Urban visions of global climate finance: Dispossessive mechanisms of futuring in the making of Groy

Of late, the trope of the green, smart and climate-resilient city has dominated imaginations of urban futures across the globe. Less visible perhaps, but arguably of equal social impact, global climate finance (GCF) agendas have asserted themselves as the only imaginable pathway to do and undo such futures in effective ways. Based on a document analysis of recent GCF reports, this contribution unpicks the mechanisms of ‘futuring’ advanced in this process of agenda setting, and sketches its inherent imaginaries of a model future city. We borrow from John Berger’s city of Troy and call this city Groy. Groy is a metaphor for green growth; it is the World Bank’s fantasy project: a techno-capitalist vision of prosperity, the bank’s donor darling and its best practice case. In rendering this fantasy into a fictional city, we explore how future visions of urban GCF initiatives shape cities today to allow for a sustained critique of that future and, in consequence, a rethinking of present times. Our analysis builds on the work of futurists Ben Anderson and John Urry, and an emerging debate that seeks to postcolonialize climate finance, to demand thinking about definancialization beyond regulation as a sociopolitical process of opening up the future for other imaginations

The financial ecologies of climate urbanism: Project preparation and the anchoring of global climate finance

Global development institutions herald private finance as a key mechanism for limiting climate change. Many have concentrated their efforts on bridging urban “infrastructure gaps,” thereby creating profitable fixes and establishing new markets through global climate finance initiatives (GCFIs). This paper examines the project preparation practices of GCFIs in cities of the global South to understand how global climate finance anchors itself within cities. Leaning on the concept of financial ecologies, we argue that these practices do significant relational work, linking emerging smaller financial ecologies with each other, thereby establishing a larger financial ecology of climate urbanism. Examining the actors, spatial strategies and relations of these initiatives, we conclude that the sum of these parts ultimately serves the reproduction of global climate finance itself

Langweilige Dystopien in fiktiven Geographien

Dieser Artikel untersucht das Verhältnis zwischen räumlichem Eingeschlossensein und dystopischem Alltag in fiktionalen Filmen. Unser empirischer Ausgangspunkt ist die Darstellung des Eingeschlossenseins in den Filmen Parasite (2019) und Dogtooth (2009). Beide Filme erzählen mit düsterem Humor verflochtene Geschichten über Erfahrungen des Einschlusses in sozialen Hierarchien (Parasite) und patriarchalischen Strukturen (Dogtooth) sowie über den unmöglichen Versuch, aus diesen Ordnungen auszubrechen. Wir lesen diese Erfahrungen als langweilige Dystopien, also als Dystopien, die in den Alltag eingeschrieben sind und eine grausame Realität normalisieren. Wir nutzen die fiktionalen Erzählungen von Dogtooth und Parasite für eine kulturgeographische Analyse, die das Eingeschlossensein neben seinen räumlichen und materiellen Bedingungen als eine affektive Atmosphäre (Anderson 2014) versteht. Aufbauend auf der zunehmenden Stadtforschung über Affekte und Emotionen vermittelt dieser Zugang, wie das Eingeschlossensein sich als alltägliche, dystopische Erfahrung normalisiert. Wir argumentieren, dass eine Analyse affektiver Atmosphären die unsichtbar gewordenen Gewalterfahrungen des Eingeschlossenseins greifbar machen kann

Understanding the functioning of urban climate finance through topologies of reach

Urban climate action is increasingly understood through the lens of finance: through financial agendas, interests, and practical tools which enable ‘bankable’ or profitable interventions. While the literature is rife with criticism of the normative foundations and exploitative effects of this approach, it fails to capture the variegated ways in which finance configures, and is configured by, particular urban sites and spaces of power. This contribution extends our cartography of urban climate finance by bringing to light the relational dynamics of financial practices and the ways in which they span across diverse urban sites in topological ways.It has now become a common refrain among development and finance institutions that urban climate finance is, in fact, difficult to realize. A central reason for this is the perceived lack of possibilities to generate returns for investors. A topological perspective offers a relational view on the spatial practices through which new places are to be enrolled into the use of climate finance with the aim of stabilizing financial investment. Concentrating on the notion of ‘topological reach’, we show how climate finance, through its particular demands for bankability, creates new urban presences through spatial mechanisms of stretches, folds and distortions. By examining these topological mechanisms across a breadth of empirical material sourced from the individual research of the coauthors, we unpack the ways in which climate finance strategies are extended by a limited set of actors across space, often dominating and instrumentalizing urban climate action imaginaries and practices, while also failing to address a wide range of concerns and communities which fall outside of the operational parameters and speculative horizons of finance.The topological perspective provides us with the tools to make these struggles visible and opens up avenues to contest contemporary climate finance practices on the ground and to decenter the overarching narratives that drive contemporary climate finance

