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作者

Meaghan Stiman

来源

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS,Vol.41,Issue5,P.700-720

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

College of William & Mary

摘要

Drawing on interview data with second homeowners, this article identifies and explains diverging modes of second homeowner engagement in Boston, Massachusetts. Though recent scholarship suggests that second homeowners’ primary form of engagement is through financial transactions in real estate, this analysis uncovers 2 kinds of second homeowners—whom I call city speculators and city specters—who engage with the city in other, yet consequential ways. City speculators engage in city-building projects through direct civic and political participation and place-entrepreneurial activities and are motivated to do so by the pursuit and promise of economic capital. City specters more inconspicuously shape the contours of urban life through donations to and participation in elite, high cultural institutions. Specters suggest that they are not motivated by economic capital but by the high cultural value that their second home engagements afford. Documenting these differences sheds light on a growing group of urban dwellers, demonstrates and explains the heterogeneity of affluent in-migrants’ practices and variable place-making projects, and underscores the complex set of challenges that cities face today.Additional informationAuthor informationMeaghan StimanMeaghan Stiman is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the College of William & Mary. Meaghan received her PhD from the Department of Sociology at Boston University in 2017. Her research interests include community and urban sociology, culture, ethnography, and inequality. Drawing on a comparative case study of Rangeley, Maine, and Boston, Massachusetts, Meaghan’s current project explores how the social, cultural, economic, and environmental practices of second homeowners—a growing group of affluent in-migrants—come to shape the contours of everyday local life amid large-scale social and economic restructuring of both urban and rural areas.FundingThe author thanks Boston University’s Initiative on Cities and Boston University’s Department of Sociology Morris Fund for research support.AcknowledgmentsFor helpful comments and feedback, the author thanks the editors and three anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Urban Affairs, Elyas Bakhtiari, Emily Barman, Robin Bartram, Japonica Brown-Saracino, Jessica Simes, and the Urban Workshop participants at Boston University.