Class-monopoly rent and contested retail spaces under financialization: Small businesses, landlord power, and policy interventions in Singapore and Hong Kong

This article examines the contestation over the use of retail spaces between large retail landlords and small retailers in Hong Kong and Singapore. Over the past two decades, a substantial portion of retail properties in both cities has become concentrated under real estate investment trusts (REITs), a form of institutional ownership that operates under the financial imperatives. To unpack the dynamics of excessive landlord power undergirded by financialization, this article introduces the concept of class-monopoly rent as a heuristic lens. Unraveling the complex entanglements between space, capital, and power, this concept is particularly useful for debunking landlords’ anti-intervention narratives and advocating for policy interventions defending the interests of small retailers. Specifically, it shows that the monopoly power of large landlords is most evident at the submarket level rather than across an entire city, and that small retailers face structurally unequal negotiation processes. Within this context, the article highlights the significance of policy interventions such as the development of new publicly owned marketplaces in Hong Kong and the establishment of a compulsory tenancy governance framework to promote fairer negotiations in Singapore. This study adds to critical urban scholarship by theorizing retail sites as contested spaces for rethinking progressive policy alternatives. It also enriches our understanding of the interplay between policy-making and political economic conditions in the era of financialization.