Conférence midi de Carola Ludovica Giannotti Mura - Closing the (rent) gap: financialised geographies of student housing in Milan
24 October 2025
The talk will delve into the dynamics of student housing financialisation, highlighting how evolving forms of statecraft, urban branding strategies, and a dominant discourse around the need to “close the gap” between demand and supply of student beds have shaped an increasingly financialised student housing landscape in Milan, Italy. It will explore how the local state’s role as an enabler of financialisation intersects with varying degrees of embeddedness and visibility of key financial and real estate actors in the city, and how these shifting relationships may open (or constrain) possibilities for grassroots contestation of the financialisation of housing and urban development.