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2 -Breakdown and organisation of infrastructures: region and State -market
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Until a decade ago, the term “infrastructure” clearly referred to roads, highways, airports, ports, power stations, gas networks, water supplies, sewers and waste disposal systems. Going back only a few decades, there was a widespread conviction that state intervention in the financing of infrastructure was unsustainable: growing needs could simply...
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Context 1
... The partial and imperfect transmission of risks from the public sector to the economic operator can be bridged by steady GDP growth. Increased growth will gradually outweigh asymmetries and incomplete knowledge of LTC consistency (Fig. 4.1 point A). In the end, what happens in the management of the LTC is not as important as the investment ...
Context 2
... For these countries, a correct balance between the Procuring Authority and the Project Company is insufficient. It is essential to establish immediately a correct balance between hard consistency (object), PPP contract and management of the PPP assembly for the duration of the LTC (Fig. 4.1 point ...
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The model of the previous chapter represents a consolidated even if not obvious dynamic. The main reference is made up of globalization which has largely dragged the other components. More than thirty years ago, with other researchers, I tackled the issue of counterurbanization in a phase of crisis (deindustrialization) involving the West, replaced by the growth of finance and financialization. At that time, the deviations from the traditional model of urbanization were evident. We were witnessing the decline of old production within the city and its replacement by financialization. Now a critical factor that has intervened in the disruptive growth of globalization has been a crisis that has introduced the concept of slowbalization. Then followed the pandemic which had its epicenter in global cities and urban infrastructures. Hence the dichotomy between globalization and slowbalization, with strong repercussions on the evolution of the urban infrastructure.
The affirmation that financialization progressively replaces the state in the assembly of significant parts of the city also characterizes the way of understanding urban infrastructure. The claim, therefore, needs to be proved. The choice falls on a case study, able to focus on financialization and set-up applied to the Real Estate and to the urban infrastructure of the global cities. In order to see the effects it is therefore necessary to verify its evolution. Milan is chosen, the most global city of the last thirty years in Italy. The evolution of the last 20 years is analyzed and an attempt is made to verify the intertwining between new forms of Real Estate and the new evolution of urban infrastructures.
The chapter deals with the concept of urban infrastructure. The attempt is that of a first systematization of the theme. The identity of the term and the meaning it assumes become central to understanding the concept and its importance. It is the urban term that is added to infrastructure that gives infrastructure a new meaning. It is the evolving phenomena that are combined with cities that make it a central theme. The use of the term urban infrastructure in an ever more extensive form does not concern an occasional passage, but it is a new treatment and a new line of research. We differ from a previous phase of territory, nation, city, public works. There is a technical rigor in defining the urban infrastructure, but also an interdisciplinarity in making it become a formidable key to interpreting the rapidly changing economic, technological and organizational, as well as social transformation. The big cities (global cities) and the infrastructures that innervate them are the centre of the discussion, the transformation of the state and of the private capital in relation to urban infrastructure also appears at the same time. There is also an attempt to rearrange and integrate the language of different authors and disciplines around the concept of urban infrastructure.
The central theme is a definition of urban infrastructure. It is a question of identifying the different types and completing the shape through the different types. It is precisely the different typology of infrastructures that provides the thickness and complexity of urban infrastructures and the conceptual perimeter where to insert them. It is the growing presence of the ITC and the innovation of the ubiquitous infrastructure capable of contaminating the other types that end up giving a sense of depth and greater three-dimensionality to the concept of urban infrastructure. Technology is an important component of the evolution of urban infrastructure, which technology represents a variable of other evolutions. Within the chapter there is also a part on the slowdown of globalization and the effect that this can have on the development of the concept of urban infrastructure. At the same time, it is the infrastructure that appears in all national programs for the recovery of economic development and which is used as a guide for getting out of the pandemic crisis.
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.
