Landscapes on hold: Opening up monopoly rent gaps on Crete's Cape Sidero

Papadopoulou Korfiati, Ioanna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1731-6700 2022. Landscapes on hold: Opening up monopoly rent gaps on Crete's Cape Sidero. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 46 (4) , pp. 576-593. 10.1111/1468-2427.13100

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Abstract

To explain the continuous hold of a single touristic real estate investor over the greater part of Crete's easternmost peninsula, Cape Sidero, for a period of over thirty years, this article examines the production of rent gaps on ‘exceptional’ rural land through increasing potential rent rather than a falling capitalized rent. I examine Neil Smith's ‘alternative’ rent gap hypothesis as it applies to two main factors: the production of and sustained control over land of monopolistic quality, which has no fixed value and is resistant to depreciation; and the dramatic neoliberal reworking of land markets through institutional and legislative changes, which produce legally ‘exceptional’ spaces. I employ the conceptual lens of the rent gap to examine how opening up a rent gap on ‘exceptional land’ based solely on the <jats:italic>promise</jats:italic> of (re)development can be a sufficient driver of land dispossession. Simply sustaining this promise can perpetuate land with monopolistic quality as a site of rent‐generating possibility, and while this process might never lead to (re)development, it can result in the submersion of the landscape into a captive, limbo state, stealing its future.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Publisher:	Wiley-Blackwell
ISSN:	0309-1317
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	26 June 2024
Date of Acceptance:	24 December 2021
Last Modified:	27 Jun 2024 01:37
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/170134

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