A journey through ‘infraspace’: The financial architecture of infrastructure

Abstract

This paper challenges dominant governance paradigms by exploring the world of infrastructure investment, referred to by the industry as the ‘infraspace’. Starting with financial institutions and multilateral development agencies that steer global infrastructure money, it will trace the financial, technical, bureaucratic and aspirational journey of infrastructure and infrastructure planning. Examining the sociofinancial architecture of infrastructure and development pulls into focus the relationship between states, state-owned enterprises and multilateral financial institutions. Rather than focus primarily on the social and cultural consequences of infrastructural change, however, or how the political promise and aspiration of infrastructure measures up to its everyday use, the point of departure for this paper is the social, economic and political relations that produce infrastructure. Such an examination requires a journey beyond the state and through infraspace.