Lecture | Lunch Research Seminar
Mapping debt, displacement, and rentier urbanism in South Korea
- Date
- Wednesday 8 April 2026
- Time
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 0.30
Registration
All are welcome, however please register in advance at l-peg@hum.leidenuniv.nl to receive a copy of the paper and lunch.
Abstract
This project examines debt as a spatial-financial tactic of rentier urbanism in Seoul, South Korea. We trace fifteen years’ change of a low-rise residential neighbourhood in Seoul by analysing property registries, retail business permits, street view images, mapping and interviews. Property registries as data enable tracing of the changing amount of debt leveraged over the years, property owners, and their socioeconomic profiles. Findings show, debt is a spatial-financial tactic that reconfigures urban spaces, finance, and social interactions in local communities to serve capital circulation. In this process, rentiers mobilise debt through their existing high-profile properties in wealthy neighbourhoods to newly invest in distanced properties. Targeted neighbourhoods change, from residential to commercial and from locally serving facilities to elite-driven consumption spaces. Local communities are left indebted and irreversibly displaced, yet itemised on investment portfolios as a chain to enable further leverage. We propose to understand this uneven urban change in Seoul through the focus on debt as tactics in times of rentier urbanism.