With apologies for cross-posting...
Public Infrastructure Under Global Ownership
AAG Tampa, Florida, 8-12 April 2014
Professor Andrew Jones (City University, UK)
Dr Steve Musson (University of Reading, UK)
In October 2013, the provincial Scottish airport at Prestwick was re-nationalised. Infratil, the New Zeland-based multinational fund that owned the airport, demanded average returns of 20% on its investments. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the budget airline hub at Prestwick - best known as the site of Elvis Presley’s only visit to the UK in 1960 - was unable to meet this requirement.
Since at least the mid 1990s, ongoing processes of economic globalization have been increasingly associated with such international investment and ownership of public infrastructure (see for example Dunleavy 1994). This is characterised by direct and indirect investment in public infrastructure by foreign investors and the acquisition of national infrastructure companies by multinational infrastructure service corporations. This process of internationalization been facilitated by the ongoing privatization of state-owned public infrastructure, the creation of investment vehicles such as public-private partnership initiatives, and by falling barriers to foreign investment and ownership (which may be imposed on national governments as part of economic restructuring programs). As the case of Prestwick illustrates, though this process public infrastructure has become increasingly finanicalized, commoditized and internationalized.
This session aims to bring together empirical and theoretical work within economic, urban and political geography concerned with the changing nature of public infrastructure ownership. Papers might consider the following themes, although we welcome other cognate contributions:
i) Case studies and other empirical examinations of the geographies and functions of international investment in public infrastructure projects;
ii) Conceptual work that understands nature of political, ideological policy frameworks that inform states policies on public infrastructure provision and international ownership
iii) Political economic work, examining the national and international politics of public infrastructure
iv) Theoretical contributions concerned with how processes such as globalization, financialisation and neoliberalization intersect with trends in public infrastructure provision;
Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted to Steve Musson ([log in to unmask]) by Monday 28th October 2013 (note extended deadline).
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