble, where pricing and supply had only tenuous connections to the market. From Boom to Bubble is an innovative look at how property markets change and fail—and how that affects cities.
About the Author
Rachel Weber is a professor in the Urban Planning and Policy Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she teaches courses and conducts research in the fields of economic development, real estate, urban politics, and public finance. She is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Urban Planning, a compilation of 40 essays by leading urban scholars. Her latest book, From Boom to Bubble: How Finance Built the New Chicago (University of Chicago Press) won the Best Book Award from the Urban Affairs Association in 2017. She is the author of over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as numerous book chapters and published reports. In addition to her academic responsibilities, she has served as an advisor to planning agencies, political candidates, and community organizations on issues related to financial incentives, property taxes, and neighborhood change. She was appointed to then-presidential candidate Barack Obama´s Urban Policy Committee in 2008 and by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to the Tax Increment Financing Reform Task Force in 2011.
Date posted
Oct 12, 2023
Date updated
Oct 12, 2023