00:00:00: This is The Urban Political.
00:00:10: Welcome dear listeners, welcome to the third episode of the UPP mini-series on cities and geopolitics that we're producing in collaboration with the Second Cold War Observatory an urban geography journal.
00:00:23: In the last episode We had a spirited conversation With Emily Conrad Simon Marvin And Justin Koller On Instructions Of Power In the war-ridden global landscape.
00:00:33: at the moment, we're seeing a major re-sutering of corridors logistics and supply chains.
00:00:39: And also circulation which is manifesting in all kinds of everyday implications for us such as pluriative transit routes.
00:00:45: I have friends who cannot plan.
00:00:47: they have a fear flying because They don't want to be stuck in a place.
00:00:51: We don't have so much certainty To plan these kind of things anymore.
00:00:55: There's increase Of prices on...in All kinds of commodities that you are seeing At The Moment.
00:01:01: How does this sort of refer to corridors, logistics and circulation?
00:01:06: And what's the geopolitics a bit at the current conjuncture.
00:01:09: So this is going to be a puzzle that we'll try to explore in this podcast.
00:01:13: so In this episode We will be exploring This crucial aspect Of cities and geopolitics through The topic of corridors logistics and circulation says you may recall.
00:01:24: in the opening Episode Sachin Le and Kevin Baud alluded to the notion of how extended urbanization unfolds beyond cities through corridors, logistics and circulation.
00:01:36: And that is a defining condition for current geopolitical urbanisation.
00:01:41: we are seeing the geopolitical organization that happened in the first Cold
00:01:48: War.
00:01:48: To help explore this puzzle further and to help us better understand its very complicated dynamic, we have three excellent guests with us today whose work focuses on Geopolitics of Corridors, Logistics & Circulation.
00:02:02: so our first guest today is Professor John Silva.
00:02:05: he's a Deputy Director at The Urban Institute under University of Sheffield where his currently leading ERC funded project called Global Corridor, which investigates the role of new infrastructure corridors in shaping urbanization processes and inequality through comparative investigations.
00:02:25: His work has taken him to a range of cities across global knots and globals outs working on post-colonial modes of theorizing paying attention to ways in which finance or urban politics everyday interactions and visions of futurity come into shape for infrastructure terrain.
00:02:43: Our second guest today, Dr.
00:02:45: Jasneya Sarma originally from Assam in North-East India is a feminist geographer and ethnographer researching borderlands and frontiers And it's currently based in Switzerland and actually one of my neighbours and colleagues here at the University of Zurich.
00:02:59: She works as a senior lecturer in political geography and critical geopolitics.
00:03:09: She's an editor of the journal Geopolitics and has previously edited The Independent Blog on Burma slash Myanmar Studies, the Anti-Circle.
00:03:19: Our third guest Dr Luis Guizuzo is a early career scholar who holds a joint PhD in policy management development and urban planning from the University of Manchester and Melbourne as research focuses and examines how its ongoing redevelopment intersects with ways geopolitical agendas and domestic political realities, while foregrounding urban and social environmental implications of the post-developement in Mombasa.
00:03:54: So welcome to the podcast!
00:03:55: And thanks for joining us today.
00:03:57: Before passing on my mic I would like to pose a question What is Geopolitical Significance Of Corridors & Logistics Infrastructures?
00:04:07: And if I may add to that question, what is geopolitical about them?
00:04:11: and What Is Urban About Them.
00:04:13: Let's start with you John as you've been working on this question much longer than any of us.
00:04:19: Thank You very Much.
00:04:20: It's Great To Be On The Show In Some Corridors Can Help Us Read the Geopolitical Future.
00:04:28: Thinking From Ambali in Eastern Uganda at the Top End Of Northern Corridor one sees a changing urban situation in which the post-colonial malaise and these structural adjustment programs of the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties now give way to new forms of Chinese investment, construction expertise.
00:04:51: In railways special economic zones and such forth.
00:04:55: so here we see town that is very much being re urbanized, being reindustrialised but under very different geopolitical relations and conditions.
00:05:08: Ones that require disentangling and thinking about.
00:05:12: in a world where we increasingly see weaponized global economy playing out through who controls not just the hotspots of the global economy nor the extractive resources and hinterlands of copper or lithium, or carbon but in the infrastructures of circulation which allow these um resources and finances to flow through corridor delineations.
