Residential vertical urbanisation: The intertwining of law and financialisation

The skylines of many global cities are dominated by residential tall buildings, but surprisingly little is known about them. Following the Grenfell Tower fire in London, England, the UK government struggled to understand how many tall buildings there are, how many are affected by building safety failures, and to identify those responsible for looking after these buildings. Eight years after the fire this core information is still very patchy. In addition to the absence of basic core data, there is little understanding about the role, and practice, of law(s) in residential towers. This makes it difficult for policy makers to respond to urgent contemporary challenges such as building safety, sustainable cities, and achieving net zero. 

In our article we propose a new framework that can be used to inform future empirical research. We show that law and financialisation are intertwined and that it is helpful to examine these interconnections at five scales, from the global, national, municipal, site/building to the home. The Phase 2 report from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry shows how the (national) regulatory laws designed to ensure that buildings are constructed to be safe were manipulated by (global) product suppliers to enable them to promote the use of combustible products on high-rise buildings (site). The outcome was that the cladding system used in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower was found to be the principal cause of the rapid fire spread, and resulting loss of 72 lives. 

Law is an expansive concept that includes not only legislative and contractual rules, but also informal social and commercial norms. For example, as well as the statutory regulations of planning and building, we include management practices and resident-led initiatives.  We refer to a recent study from Australia that illustrates how social norms may intersect with (formal) regulation and design to make families with children feel out of place (Kerr et al, 2025) in residential developments.

There is a rich multi-disciplinary urban scholarship that explores tall buildings, but a notable gap in relation to the role of law, especially at the scales of site/building and home. Indeed, in England, there is no data about the legal, governance and management arrangements used and how the arrangements impact on, for example, maintenance, costs and quality of life.  Adopting our socio-legal framework in empirical studies will provide a much richer understanding of residential towers and provide the foundation for more effective policy implementation.