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Integrating what and for whom? Financialisation and the Thames Tideway Tunnel

Author

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  • Alex Loftus

    (King’s College London, UK)

  • Hug March

    (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain)

Abstract

The Thames Tideway Tunnel (TTT), often referred to as the Thames super sewer, is currently one of the largest infrastructure projects underway in any European city. Costing an estimated £4.2 billion, the sewer connects London’s Victorian sewerage network with the Thames Wastewater Treatment Works at Beckton. The latter facility has been described as the UK’s Water–Energy–Food nexus poster child, for its combination of desalination facilities, green energy generation and wastewater treatment. While physically connected to the Beckton plant, the TTT is, paradoxically, designed with an apparent disregard for the water–energy nexus. If the Beckton plant represents a nexus-based vision of integration – what Macrorie and Marvin (2016) refer to as Mode 2 Urban Integration – the TTT harks back to a view of urban integration carried from the Victorian era through to the present moment. What unites the two projects, and what undergirds the transformation of the hydrosocial cycle, is a financial model more focused on the extraction of rents from Thames Water’s consumers. Thames Water’s dismissal of genuinely integrated alternatives appears guided more by the financialisation of the urban integrated ideal than by what is needed to respond to London’s broader environmental needs. Contesting the project, therefore, will involve slicing through the various claims to integration, going beyond the many proposals for evidence-based alternatives, and capturing the transformations being wrought by finance’s entry into infrastructure provision.

Suggested Citation

  • Alex Loftus & Hug March, 2019. "Integrating what and for whom? Financialisation and the Thames Tideway Tunnel," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(11), pages 2280-2296, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:56:y:2019:i:11:p:2280-2296
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098017736713
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. John Allen & Michael Pryke, 2013. "Financialising household water: Thames Water, MEIF, and ‘ring-fenced’ politics," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 6(3), pages 419-439.
    2. Alex Loftus & Hug March, 2016. "Financializing Desalination: Rethinking the Returns of Big Infrastructure," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 46-61, January.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Jenny McArthur, 2024. "Infrastructure debt funds and the assetization of public infrastructures," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 56(3), pages 681-698, May.
    3. Rehema Msulwa, 2022. "How do megaprojects influence institutional change?," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 38(2), pages 302-321.
    4. Jochen Monstadt & Olivier Coutard, 2019. "Cities in an era of interfacing infrastructures: Politics and spatialities of the urban nexus," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(11), pages 2191-2206, August.

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