00:05:42: I think the war in Iran by the US and Israel really brings this to public attention.
00:05:50: we see how both the weaponisation of the global economy and capacity to control choke points, corridors plays out not just in economic war but as a military war now.
00:06:07: And waking up every morning, the first thing I hear on the news is normally a new proposal for middle eastern corridor that allows some kind of bypass outside this blockade or outside US blockade.
00:06:25: This really an intensification but also acceleration of what we've been seeing since the two thousand and eight economic crisis, emerging not just out-of-the Chinese led Belt and Road Initiative but also a range of geopolitical actors involved in various kinds of corridor plans.
00:06:47: The Lebutu Corridor in Angola has become another contested corridor between initial Chinese investment an attempt by the US to gain some kind of foothold through investments in the railway and in various other kinds of infrastructures, resources.
00:07:13: But to condense it down to China and the U S as a competition would I think be wrong?
00:07:19: There are other significant geopolitical actors involved in these corridors.
00:07:24: We see the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, particularly the UAE and Saudi are involved in all kinds of investments in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere.
00:07:36: And if corridors become a new infrastructure power then competition over them is becoming increasingly heated.
00:07:46: This has serious urban implications.
00:07:50: Towns and cities, some more significant.
00:07:53: Some less-significant perhaps such as in Bali are being transformed but they're also integral to the ways these corridors geographies unfold.
00:08:04: I think it's probably straightforward now for members of the public As well.
00:08:10: scholars see the geopolitics in corridors But is important to emphasise the urban dimensions.
00:08:18: Firstly, because most large-scale infrastructure corridors are predicated on nodes such as Mombasa Port or capital cities but also because they run through these towns and cities.
00:08:33: shaping urban experience in urban lives.
00:08:37: If we think of corridors is the infrastructure of extended urbanization the networks that mesh together, operational landscapes and a city then we can see how they are both urban and geopolitical an integral to the urban futures being shaped here in now.
00:08:58: Thanks John.
00:08:59: Justinian do you want to go next maybe?
00:09:02: Yeah thank you!
00:09:03: Thank you for that Jonathan.
00:09:04: it was really interesting in terms of... You've given us this very big picture analysis how corridors and logistics infrastructures are connected with this moment.
00:09:16: Indeed, we're living in the moment of hormones which is a deeply geopolitical moment.
00:09:24: And not only that, it was happening on the tank day of Ramadan and on the twentieth February.
00:09:29: This is... this is the moment of Hamoos but before times there were moments of Panama.
00:09:33: There are moments in the Suez Canal with nationalization of it The Malacca straits from which eighty eight percent world trade goes through.
00:09:43: You had other nodes and choke points and corridors.
00:09:47: Of course, it's a geopolitical obsession but the question that really could be connected with what is happening now as well.
00:09:56: Previously in even conceptualization of geopolitics you go back to Swedish conservative geopolitician ever used this word geopolitics, Rudolf Chellion who was a pupil of Friedrich Razzal from the German highly colonial imperial field.
00:10:14: And then you had of course Kersen, McKinder.
00:10:17: all of the Imperial Geopolitical thinkers have very imperial and masculinist ways of thinking about whoever controls The Heartland would control the future, the geographical pivot to history.
00:10:32: so much of geopolitical corridors functions as a process of who controls them, at whose expense?
00:10:40: At what expense and also how processes of colonialism, coloniality configures not only in the past but also very much to the present.
00:10:51: We see that with example given just now from the Lobito corridor.
00:10:54: But that brings us another question is Who are players of this geopolitics?
00:10:59: because Oftentimes we think about states, colonial powers and imperial powers as the only players in this idea of who controls corridors and so on.
00:11:08: When we think about airports, the Heathrow Airport is one of largest airports in the world.
00:11:12: it's controlled by sort-of wealth funds, controlled by Qatar and Saudi Arabia pension funds.
00:11:17: And now you have financial actors private equity actors.
00:11:20: You have investment asset holders like BlackRock Who invests in certain not very favourable things Like fossil fuels.
00:11:28: Then you've got weapons all that They are the ones trying to buy off certain ports in the Panama Canal.
00:11:36: Right?
00:11:37: And that, again is going to be another competition between what China already holds.
