Sell, hold or buy? Privatising, managing, owning and acquiring city infrastructure assets

Within international debates about public asset ownership, management, governance and privatisation, financialisation, decentralisation and austerity are compelling national and local state actors into more “commercial†statecraft in an ongoing and pressing search to generate new capital and revenue resources. This uneven financialising of city statecraft has opened up channels for the entry and influence of financial actors with new relations, market incentives and financial practices. Yet, city government agency is provoking national government and financial actor concerns about risk taking, speculation and competition for assets using relatively low interest rate UK state-backed funds. City statecraft involves a socially and spatially uneven range of strategies, rationales, asset definitions, institutional models and practices. Mixing managerialism, entrepreneurialism and financialism, city statecraft is wrestling with the speculative leverage as well as long-term ownership and management of urban infrastructure assets in UK cities. Uneven geographies of public wealth are the result.