Gateways or backdoors to development? Filtering mechanisms and territorial embeddedness in the Chilean copper GPN’s urban system

Abstract

This paper analyses the role played by different urban nodes in the Chilean copper mining Global Production Network (GPN), and how filtering mechanisms act in favour of the capital city, limiting the territorial embeddedness of extractive industry in resource peripheries. In doing so, we make three contributions to the literature. First, in addition to observing gateway cities (those connecting the mining hinterlands to the global economy), we propose an intermediate category in urban hierarchies which we label the “backdoor city” (those that can perform one or more functions of a gateway city but lack chances for value capture and sustainable development outcomes). Second, we analyse the filtering mechanisms that work to the detriment of resources peripheries. Third, we analyse how these mechanisms reduce the territorial embeddedness of mining activity across the Chilean urban hierarchy. Our main results show that the capital city of Santiago stands out as the only gateway city in the country, and Antofagasta acts as a backdoor city for the Chilean resource peripheries where the extractive activity is weakly embedded, limiting their development opportunities.

The subnational supply chain and the COVID‐19 pandemic: Short‐term impacts on the Brazilian regional economy

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Evade neoliberalism’s turnstiles! Lessons from the Chilean Estallido Social

“…Currently, Chile has the largest deposits and is the biggest producer of copper, lithium and other valuable minerals worldwide (Atienza et al, 2020), but it is also the most unequal country among the OECD members, and one of the most unequal worldwide (OECD, 2020). Almost 67% of the workers in Chile have a monthly wage of up to 770 USD (Dura´n and Kremerman, 2020), insufficient to cover the costs of living in one of the most expensive countries in Latin America (Jim enez-Yañez, 2020).…”

The brokerage roles of city-regions in global corporate networks

“…In a move to diversify beyond the concentrated focus on top-tier 'global cities' and 'world cities' in the globalisation literature (cf. Friedmann, 1986;Sassen, 1991) accounts of city-regions as 'gateways', 'backdoor cities', 'entrepôts', 'relational cities', and other forms of intermediary roles aim to contextualise how many medium-sized and smaller cities fit within global urban networks shaped by more nuanced economic functions and processes (Atienza et al, 2021;Dörry, 2015, Short et al, 2000Scholvin and Breul, 2020;Sigler, 2013;Taylor et al, 2002). Nonetheless, there has been a methodological disconnect in how such literatures have captured brokerage as both a process of intermediation, and as a position within global urban-economic networks.…”