The Financialization of Urban Infrastructure

The chapter is one of the most important passages of the book. Without financialization, even the full concept of urban infrastructure as it is treated in the volume would not be possible. Financialization is a central point in understanding the specificity of urban infrastructure and the potential for growth and transformation that the concept of urban infrastructure assumes. Financialization also represents a formidable symmetry between the growth of the global city and the urban infrastructure in an evolution that cannot be broken down. This explains, especially within global cities, the progressive replacement of the state by finance in the assembly and management of urban infrastructures. This replacement is not comparable with what happens in other parts of the national territory. The transformation of the Real Estate and urban infrastructures is therefore a phenomenon that mostly involves global cities. The question is: at what stage of the process we are and what are the margins for development. The data tell us that we are only at the beginning with enormous contradictions and complexities that must find a solution to evolve. Some application examples (micro cases) highlight some difficulties which is also the difficult transition between the before and the after, between the old and the new driven by competitive advantage. Other difficulties mentioned in Chap. 1 concern the gap between large cities and the rest of the national territory and the difficulties of territorial integration that arise.