A dialogue on global infrastructure-led urbanization: Concepts and reorientations

The territorial and technological geographies of the planet are being rapidly and profoundly transformed and restructured in the 21st century. A massive surge of plans, visions, and investments is materializing through new connectivity infrastructure and operations of vast, extended transportation and logistical networks, with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative serving as a prominent example. To scrutinize this context, in this article, we advocate for a shift from infrastructure-led development to infrastructure-led urbanization, emphasizing the urban as the key analytical terrain. We argue that the urban perspective reveals conceptual, geoeconomic, and geopolitical dimensions that are at the core of the transformations brought about by the implementation of global infrastructure. By mobilizing the authors’ urban research experience spanning Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and by stressing the vital value of on-the-ground and comparative research, we illustrate the complexities and specificities inherent in these projects. In doing so, we propose a collective dialogue that explores and reorients conceptual and methodological possibilities to capture the complex interplay of geoeconomic and geopolitical forces within what we term ‘global infrastructure-led urbanization’.