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

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that infrastructure-led development constitutes an emergent international development regime whose imperative is to ‘get the territory right’. Spatial planning strategies from the post-war 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 subnational urban systems – oftentimes across national borders – in ways that constitute spatially articulated value chains geared toward the extraction of resources, logistical integration and industrial production. The paper charts the emergence of this regime, analyses its spatial manifestations and evaluates its developmental outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• infrastructure
• development
• regional planning
• neoliberalism

JEL:

• N90
• O2

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Seth Schindler has presented parts of this paper at the Regional Studies Annual Conference 2018. Earlier versions of this paper received supportive comments from three anonymous reviewers as well as from Vincent Béal, Max Rousseau, Mark Usher, David Hulme, Niki Banks, Cristina Temenos, Mike Hodson, Tom Gillespie, Mustafa Bayırbağ, Connie Smith and Łukasz Stanek. The usual disclaimers apply.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See https://www.neom.com/.

2. See https://www.iif.com/content/infrastructure-working-group.

3. See https://pipeline.gihub.org/.

4. See https://www.gica.global/about-us/what-global-infrastructure-connectivity-alliance.

5. See https://ppi.worldbank.org/.

6. See https://www.gihub.org/blog/financing-cross-border-infrastructure-projects-bankability/.

7. See https://eng.yidaiyilu.gov.cn/.

Additional information

Funding

Seth Schindler acknowledges generous funding from the British Academy’s Tackling the UK’s International Challenges Programme, 2017 [Megaprojects and the Reshaping of Urban Futures: G] and Regional Studies Association [Early Career Grant, 2015].