00:11:42: It's the Li-Ka-Shing Hong Kong based company that holds those ports.
00:11:45: and now this is a contestation Again!
00:11:48: The who are players of this geopolitics?
00:11:50: Who controls all we call logistics?
00:11:53: Of course you've got states.
00:11:54: You have financial stakeholders But then also people.
00:11:58: these infrastructures Are supposed border order mobilise control.
00:12:03: That for me an important important player in thinking about the actors of who really become imbricated.
00:12:10: In this politics of corridors and mobility, And later on we can talk a little bit more.
00:12:25: The place that I come from, North East India some of you might know maybe the listeners know about this but it's cutely called after all a chicken snack which is a twenty kilometre kind of logistical road.
00:12:39: That could be according to the Indian state territorial sovereign anxieties and imaginations could be snapped anytime much like a chicken you know because it's kind of surrounded by different countries which, of course is the product of partitions several partitions.
00:12:52: The creation of Bangladesh and today operates as one of the most securitized channels that control an order these societies that live within these areas.
00:13:03: so in a nutshell watch Geopolitical about about corridors and logistics is obviously the big geopolitics of competition, or free sources finances.
00:13:15: A precarious labor which is important to talk about but also the actors within who are implicated in these corridors that often disrupt as we know, in the case of many zones which are under war right now and then you also have disruptions going on.
00:13:32: So infrastructure again can be assembled and manipulated to be disrupted by not only the actors who were supposed The urban question absolutely well controls mobility resources, controls the conditions of life and life is after all at the heart of urban societies.
00:13:59: Who really is able to access resources titles land finances across spaces that are being reconfigured as logistical corridors which have been re-configured?
00:14:17: who then belongs in the urban space, in terms of how these corridors and logistics are reframing and refurbishing financial and real estate development in urban areas.
00:14:27: So those other big sort of questions that we can talk about through cases.
00:14:33: thanks.
00:14:33: Yeah Luis maybe do you want to come?
00:14:36: Yeah, of course as well.
00:14:37: Very happy to be here.
00:14:39: thanks for the invitation.
00:14:40: and yeah I think John and Justin have kind of very well given this complete picture or the geopolitical states involved in corridors and logistics.
00:14:53: And maybe i'd like coming into a complementary way by approaching it through discussions that we've been having at The Second Cold War Observatory about What is increasingly characterizing geopolitical rivalry, it's this form of network-based competition.
00:15:10: Increasingly actors such as the United States China but also others are focused on competing over very integrated transnational production and exchange networks.
00:15:22: I think what these means for the significance.
00:15:29: They are particularly central in this process.
00:15:33: And they raise a bunch of questions, that's just me as also mentioned about who gets to define how commodities circulate?
00:15:42: Who gets to capture value and who get to define supply chains are secured by... I'll also add on the reflections that John and Justinia have had And I mean, it's very obvious that what it reveals is not just about military capacity and having the greatest army of the world.
00:16:07: You can have a power that you see run which in many respects is less potent militarily than other aspects but has managed to from the get-go.
00:16:20: really since this conflict started stuff from circulating, and we are seeing the kind of economic consequences.
00:16:32: And geopolitical consequences is having for the United States
00:16:36: etc.,
00:16:36: but also when you think about the perspective of the global south especially in my case.
00:16:43: it's how it reveals this persisting structural inequalities who were most negatively impacted by these dynamics of geopolitical contestation.
00:16:55: And I mean, we're thinking about a number of countries that are starting to run through issues or short footage and another issue there is maybe a bit less discusses the question of fertilizers.
00:17:07: We have a number in East Africa which are dependent on fertilizers from the GCC including Kenya and others.
00:17:17: it's also I guess what it tells about persisting inequalities, global inequality structural inequalities and how they are revealed by these kinds of geopolitical contestations around critical chalk points or global circulation.
00:17:31: And above the urban question.
00:17:32: so in my case uh interest is in the city of Mombasa and the kind of you know contestation that have been taking place between different actors how the position of a city is conceived as another city, whether it's China and its approaching through perspective of the BRI.
00:17:51: Through what has been extensively discussed which is the SGR Railway.
00:17:55: on the other hand you also have other actors that are less discussed.
00:17:58: they're quite active in the City.
00:18:00: for instance Japan to its... That has come frame if project but it is developing around its free and open inter-Pacific frameworks.