Finance, water infrastructure, and the city: comparing impacts of financialization in London and Mumbai

This paper examines how financialization changes the financial ecologies of urban water infrastructure provision, and the consequences of these impacts. It begins by illustrating the current state of research on the financialization of infrastructure, and then details the method for contributing towards this literature. A comparative approach, based on the financial ecologies of urban infrastructure, is introduced and explained. The changing financial ecologies of London (UK) and Mumbai (India) are presented by means of a twin approach that examines, on the one hand, new state-level initiatives that introduce municipal bonds into their respective countries, and, on the other, highly individualized financial constructs that aim to enable similar, large water infrastructure projects in the two cities. The findings include the importance of local knowledge and the expertise needed to translate these knowledges/risks between actors in the financial ecology. Faults in these processes lead to compromised decision-making, which is largely enabled by weak oversight. Closer scrutiny and more transparent tendering processes are recommended as policy tools to overcome these shortcomings

Finance, Water Infrastructure, and the City

Diese Dissertation untersucht die Frage, wie sich aktuelle Finanzpraktiken auf die Versorgung mit städtischer Wasserinfrastruktur auswirken und welche Konsequenzen diese Praktiken für Städte haben. Die Arbeit umfasst drei spezifische Ziele, die jeweils in einer separaten Publikation behandelt werden: Die erste Publikation entwickelt den theoretischen Rahmen zur Erarbeitung der Forschungsfrage und prüft diesen in einer ersten empirischen Anwendung. Dabei wird argumentiert, dass durch die Betonung der Rolle von Infrastrukturen und die Entwicklung eines auf "Finanzökologien" basierenden Modells die Auswirkungen der Finanzialisierung auf Städte besser verstanden werden kann. Die empirische Anwendung im Kontext der Einführung von Kommunalanleihen in Großbritannien zeigt erste räumliche Effekte auf. In der zweiten Publikation wird die zeitliche Dimension der Finanzialisierung von städtischer Wasserinfrastruktur untersucht. Sie hebt die soziale Erfahrung von Zeit (temporalities/Zeitlichkeiten) hervor und zeigt am Beispiel des Thames Tideway Tunnels (TTT) in London, wie dessen Finanzialisierung bestimmte zeitliche Charakteristika festlegt. Diese eröffnen und verschließen Möglichkeitsräume, welche abschließend betrachtet werden. Die dritte Publikation wendet das im ersten Artikel entwickelte Modell auf eine vergleichende Analyse der Finanzökologien der städtischen Infrastruktur in London und Mumbai an. Um die sich wandelnde Dynamik der Finanzökologie besser zu verstehen, verfolgt der Artikel einen zweistufigen Ansatz: Zunächst werden Initiativen zur Einführung von Kommunalanleihen als Mittel zur Infrastrukturfinanzierung auf nationaler Ebene untersucht. Sodann wird beispielhaft ein Fall der Projektfinanzierung auf lokaler Ebene herangezogen. Die empirische Analyse dieser Fälle fungiert anschließend als Grundlage für eine vergleichende Untersuchung, welche unterschiedliche Muster der Finanzialisierung identifiziert. Im weiteren Verlauf setzt sich der vorliegende Text kritisch mit den ursprünglichen Zielen und der Methode der Dissertation auseinander und gibt einen Überblick über die geleisteten Beiträge zur einschlägigen Literatur. Der Schlussabschnitt fasst die drei Veröffentlichungen zusammen und bezieht diese auf aktuelle Forschungsergebnisse zur Finanzialisierung der städtischen Infrastruktur. Abschließend wird ein Ausblick auf die Bedeutung des behandelten Feldes für die Herausforderungen des Klimawandels und das Aufkommen von „Smart City“-Konzepten gegeben.This thesis examines the question of how current financial practices affect urban water infrastructure provision, and the consequences of these evolving practices for cities. The thesis sets out three specific objectives, each tackled by a separate publication: the first aims to establish a theoretical framework capable of addressing the research question, and tests it via a first empirical application. It presents the argument that, by emphasizing the role of infrastructure and developing a conceptual model based on financial ecologies, we can better understand the impacts of financialization on cities. The empirical application, in the context of municipal bond development in the UK, identifies some initial spatial effects. The second publication explores the temporal dimension of finance in relation to urban water infrastructure. It emphasizes the social experience of time as temporalities and shows, by example of the Thames Tideway Tunnel (TTT) project in London, how its financialization establishes certain temporal characteristics. The paper concludes with an analysis of openings and closures for political intervention that result from these specific characteristics. The final publication applies the conceptual model, developed in the first publication, to a comparative analysis of the financial ecologies of urban infrastructure in London and Mumbai. To determine the changing dynamics of financial ecologies, the paper follows a twin approach: firstly, it examines initiatives for the introduction of municipal bonds as a means for infrastructure financing at the national level; secondly, it identifies an exemplary case of project finance at the local level. Data obtained through empirical research allow comparison of the cities’ respective financial ecologies, thereby highlighting patterns that emerge as a consequence of financialization. The thesis concludes by reflecting on the original objectives, the method, and by summarizing the contributions to the literature. The conclusion section draws together the three publications and relates them to current research on the financialization of urban infrastructure while providing a perspective on the significance of the field in view of the challenges of climate change and the momentum behind ‘smart city’ initiatives

