China's Belt and Road Initiative and the emerging geographies of global urbanisation

Williams, Joe; Robinson, Caitlin; Bouzarovski, Stefan

Abstract

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is heralded as the largest investment in infrastructure in history and is expected to re‐shape the geographies of urbanization in the coming decades. In this paper we review the burgeoning, yet still embryonic literature on the BRI. Our aim is to move beyond currently dominant framings of the BRI as a geopolitical or economic strategy that tend to overlook the complex embeddedness of infrastructure. Drawing on theories of planetary urbanization, we argue that the BRI constitutes a form of urbanization that is bound up with the socio‐spatial and ecological restructuring of global capitalism. We illustrate this by mapping and analysing energy projects under the BRI. Overall, we outline a research agenda on the BRI that calls for: 1) a more nuanced analysis of its spatial and scalar politics; 2) approaching the BRI as a distinctly urban question; and 3) a disruption of the dominant China‐centric discussions through critical in‐depth case‐study analysis.

Citation

Williams, J., Robinson, C., & Bouzarovski, S. (2020). China's Belt and Road Initiative and the emerging geographies of global urbanisation. The Geographical Journal, 186(1), 128-140. https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12332

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 26, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Oct 31, 2019
• Publication Date: Mar 31, 2020
• Deposit Date: Oct 10, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 31, 2021
• Journal: The Geographical Journal
• Print ISSN: 0016-7398
• Electronic ISSN: 1475-4959
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 186
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 128-140
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12332