00:18:10: We have these kind of rival connectivity strategies that are overlapping in this city, which is conceived as a nodal city but it's also always the city where people live or try to make a living sometimes... you know conditions of informality.
00:18:26: So I think it's also important to ask the question again, i think Justinia mentioned that about... It's not just this big rivalry between superpowers but how everyday people find ways to navigate these situations.
00:18:39: so yeah..I'll leave it there.
00:18:42: Thank You Lewis!
00:18:43: That is a really great segue into my next question which How do these circulation systems reshape urban and regional geographies?
00:18:52: So I would love if you could use the examples of places that are working with to maybe explain to our listeners, how are these places transforming really like so.
00:19:06: Maybe we can go in the same order.
00:19:08: John Do you want a pick up first?
00:19:11: great question Like a good infrastructure scholar, I will revisit splintering urbanism because i think the seeds of the answer very much lay in that landmark text.
00:19:24: What we see is the requirements for global infrastructure projects nearly always taking paramount importance over local populations whatever the scheme or project whoever the funder whatever the geopolitics behind it.
00:19:41: This inequality shaped through infrastructure has been really vivid in The Global Corridor Project and the range of sites that we've been investigating alongside partners.
00:19:54: In Karachi, another Pakistani city is Tauheed Muhammad at the Karachi-Irban Lab And I have been looking how the standards required for the new ML one train line upgrade have significant implications for local populations.
00:20:12: The clearance of the railway either side between twenty and forty metres means that distance really shapes thousands of people's future urban lives.
00:20:23: And if the kind of broader delineation is required, twelve-fifteen thousand households will be forced to move.
00:20:33: In Karachi this is significant.
00:20:35: to move from the centre or near the centre of the city somewhere on the edges you lose your livelihood and social connections And that kind of age-old story of dispossession and displacement is reanimated.
00:20:54: Atufa Samo has been doing similar but very different work in the desert towns of Mithi, where a Chinese coal fired power station and coal mine have been invested and implemented.
00:21:09: their villages have lost their entire villages.
00:21:12: In Nairobi, the building of The Expressway researched by Wairoo Mugafimba on their project saw up to forty thousand people demolished out of there homes.
00:21:26: And so we can see this age old story of splintering urbanism.
00:21:30: and we could say that's a child story if these national economic development projects taking precedent over every day intricate urban lives in inhabitations.
00:21:43: I think that should always be at the forefront of thinking about how urban regional geography and space is being reshaped.
00:21:52: But there's other kinds of stories that emerge when we think about corridors, in which these circulation systems engage with urban space.
00:22:02: And one interesting thing has come out.
00:22:04: this project Is a number of urban settlements are shifting from industrial to logistical use and the kind of spatial demands, and livelihoods in labour that go alongside.
00:22:21: In Athens working with Giannis Calionis and Harakuki we see how post-industrial landscape of the Athens metropolitan region particularly over from the main city in Elvesina and Espropregros is increasingly moving A classical industrial landscape to one that is around logistics and circulation.
00:22:47: So they're less factories, there's more warehouses There are investments in new pipelines In ship repair yards And the new kind of multimodal initiatives Induceberg a powerful industrial city in Germany.
00:23:06: The entry of the Chinese railway into the city precipitated a whole kind of shift to Germany's China City as the city.
00:23:17: municipal officials, Kord Dusberg for awhile and again you're seeing this very dramatic shift from a kind of industrial usage to one of logistical usage.
00:23:32: These operational landscapes that previously existed outside of cities are increasingly being incorporated into these urban spaces.
00:23:43: This, of course comes with lots of different urban political implications in these geographies.
00:23:50: do logistical sector laborers have the same kind of labour power as industrial workers?
00:23:57: and do the residents sitting along a railway line in Pakistan or an expressway, in Kenya have the kind of power to resist these massive projects.
00:24:09: So I think they're the two main ways in which we've tried to look at urban and regional geographies in this project.
00:24:17: The final thing that i'd like to add is not far behind The logistics of circulation and the reshaping of urban regional geographies come new kind of real estate frontiers.
00:24:30: Connectivity brings opportunity, it brings real estate agents ,it brings developers.
00:24:37: It brings national and international real-estate rent seeking finance and we can see how, for instance the port in Guadar an integral part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is only part of this story.
