Getting the territory right: infrastructure-led development and the re-emergence of spatial planning strategies

Abstract

In this paper we argue that infrastructure-led development constitutes an emergent international development regime whose imperative is to 'get the territory right.' Spatial planning strategies from the postwar era are increasingly employed in contemporary attempts to integrate territory with global networks of production and trade. Large-scale infrastructure projects link resource frontiers and sub-national urban systemsoftentimes across national bordersin ways that constitute spatially articulated value chains geared toward the extraction of resources, logistical integration and industrial production. We chart the emergence of this regime, analyse its spatial manifestations and evaluate its developmental outcomes.

Imperial Remains and Imperial Invitations: Centering Race within the Contemporary Large‐Scale Infrastructures of East Africa

“…While, apparently, seeking to provide blueprints for profitable and “shiny African cities” and their hinterlands (Côté‐Roy and Moser 2019), they also intend to generate immediate benefits to transnational companies, banks and local and international elites. These narrative products (see, for example, ADB nd; McKinsey Global Institute 2010; PIDA 2012; UNECA 2012; World Bank 2010), often developed and cheered on by multilateral institutions, consulting and development agencies (Schindler and Kanai 2019), work within a presentist and a‐historical optic that disregards, or, in a fairly calculative fashion, places historical “stuff” such as colonialism, inequality and distorted international relations outside of view. Africa now, while perhaps not viewed as a completely clean slate, is still “ripe” for “development” within an unquestioned hyper‐neoliberal arena, now intersected with Sino‐led “authoritarian capitalism” (Bloom 2016; cf.…”

“…Localised and textured studies from a black radical standpoint are much needed in this moment of “infrastructure‐led development” (Schindler and Kanai 2019), both to expose its fatal reproduction of racial disposability, and for building longer genealogies of solidarity with those who resist it. Colonial encounters are remade through a “help” that obscures imperial processes: its remains and invitations.…”

“…It is important to note that when we discuss infrastructure projects, we refer to large‐scale physical constructions taken as unquestionably imperative to the running of economies, such as transportation, energy, communication and waste management systems. These aim “to integrate territory with global networks of production and trade” (Schindler and Kanai 2019), and are viewed as “engines of modernity” that connect rural and urban geographies. Certainly, they are intended to render civilisatory facades and comply with (physically) absent (but mentally) present evolutionary trajectories of progress and development.…”

Covid-19, China and the future of global development

“…Plans tend to emphasize the importance of inter-city, regional and even transnational connectivity via expansive corridors ( Mayer and Zhang, 2020 ). The realization of these ambitious plans requires significant investments in infrastructure such as regional energy grids, railways, highways and ports ( Schindler and Kanai, 2019 ). Chinese planners consider this turnkey infrastructure a necessary precondition for economic growth, and countries are encouraged to finance construction through loans.…”

Large investments, small farmers: A financialisation perspective on value chains in a development corridor

“…With the interrelated food and finance crises (2007/08), the agricultural sector has returned onto the agenda of national planning, international development, and global capital investments. Same rediscovery of agriculture as field of development intervention as well as investment opportunity, was further accompanied by a general return towards regional planning to facilitate and govern the increased articulation with the global political economy (Smalley, 2017;Schindler & Kanai, 2019). Ambitious infrastructural projects in the form of agriculture-oriented development corridors have since epitomised this trend in several African regions.…”