Abstract
The financialization phenomenon is not often codified in its sociospatial expressions, despite being a frequent theme in urban studies. Generally, the works only reveal a small part of the problem, because the city is not considered as an inter-scalar mediation in the processes, which hinders the settled understanding of sociospatial reproduction. Thus, this paper points out the following question: how is financialization reproduced in urban space? Through Henri Lefebvre’s notion of urban levels, it is nominated one unifying proposition which considers the city as a systemic mediation between the global and everyday life, moving and exceeding scales. It analyzes the residential and retail sectors to show that the increasing penetration of financial logic intensifies inequality, segregation, and fragmentation in Brazilian cities. Shopping centers, supermarkets and hypermarkets, closed residential spaces, and e-commerce are some of its expressions. Finally, it presents a summary, followed by a conceptual proposition called urban-differential pulverization of financial logic. It is revealed that financialization occurs as a systemic pulverization in cities, with geographic differences, as a renewed flow of capital valorization. It clarifies the complexity intrinsic to the movement of urban sociospatial reproduction of financialization and enlightens new strategies and spatial practices.
Keywords:
Urban Levels; Financialization; City; Residence; Retail
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