Social Welfare Functions which preserve distances

The notion of keeping distances, introduced by N. Baigent in [2], avoids the need to introduce topological concepts when defining Social Welfare Functions with requirements analogous to those established by Chichilnsky in [3]. In the following study we propose an extension of the results of Baigent, in a non topological framework, to a much broader class of metrics which enables the case of infinite agents to be considered in a natural fashion.

The temporalities of financialization

In the last decade, a bourgeoning body of literature has explored the influence of financial actors, techniques and motives in the urban development of North American and European cities. Less has been said about the influence of finance on the temporalities of urban production and urban life. Yet finance is, at its most basic, the management of debt; and debt is, simply put, the deferral of payment; thus, by its very nature, financialization introduces new temporal dynamics into whatever object of investment it engages with. This paper examines these temporal dynamics in the financialized production of a large-scale urban infrastructure project, the Thames Tideway Tunnel (TTT), a 25-km ‘super-sewer’ beneath the River Thames where it runs through the center of London. From analyzing how financial actors, motives, and instruments influence the planning and implementation of this massive sewer expansion, it traces the ways in which the temporal characteristics of finance have repercussions in the urban space that privilege financial interests. This analysis contributes both conceptual and empirical insights. Firstly, it provides a theoretical conceptualization of the ways in which the temporalities of financialization shape the material production of the city. Secondly and more empirically, our case analysis allows us to schematize the different ways in which the financialization of the TTT project shapes the temporalities of its production, with wide-ranging political, economic and environmental implications. In summary, the paper closes a crucial gap in understanding how different temporalities of finance intersect in the making of contemporary cities.Peer Reviewe

City development under the constraints of complexity and urban governance: A case study on the application of systems modelling and ‘syntegration’ to the city of Fürth

This paper presents insights from the so-called ‘syntegration’ process, which helped the German city of Fürth to overcome severe financial deficit. The approach comprises both systems modelling, in order to grasp the developmental prospects of a city, and an accelerated process of consensus-building within the city, which is closely connected to implementation. Syntegration is viewed within the context of urban governance. The findings suggest that leadership is indispensable in initiating and controlling such an urban change process. ‘Syntegration’ and ‘Malik Syntegration’ are registered trade marks owned by Malik

Precaution and Innovation in the Context of Wastewater Regulation: An Examination of Financial Innovation under UWWTD Disputes in London and Milan

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) under the guidance of the precautionary principle sets out standards to guarantee high quality water services for European citizens. This creates pressure on European cities to update and renew their water infrastructures in accordance with EU Law at great financial cost. Cities within the Union try to bridge this financial gap with a variety of approaches. This paper presents the cases of London and Milan, both of which were subject to legal proceedings for breaching the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive. By example of these two cases, this article details how the precautionary principle affects urban water infrastructure provision, and how the regulation of the primary risk of pollution can both trigger innovation and create secondary risks within the highly integrated urban water infrastructure sector. The London case focusses on an individual infrastructure project and shows how its financial framing has compromised the final outcome, while the Milan case presents a longer-view perspective that shows how structural changes in the urban water infrastructure sector have enabled an environment for sustainable financial innovation. The role of transparency and good local governance practices are emphasized for a successful implementation of the precautionary principle requirements in a city’s water sector. Managing this process effectively can result in meaningful social innovation for urban water infrastructure provision.Horizon 2020 Framework ProgrammePeer Reviewe