Urban state venturism: On state-led venture capital investments in the urban process of capital accumulation

Abstract

Research on the urban process of capital accumulation has typically examined the state and capital as separate actors. This distinction is problematized by a long-standing, increasingly prominent but largely overlooked attempt by state institutions to drive urban development through venture capital (VC) investments. Conceptualized as urban state venturism in this paper, state-driven VC investments reflect at once a riskier extension of urban entrepreneurialism (through their speculative construction of place) and a transposition of state institutions into firm-level drivers of capitalist urbanization (through their roles as profit-oriented investors). To advance research on the urban process of capital accumulation through examining these imbricated state roles, this paper presents a new research agenda that comprises three dimensions, namely (i) the rationale of urban state venturism, (ii) the distribution of profits and risks, and (iii) the extent to which urban state venturism reflects state institutions’ intrinsic commitment to a ‘developmentalist’ ideology. In turn, the agenda foregrounds the value of assessing ‘new’ state capitalism through urban state venturism.