00:24:52: So from outside Guadara it's very much a corridor city but its also place real estate opportunity speculation massive surge finance into various kind of estates And the speculation of Pakistanis and others in Guadal, not just a logistical city but also as a real estate frontier.
00:25:20: So yeah let's never forget that there is always a real-estate developer or agent sat behind any kind of large scale infrastructure plan.
00:25:31: Thanks John for that.
00:25:32: Justin would you like to go next?
00:25:35: Thank you, Nitin.
00:25:36: The question of circulation systems and reshaping urban regional geographies.
00:25:40: I think Jonathan has given us a really big kind of world tour that we go through And i'm going to pick up points from Jonathan's kind of answer there, which is about you know frontiers, infrastructural frontiers or corridor as a frontier.
00:25:55: Oftentimes the workplaces that I work in are in borderlands and oftentimes it's not very surprising that Borderlands or border spaces are In fact exactly at the center where corridors pass through.
00:26:07: And this can be seen on global scale all together.
00:26:10: because you know corridors don't just go two places they go through them.
00:26:14: and so that trueness is always this in-betweenness, this liminality of place.
00:26:19: That it reaches true... And I can tell you a little bit from experience but also through some of my research that i've done across the border cities which are not only in China with Myanmar on the northern side of it.. But also northeast India and Myanmar.
00:26:36: So if actually look at map these seem like three different countries.
00:26:42: look at it from a colonial mindset, you see as the connected region.
00:26:45: And in fact was very well-connected region before you had colonial borders here.
00:26:51: The city that I grew up is called Guwahati.
00:26:54: When i was growing there in the eighties and nineties often times things are... You know..I thought It's natural and normal when go out of your house to see people military uniforms.
00:27:08: This just way the entire world lives, you know.
00:27:11: And because I didn't quite realize that actually where i was had been essentially a militarized city.
00:27:20: and of course when you don't know the rest of the world... You think the military city is the way the world works.
00:27:25: but it was only after the nineties in the you know uh two thousands that you see massive massive changes in this city.
00:27:32: one of the things that happened as part this city being a military city was that you had a lot of untouched nature, so it was the wetlands reserved.
00:27:41: You had a lots of urban ecologies.
00:27:43: every house came with a garden and residential areas have a lot trees.
00:27:48: today fast forward you know, thirty-thirty eight years.
00:27:53: That's no longer the case.
00:27:55: so what's changed?
00:27:56: I'm not going to go very deep dive into history but Northeast India and Guwahati.
00:28:00: this is actually a gateway city in Gateway City that has been imagined as a corridor city...that has been imaged you know, markets resources labor and ecologies to Southeast Asia.
00:28:19: So this is the major city And from there You have other hill cities that are surrounding it?
00:28:24: All of these areas Have been kind of refurbished We thought as corridor cities through something called Acti's policy.
00:28:31: That was originally called a Look East Policy because India suddenly realized oh we haven't been We haven't really looked at the East, now it's time to look east and not only look east but also act east.
00:28:42: Similar things have happened all across China you know?
00:28:44: You have Chinese, Vietnamese businessmen who were going into Burma for its massive timber logging.
00:28:52: jade economies you had and then opium economies.
00:28:55: And now, you have agribusiness plantations.
00:28:58: You have rare earth minerals.
00:28:59: some of the largest amounts of rare Earths that are coming into China which is the largest importer or exporter Of Rare Earth Minerals comes from Myanmar.
00:29:08: so you had cities growing up corridors along these corridors of extraction.
00:29:13: How does this reshape urban and regional geographies?
00:29:17: Today if we look at Guwahati and its surrounding areas in Borneheart, it has become one of the world's most polluted urban metropolitan areas.
00:29:27: And this pollution is not accidental.
00:29:29: This pollution comes as its frontierization process, starts to create forms of urban ecological destruction.
00:29:39: The loss of water bodies has magnified beyond anybody has ever imagined.
00:29:43: you have AQI levels that are beyond sometimes what's also in cities like Delhi and so on.
00:29:50: And on top of that You'll have the emergence of land mafia which is part of this speculation city than Jonathan was talking about.
00:29:56: So That's on the one hand, a kind of material ecological change that shifts in cities and urban areas.
