Funding and Financing Urban Infrastructure: a UK-US Comparison
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Funding and financing urban infrastructure: a UK-US comparison Thomas Christopher Strickland Doctor of Philosophy School of Geography, Politics and Sociology Newcastle University January 2016 Abstract This thesis examines how urban infrastructure is funded and financed in cities in the United Kingdom and the United States. The thesis brings together the diverse and disconnected literatures on infrastructure, capital investment and urban development and creates a framework for understanding the changing landscape of infrastructure finance. Drawing on primary empirical research, this framework is then used to examine the funding and financing of infrastructure in the cities of Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield in the UK and Buffalo, NY, Chicago, IL, and Stockton, CA in the US. The objectives of the empirical analysis are: to explain the types of funding and financing being used within the case study cities and to identify emergent trends; to understand the multiscalar factors driving the adoption and use of those practices; to analyse the key mechanisms, processes and systems that are implicit in a range of capital investment strategies; and to explain the implications of the ways in which infrastructure is funded and financed for urban development within the case study cities. This thesis argues that the practices used for funding and financing infrastructure in cities are becoming increasingly financialised, and that this is having transformative implications for the urban environment. As such, the thesis makes four main contributions; first, it demonstrates how the process of financialisation is changing the ways in which infrastructure is funded and financed; second, it shows that financialisation is changing the politics of infrastructure and fuelling a process of reterritorialisation but, at the same time, that the state continues to have a major role in the funding and financing of infrastructure; third, it contends that the financialisation of capital investment is encouraged by instances of fiscal stress, and yet that it can also catalyse overaccumulation and cause further fiscal crisis; and fourth, it suggests that increasingly financialised models of infrastructure investment are reinforcing patterns of uneven development and causing an intensification in the process of urban splintering. More broadly, this research begins to address a gap in the literature on financialisation, which, to date, has been criticised for lacking sufficiently in-depth and fine-grained analyses of financial actors, markets and systems. In particular, the empirical evidence and comparative case study analysis illustrates that financialisation is not an overpowering and all-consuming behemoth but a highly variable process that is negotiated, managed and regulated in different ways in different geographical contexts. ii Acknowledgements During the three and a half years that it has taken me to write this thesis, I have had help and advice from more people than it would be possible to name here. Nevertheless, I would like to thank each and every one of you for your input: this thesis is a product of your combined support and it could not have been completed without you. The direction of this thesis has been driven, to a great extent, by the interviews that I conducted across the UK and US in Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield, Buffalo, Chicago and Stockton. I would like to thank everyone who selflessly gave up their time (always for free, sometimes for half an hour, sometimes for a day or more) to help me undertake my research. The experience and knowledge that I have gained from speaking to such a diverse and interesting group of people has been – and will continue to be – truly invaluable. In future, I would be delighted to return the generosity that you have shown me in any way I can. Equally important has been the support of Newcastle City Council. In particular, I would like to mention Beverley Linsley, Claire Smith, Rob Hamilton, Andrew Lewis, Paul Woods and Kevin Richardson for all their advice, direction and feedback. Had it not been for a meeting that I had with Kevin Richardson in early 2011 and for his support and guidance throughout my Masters Dissertation, I may not have decided to do a PhD at all. In October and November 2012, I was lucky enough to be invited to be a Visiting Fellow at the Great Cities Institute at the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). I am extremely grateful to Rachel Weber for the invitation and also to Taryn McCook and the rest of the department for their excellent hospitality. Writing a PhD is a journey, and a lot of that journey was spent in the Geography Postgrad Office in Newcastle University’s Daysh Building. I would like to thank all of my colleagues and friends in geography for undertaking this journey with me and for giving me some great memories along the way. Please keep in touch! I would also like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the North East Doctoral Training Centre (NEDTC) and its staff for providing the funding with which this PhD could otherwise not have been completed. I have been fortunate enough to be a PhD student at the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies. It is a fantastic research centre, and I am proud to have been a part of it: everywhere I go, people know the name ‘CURDS’ and associate it with quality and iii excellence in research. Of the many CURDS staff that have supported me along the way, I would especially like to thank Stuart Dawley and David Bradley for the role they have had in my development both as an academic and as a person. To my supervisors, Jane Pollard and Andy Pike, I have so much to thank you for. You have provided me with such unbelievable support and the most invaluable advice throughout this journey, and you have helped me overcome any and every hurdle along the way. It has been an absolute pleasure to have you as my supervisors. Lastly, to my friends and family, I can’t thank you enough for all of your support throughout my PhD and beyond. Doing a PhD has been a great life experience and you have all been at the heart of it. iv Table of Contents List of Figures .......................................................................................................... viii List of Tables ............................................................................................................... x List of Appendices ...................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1: Introduction .............................................................................................. 12 1.1 The contested category of infrastructure: towards a definition ................................... 14 1.2 An introduction to the funding and financing of infrastructure .................................. 16 1.3 Outlining the framework of research: a UK-US comparison ....................................... 20 1.4 Key conceptual and theoretical contributions ............................................................. 21 1.5 Structure of the thesis................................................................................................... 25 Chapter 2: The geographies of capital investment and infrastructure finance ........ 29 2.1 The financialisation of infrastructure and urban development ................................... 29 2.1.1 The geographies of financialisation .......................................................................................... 30 2.1.2 Securitisation, capital switching and the transformation of capital accumulation ............ 31 2.1.3 The financialisation of infrastructure ....................................................................................... 33 2.1.4 The financialisation of public policy and capital investment ............................................... 37 2.2 State reterritorialisation and the governance of capital investment ............................ 40 2.2.1 Positioning the state at the centre of analysis ......................................................................... 41 2.2.2 The state and its strategies of financialisation and urban redevelopment .......................... 42 2.2.3 Power politics: financial elites, local coalitions and the changing scalarity of urban governance ............................................................................................................................................. 44 2.2.4 Financialisation, multiscalar interdependencies and systemic competition ....................... 46 2.2.5 Urban reterritorialisation and the financialisation of capital investment ........................... 48 2.3 The fiscalisation of urban development ...................................................................... 50 2.3.1 Fiscal crisis and the urbanisation of austerity ......................................................................... 51 2.3.2 Fiscal stress, austerity and deficit reduction: constraining the financialisation of capital investment? ............................................................................................................................................ 54 2.3.3 Infrastructure, capital investment and the financial condition ............................................ 56 2.3.4 The fiscalisation of urban development and the prioritisation of returns on investment57 2.4 The intensification of ‘Splintering Urbanism’ through financialisation ..................... 60 2.4.1