The craft of weakening the prospects for human fulfilment and wellbeing. In: Book symposium: Pike et al.’s Financialising City Statecraft and Infrastructure: A reader’s guide

Financialising City Statecraft and Infrastructure is a diligent, historically derived and highly insightful dissection of infrastructure procurement, funding, financing and governance in the UK’s cities. It is timely in helping to explain the dynamics and consequences that contributed to the Brexit vote in 2016. Echoed in the conclusion of this remarkable book, ‘[t]he fear is that in the current episode of financialisation power has shifted to financial interests, actors and markets in ways that risk [leading to] eroded democracy, increased inequality and heightened instability’ (p. 286). This situation feels like we are headed towards a slow death of the wider social, cultural and political opportunities that infrastructure could provide for human fulfilment and wellbeing. It marks the importance of the book (...)