00:30:10: But then there is also an exclusion part.
00:30:14: Who is excluded and included in this kind of corridor process?
00:30:17: Across North East India, you see people being evicted.
00:30:20: We've written a paper with Prahranadasa and Gaurav Mittal about this.
00:30:24: looking at all these north-east Indian cities that have been converted into these corridorsities That create forms or what we call entangled exclusions who are the people excluded out of these urban material processes?
00:30:35: when These corridor and gateway imaginations come to the fore it's mostly The People who Have Been bordered as others in these areas.
00:30:45: This could be different and different areas of the world, but essentially it's oftentimes something that has been constructed by the majoritarian populations living in these places as people who ought to not be part of the urban space whether its migrants or refugees ,whether they are people who aren't part of citizenship registers so on .
00:31:03: So you have ecological devastation, you have exclusions across, you know I work in the war context and Myanmar way.
00:31:15: You've had a coup since twenty-twenty one And In this coup A lot of The areas that were originally imagined like i said as corridors.
00:31:23: or you Know the China Myanmar economic cooperation SCZ's the special economic zones?
00:31:28: You have big border gates.
00:31:30: you Have border cities That was Originally controlled by both Chinese finances As well as Myanmar military And those have been retaken by ethnic armed organizations or paramilitary forces, or militias.
00:31:45: And oftentimes when I interview them they say why is it that you've taken over the corridors?
00:31:51: The zones of infrastructure connectivity and often tell me we will show what they don't see.
00:31:57: We'll show critical infrastructures by attacking the spaces through which extraction takes place, we're going to show the little violences that have accumulated over what has actually resulted in an ethno-side across the borders of Myanmar and a genocide on its western border with the Rohingya population.
00:32:17: These are the violences of infrastructures against the spectacle of corridors.
00:32:27: So in a sense, we can also think about them as anti-spectacular disruptions against the spectacle of corridors.
00:32:34: again these are three ways that I thought off but i'm curious to hear
00:32:43: Those were very, very interesting and inspiring interventions.
00:32:47: I guess i'd like to start the same place from where John started this idea of returning to splintering urbanism because it's actually something that is quite relevant for my own research.
00:33:00: And what I've been observing in Mombasa In terms of projects that have been ongoing are clearly their effects Is to produce these cities that are centered around what I would call logistics led urbanization, right?
00:33:15: So the organization of urban space around the production of cities or nodal cities that are connected to what Simon and Marvin used to called kind of integration into global markets et cetera.
00:33:28: But I guess a question that I've been asking myself now is in terms... And it's you know kinda the article I'm working on.
00:33:37: we're seeing instead cities into kind of nebulous global markets.
00:33:45: We are instead seeing an attempt to align them with specific connectivity strategies and what it means in terms of the growing influence on geopolitical agendas, uh...in cities.
00:33:56: And of course that response is not simple It's never simple.
00:34:03: Um I mean there has been very interesting work from John and some other colleagues about these trends we're seeing about the emergence of cities connected through BRI etc.
00:34:13: And what I find interesting in Mombasa is, when i'm seeing a place it's potentially this kind of overlapping or contested.
00:34:21: How these processes can be tested because you have different connectivity strategies that are overlapping meaning not only Japan and its FIP which has framed Mombassa as like a flagship city for its... Or at least Mombasta brought us the flagship cities for its connectivity strategy but also the product city.
00:34:39: And then you have China's BRI, of course which has no official map but some of the maps that we see circulating.
00:34:46: You also have Mombasa on it and I think is quite interesting.
00:34:49: Then you have regional connectivity agendas in Kenya trying to produce a nodal city that connects seamlessly with Indian Ocean landlocked countries, et cetera.
00:35:02: So you have this kind of overlapping with different visions and strategies.
00:35:06: the way that I think is quite interesting in approaching these on a first analysis message configurations or different forms territorialization space
00:35:16: etc.,
00:35:18: First of all going from the agency of local actors at least national actresses.
00:35:23: so what has driven Kenyan authorities to engage a multiplicity of different actors to develop different sections of their corridor, because as I said you have Japan in Mombasa and China on the railway.
00:35:35: You have other actors like for example United States that is possibly developing a road connecting Mombassa to Nairobi.
00:35:42: And one interesting thesis we talk about.
