Modifying to commodify: How financial intent shapes urban streetscapes in Zurich

Capital is deeply embedded in the production of urban space. Many have written on capital and increasing financialization’s impact in the physical spaces and social constructions of the city writ large. To make visible housing financialization’s effect on the production of urban sociality at the micro scale, this research examines the financial underpinning and resultant urban streetscapes for three housing developments built in Zurich from 2009 to 2012. I interrogate the impact of each project’s relationship to financialization on the materiality and detail of the architectural and street siting choices, by researching the funding model for each development and how it affects the project’s siting, massing, and material decisions. I question how and whether these material decisions enable the street to serve as social infrastructure, and find that while the streetscape created by each project differs, in all three the street is not a lively place of interaction but rather a place of sterility or at least partial exclusion created to serve financial markets’ commodified interests.