What is the connection between gentrification and the mortgage crisis?
Harvey: The gentrification process here in New York was again about reconstructing urban environments. A lot of the reconstruction entailed a big investment in housing, particularly when it was corporate-led. You then have the problem of who’s going to buy the housing. And it’s not only gentrification, it’s also new development, new condominiums and all the rest. It’s interesting. Finance controls both, the creation of housing and also its consumption. You lend money to the developers. They go in and gentrify a neighborhood. You then lend money to the people who are going to occupy it. You’ve got to find that market for gentrification once that process goes on. And so, the connection in this is that the financial operators are working both ends of this game. Goodman: Do you see neo-liberalism as dead? Harvey: I don’t see neo-liberalism as dead, if you say neo-liberalism is about consolidation of class power, because actually we’re seeing the further consolidation of it right now, rathe
