ABSTRACT
The 1980s marked an extraordinary surge in property development in London and New York, followed by an equally precipitous drop at the end of the decade. A new boom gathered force in the mid-1990s and continued through 2000. The two property booms closely tracked spurts in the economies of the two cities, largely attributable to growth in finance and business service sectors throughout the twenty years, but also to expansion in media and tourism, especially in the latter part. Although in many respects the 1990s represented a continuation of previous trends, that decade, as we shall see, had some elements that differentiated it from the earlier period.
