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FrancoAngeli Journals

Geographies of Urban Financialization: Global Dynamics, Italian Scenarios

No. 3 (2025)

Reasons, actors and tools of the financialization of urban infrastructure: A conceptual map

  • Alberto Valz Gris
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/rgioa3-2025oa21178
Submitted
ottobre 2, 2025
Published
2025-10-24

Abstract

A global infrastructure turn affects the field of urban studies. A general consensus that correlates infrastructures to social and economic development determines a significant increase in investments required for circulation infrastructures such as electricity grids, pipelines, sewage systems, or railways. If infrastructuring a territory was dominated by public spending in the modern era, the emergence of neoliberal regimes has characterized a radical transformation of the forms of infrastructure financing, in the name of privatization and financialization. This article aims to offer a conceptual mapping to read these processes, interrogating the reasons, the actors and the tools of the financialization of urban infrastructure and to consider, in light of emerging themes in the international debate, some future lines of research on the Italian territory.

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