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

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Caitlin RobinsonORCiD

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2020.

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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.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Williams J, Robinson C, Bouzarovski S

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: The Geographical Journal

Year: 2020

Volume: 186

Issue: 1

Pages: 128-140

Print publication date: 01/03/2020

Online publication date: 30/09/2019

Acceptance date: 30/09/2019

Date deposited: 07/10/2019

ISSN (print): 0016-7398

ISSN (electronic): 1475-4959

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12332

DOI: 10.1111/geoj.12332

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