Tracing the Links between Infrastructure-Led Development, Urban Transformation, and Inequality in China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the links between infrastructure-led development, urban transformation and inequality in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). I theorise the BRI as a spatial fix to the overaccumulation problems of Chinese capitalism and I pay particular attention to the role of urbanisation. By drawing on postcolonial geographies, my goal is to offer a relational analysis of divergent trajectories of socio-spatial urban change driven by BRI projects in Athens, Colombo and London. My key argument is that urban transformation driven by the BRI signals the emergence of a new form of infrastructure-led, authoritarian neoliberal urbanism. This engenders both new urban formations and new urban politics that, despite variegated expressions across different contexts, are reconfiguring urban space and are transforming the social geography of each city by creating, facilitating or exacerbating spatial fragmentation and social segregation.