00:35:45: it's this idea what are seeing more In contrast to, for example the first Cold War where it was really about non-alignment for southern nations and saying that we don't want two sides between competing hegemons.
00:36:07: It would be instead a form of poly alignment right?
00:36:09: So in the context very integrated economies globally
00:36:14: etc.,
00:36:15: makes no sense either pick side or say you do not choose any side.
00:36:20: Instead extend as many relations as possible, with as many actors as possible to kind of extract as much benefits from different deals and international relation scholars we call that hedging.
00:36:34: What I think is interesting isn't looking at what are the territorial configurations that are emerging from these kind of patchworked and interconnected overlapping forms of territorialization in specifically my context, which is Kenya.
00:36:51: It's also again as I was mentioning earlier about accounting for people.
00:36:55: so how do In the city of Mombasa, in their everyday lives you know see proceed these projects and their implementation.
00:37:04: And there are forms also exclusion that they create because one other thing about for example during development in SGR and the Mombassa port is effectively organizing from bypassing right?
00:37:17: Of urban economies which existed before this project were developed.
00:37:23: formula of Simon and Marvin, you know connecting valued users in places etc.
00:37:27: There's rarely a case where no users were considered non-valued are going to stay idle and not do anything.
00:37:35: so it is also about how these excluded actors react this processes on how they contest them.
00:37:43: what I see in Mombasa?
00:37:45: that different strategies that are mobilized by, you know urban dwellers.
00:37:51: They may be court cases they maybe protests.
00:37:55: there might be various means that allow to say okay we have a say in the way these connectivity strategies are unfolding and We want to be included In the type of benefits this project is promising.
00:38:10: One of their decisions came after completion not only standard gauge railway but also of the Mombasa port expansion project was a regulation that enforced all cargo coming in from through the Port of Mombassa to be held here at SDR, right?
00:38:29: And so the problem is this regulation meant that certain number logistic clearance facilities are in mombasa would be excluded.
00:38:40: The result obviously a public outcry in Mombasa against this regulation because they were directly impacting urban economies.
00:38:51: They're having these kind of chain ripple effects, because obviously cargo business is very important thing in Mambasa so you should take away the types of cargo cleaning businesses.
00:39:02: it's going to have an important impact on Mombassa.
00:39:06: So one other things that I try to demonstrate and do at work these protests, court cases etc.
00:39:14: eventually led to the cancellation of the directives which is I guess a small victory but still something that's quite noticeable in terms saying it was also important for the agency of local actors in reshaping how this process unfolds on the ground.
00:39:32: Thanks Louis!
00:39:33: The last question has been addressed by you at different points today.
00:39:40: invite you to maybe have some final reflections on this.
00:39:44: So what new spatial configurations emerged through these networks, through these colloidal networks and circulatory networks?
00:39:54: Through our logistical networks?
00:39:56: so let's start again with you John.
00:39:58: Thank You.
00:40:00: What is New?
00:40:00: Indeed I think hearing a little more about Kenya in Myanmar One asks whether these infrastructures are just a reverberation of this age-old infrastructure as an empire, is it extractive and technologies have dispossession or if there's something new.
00:40:21: Reflecting on the question really important maybe answer that comes to mind for me is really intensification in acceleration.
00:40:31: Intensification in that these networks are becoming more and more pronounced across the planet.
00:40:38: In the work we've been doing on The Corridor Atlas, We have been looking at around seventy new or well-established corridors And in search of investments.
00:40:49: since two thousand eight, we had about one point six trillion dollars.
00:40:54: So there's clearly some kind of intensification.
00:40:58: But I also think there's another form of intensification, which is the violence that comes along with these infrastructures.
00:41:05: We see how plans for the Gaza Riviera have been aligned and with the India Middle East economic corridor And whole kind of humanity is erased.
00:41:15: The whole population is erased.
00:41:18: What we have are these plans For logistical circulation That can be two days faster than the next corridor over.
00:41:26: I think the speed and intensity of these corridors precipitate massive spatial transformation at a planetary level in ways that demand our attention.
00:41:37: When we think about how corridors are being deployed, they come with promise.
00:41:42: not one new special economic zone but nine or thirteen.
00:41:47: when we think of a new railway opening up an extractive frontier is actually to connect three, four or five different mining operations.
