Funding, financing and governing urban infrastructures

Abstract

This Special Issue aims to further understanding and explanation of the funding, financing and governing of urban infrastructure amidst its engagements with contemporary financialisation. Drawing upon empirical material from international cases from Europe, North America, Africa and Asia, it identifies critical issues to advance work in this area. These themes concern: the impacts of financialisation upon shifting the definitions and conceptualisations of urban infrastructure; the worth of adopting more actor-oriented and grounded approaches to financialisation; the importance of affording greater recognition to national and local states as the objects and agents of financialising relations, processes and practices; the substance and ramifications of the emergent informalisation of infrastructure policy-making and governance; and, the implications of financialisation for the evolving and uneven landscapes of urban infrastructure provision. The arguments are, first, that how infrastructure is funded, financed and governed is integral to explaining socially and spatially uneven infrastructural provision and its urban development ramifications; and second, the engagements of urban infrastructure with contemporary financialisation have become central in such accounts. Future research avenues are identified. These comprise: identifying exactly how revenues are generated from infrastructure assets; specifying the relations of financialisation with other processes such as ‘assetisation’, ‘marketisation’ and privatisation; extending the geographical and comparative reach of current studies; elaborating the spaces of regulation in negotiating and accommodating infrastructure financialisation; and, scrutinising the roles of decentralised powers and resources in financialising urban infrastructure and exploring its alternatives.

Building regional ‘goodwill’: on the financialization of subnational economic governance

“…Goodwill represents a novel and interesting lens through which to explore the effect of financialization on state spatial strategy in the context of city-regions, responding to calls for further research on processes of financialization and asset utilization (O'Brien et al, 2019). Positioning the city-region as a form of goodwill, this paper examines the influence and adaptation of financialization tendencies in forming and scaling key strategic objectives amongst local authorities as policy actors.…”

New lamps for old: financialised governance of cities and clean energy

“…The development of finance capitalism, and complex corporate and governmental networks of institutional investment, rating agencies, trading platforms and business restructuring have been a particular focus in political and cultural economy (Pryke and Du Gay 2007, Streeck 2016, Bayliss et al 2017. Infrastructure has increasingly been configured as a globally tradable asset class, with investment banks, pension, private equity and sovereign wealth funds adding urban infrastructure to investment portfolios (O'Brien et al 2019). In at least some cities, structured finance instruments have been applied to extraction of value from infrastructures, reconfiguring these as liquid asset classes yielding 'predictable and secure income streams' (Leyshon and Thrift 2007, p. 101) in global markets.…”

“…Cities such as Chicago, which have led the way in financialising urban infrastructures as a means to solve fiscal crises, have sought to manage risks by incorporating financial intermediaries into state institutions, developing new forms of agency (Ashton et al 2016). Strategic functions such as planning for example may become increasingly oriented to prioritising private investment over provision of collective services, with implications for local populations facing differential services and costs (O'Brien et al 2019). Creating material ties between global financial markets and local infrastructures is hence an irreducibly political and cultural as well as technical process.…”

“…The first contribution of the paper is to address this gap by examining urban sustainable energy planning in and through the financialised governance arrangements of UK neo-liberal political economy (Du Gay et al 2012, O'Brien et al 2019. A case study of the trajectory of Glasgow's Sustainable City business model over six years contributes practice-based evidence to necessary public debate about the fitness of our contemporary government institutions for urgent action to mitigate climate disruption (IPCC 2018).…”

A Melhor Esquina do País: as práticas empreendedoras dos agentes estatais na PPP Nova Cidade Albor

“…Desta forma, os governos desenvolveram capacidades de mediação, negociação e mobilização por meio da reorganização institucional e regulatória, atuando como parceiros do mercado (WEBER, 2010). Segundo O'brien et al (2018;2019), o discurso das políticas públicas contemporâneas está encorajando a canalização de investimento em infraestrutura pública e privada para apoiar o crescimento ou alavancar setores em crise (O'BRIEN et al 2018).…”