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'Ungovernable'? Financialisation and the Governance Of Governing the ‘ungovernable’? Financialisation and the governance of transport infrastructure in the London ‘global city-region’ February 2018 Peter O’Briena* Andy Pikea and John Tomaneyb aCentre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS), Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK NE1 7RU. Email: peter.o’[email protected]; [email protected] bBartlett School of Planning, University College London, Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, 620 Central House, 14 Upper Woburn Place, London, UK WC1H 0NN. Email: [email protected] *Corresponding author 1 Abstract The governance of infrastructure funding and financing at the city-region scale is a critical aspect of the continued search for mechanisms to channel investment into the urban landscape. In the context of the global financial crisis, austerity and uneven growth, national, sub-national and local state actors are being compelled to adopt the increasingly speculative activities of urban entrepreneurialism to attract new capital, develop ‘innovative’ financial instruments and models, and establish new or reform existing institutional arrangements for urban infrastructure governance. Amidst concerns about the claimed ‘ungovernability’ of ‘global’ cities and city-regions, governing urban infrastructure funding and financing has become an acute issue. Infrastructure renewal and development are interpreted as integral to urban growth, especially to underpin the size and scale of large cities and their significant contributions within national economies. Yet, oovercoming fragmented local jurisdictions to improve the governance and economic, social and environmental development of major metropolitan areas remains a challenge. The complex, and sometimes conflicting and contested inter-relationships at stake raise important questions about the role of the state in wrestling with entrepreneurial and managerialist governance imperatives. City and government actors are simultaneously engaging with financial actors, the financialisation of the built environment, the enduring and integral position of the state in infrastructure given its particular characteristics, the transformation of infrastructure from a public good into an asset class through the agency of private and state interests, and what relationships, if any, exist between ‘effective’ urban governance systems and improved economic performance. Contributing to theoretical debates about the apparent ‘ungovernability’ of global cities and city-regions, this paper presents analysis and findings from new research 2 examining the financialisation and governance of transport infrastructure in the London global city-region. The continued rise in London’s population is placing significant demands upon existing infrastructure assets and systems and provoking debates about the extent and nature of growth in the UK’s capital, the development of and relationship between urban and sub-urban built environments, and the ability of national, sub-national and local actors to plan infrastructure renewal and investment both within London’s formal administrative boundary and wider city-region. Combining aspects of urban entrepreneurialism and managerialism amidst the challenges of governing a global city-region, the search for new infrastructure investment by state actors is leading to the revival of specific funding and financing mechanisms and practices. The mixing of existing and new funding and financing techniques as well as governance arrangements in distinct and, at times, hybrid ways, is amplifying the novel challenges facing actors and institutions responsible for London’s governance. Keywords: Infrastructure; London; Cities; Governance; Financialisation; Transport 1. Introduction To sustain any Mayor’s vision, London government needs more financial powers to invest in London’s infrastructure and support its growth. So this plan is not a lobbying, manifesto or detailed planning document. It is our first ever strategic attempt to state exactly what infrastructure London needs, roughly how much it will cost, and how we can do it in the best possible way. London’s needs are stark. In order for Londoners to get the homes, water, energy, schools, transport, digital connectivity and better quality of life they require and expect, our city must have continued investment (Boris Johnson, former Mayor of London, Foreword to the London Infrastructure Investment Plan 2050). 3 Governing the funding and financing of infrastructure has become a central concern for states at national, metropolitan/city-regional and city scales in the global North and South. Huge and mounting pressures for infrastructure renewal and development are being generated by ageing and physical deterioration of assets and systems, increasing demands for more integrated, sophisticated and sustainable services, and a renewed emphasis upon the critical role of infrastructure in strengthening national economic competitiveness, productivity and modernisation (Mizell and Allain-Dupré 2013; OECD 2013, 2014; Arezki et al. 2016). Against a background of fiscal consolidation, budgetary pressures and political reluctance to sanction large increases in national state borrowing for new capital investment, governments in advanced economies face the predicament of how to pay for infrastructure renewal and development and devise governance arrangementsthat can plan, deliver, harness and facilitate engagement with new and existing actors and novel, untried, uncertain and speculative financial arrangements and practices in accountable, productive and transparent ways. This study has examined whether and how such issues can be interpreted through the prism of what Storper (2014: 116) defines as “ungovernable metropolitan regions”. The research explored whether large metropolitan areas or global city-regions produce challenges that are easier or more difficult to resolve in places where populations are rising and markets more buoyant, but where demands and pressures for continued and increased infrastructure investment are much more acute in attempts to manage the consequences of growth. As contemporary public policy discourse is focused upon encouraging the channelling of public and private infrastructure investment to support the continued growth of already relatively economically successful (particularly global) city-regions, new empirical investigations are needed to increase our knowledge and understanding and explain the processes and actors involved in governing, funding and financing their urban infrastructure. 4 The London Infrastructure Investment Plan (LIIP) 2050 outlines a pipeline of £1.3 trillion of infrastructure enhancements and renewals in London between 2016 and 2050 (Mayor of London 2014). It sits alongside a commitment made by the UK government to invest £100 billion in UK infrastructure between 2015 and 2020 (HM Treasury 2013). In LIIP’s foreword, the former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, alludes to four inter-connected issues shaping the distinct form of financialisation and governance of infrastructure in London. First, London’s governance institutions are demanding greater decentralisation and fiscal autonomy to enable London to invest more ‘locally-generated’ revenues in infrastructure assets and systems (see also London Finance Commission 2013). Second, the plan represents the first attempt to map London’s infrastructure requirements over a longer-term period. Third, the LIIP identifies specific sectors where new investment is needed, and where funding and financing should be prioritised due to cost, value for money and wider economic, social and environmental outputs and outcomes. Fourth, in portraying the plan as a ‘critical moment’ for London, the former Mayor has made an emotive case for more infrastructure in London to enable the global city-region to further grow and to sustain its economic and fiscal contribution to the UK economy. In this paper, the argument is that the governance of infrastructure investment in London, a global city-region occupying a dominant position within a highly- centralised state, is being continually transformed by a distinct set of international, national and local public and private institutional relationships shaped by the UK’s particular political-economy and neo-liberal variegation of capitalism (Peck and Theodore 2007). Financialisation – defined as the growing influence of capital markets, intermediaries and processes in economic, social and political life (Pike and Pollard 2010) – has been propelled by private actors widening and deepening their engagement with urban infrastructure, although this remains a socially and spatially differentiated, negotiated and uneven process (Strickland 2015). The role 5 of the state, operating at different spatial levels, is being re-worked and in some circumstances reinforced in the context of infrastructure financialisation because of the large-scale, capital intensive and long-term character of infrastructure in the provision of essential services. Aspects of urban entrepreneurialism and managerialism are being combined and mixed by national and local state actors amidst the challenges of funding, financing and governing infrastructure in a global city-region. Although there is a pivotal and enduring role for the public sector at national, sub-national and local scales (O’Neill 2013; Strickland 2015; Ashton et al. 2014), the resulting uneven geographies of infrastructure financialisation and governance require close conceptual and empirical scrutiny. This is particularly
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