00:41:56: With this intensification comes and you kind of spatial configuration which may or may not be a planetary geography of corridors that also act as conduits for new forms of urbanization in economic life?
00:42:13: I think that's the question that remains open and really worth revisiting longer histories of infrastructure, and corridors particularly in the majority world.
00:42:24: And the ways that they shaped nations such as Kenya.
00:42:28: Thanks
00:42:30: so much.
00:42:30: Thanks John.
00:42:31: Jasne.
00:42:31: do you want to go next maybe?
00:42:34: Yeah thank you.
00:42:34: what's new again?
00:42:36: whether we like it or not... We live in an era of war or wars.
00:42:40: So In The Context Of Myanmar & This World Of War That We Live In A certain new configuration that has started across and beyond what used to be earlier, choke points or SCZs.
00:42:55: And so on is the entire warscape of a war.
00:43:00: situation changes.
00:43:01: what corridors are?
00:43:02: first of all because you have multiple new actors, multiple new fragmentations, multiple forms.
00:43:11: Especially now in Myanmar after the war, you don't just have those old time kind of logistical corridors that we were writing about up until twenty-twenty one which used to be kinda cross border corridors or ports and so on.
00:43:27: Now where you have PDFs, People's Defense Forces who are fighting against the Myanmar military.
00:43:38: Have their own logistical corridors?
00:43:40: Have.
00:43:41: they're on roads and checkpoints similarly to certain militias.
00:43:45: then there has been just this kind of complete fragmentation of space or territory in local regions that creates very different configurations for locals civilians through these new forms of logistics.
00:44:01: So what does war mean, or the age of warming in terms of this corridor is a question that I think we can think about collectively in future because that's absolutely changed away In an age of hyperinflation and wars.
00:44:15: how people access roads Or be able to even go to next hospital at school Because they have so many forms of extortions to so many multiple different actors who are constantly in a state of flux.
00:44:30: So that's something I have seen change the context of Myanmar with war going on.
00:44:37: and secondly, lastly maybe even definitions of corridors or logistics could be expanded.
00:44:44: we've talked about multiverse infrastructure different forms of infrastructure.
00:44:49: I've written about plantations or banana plantations as part of logistical infrastructures, which you can read up later on.
00:44:56: but why do i say this?
00:44:57: It's because so many multiple things that are connected in some way or another to extraction In fact does become a part of corridors even though we don't necessarily map it As such Or call it as Such.
00:45:09: And maybe thinking through That could be Another sort Of future direction.
00:45:14: Thanks Louise Do You Want To Go Next?
00:45:16: Yeah, two very important questions.
00:45:20: I personally don't think i have enough elements to kind of take on the question that Justinia just mentioned about how do we navigate the current situation?
00:45:31: Of war and what it means in terms of thinking through logistics.
00:45:35: but... you know, raised by John is in terms at least of my case that significant because there are indeed continuities we see between the current situation and the kind of coloniality.
00:45:50: The way territorial patterns of spatial development have been designed since the colonial era.
00:45:56: so I think to ask a question from New Yorkers first has to say what is persisting?
00:46:01: What all persists until now but at the same time, recognizing those persisting patterns of colonial forms or spatial development.
00:46:12: What is particularly striking for me especially in the Kenyan case?
00:46:16: there are forms of constant negotiation contestation reframing various form of agency from an urban dweller to more powerful political actors involved and continuously redefining how urban spaces develop.
00:46:34: kind of logistics are deployed throughout the territory in a context Kenya, which since the colonial era has been defined by this fundamental concern with logistics.
00:46:47: So the connection between Mombasa and the hinterland has been a foundational aspect of the very emergence of Kenya as a modern state.
00:46:57: so inevitably when we ask ourselves what is new?
00:47:00: We have to take into account the forms of ongoing negotiations and recombinations, and contestation that reshape it.
00:47:09: Thanks John!
00:47:10: Thanks Luis thanks to Austin here for this wonderful conversation.
00:47:13: It was really amazing.
00:47:15: I traveled a lot places.
00:47:17: we learned new things.
00:47:19: i'm sure that listeners would write back.
00:47:22: so join us in next episode on urban political economies and geopolitical world making where will be joined by Yongsang Sir Maltoon and Vojci Khablowski to bring yet another part of this bigger puzzle on citizen geopolitics for us.
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