Infrastructure's contradictions : how private finance is reshaping cities

In 1776 Adam Smith nominated public works as one of only three responsibilities of government. For the next two centuries the administrations of advanced capitalist societies and their citizens accepted this charter. The driver was the need for capitalism to access, on one hand, pools of labour of sufficient size and quality to ensure production of an increasing volume and diversity of goods and services; and, on the other, growing numbers of mass spending households with the aspiration for a good life. The modern city was the spatial instrument that enabled this access" with infrastructure providing the means for a city's economic and social life to be coordinated and synchronized successfully. By the mid twentieth century successful planning, financing and operation of urban infrastructure were testament to the evolutionary development and importance of the modern state. By then, infrastructure exceeded all other state portfolios, including defence, as the state's major field of endeavour. Curiously, after such success, especially in underpinning capitalist expansion, this position within the state's capacity has now been dismantled and a reassembly of responsibility for urban infrastructure is underway across all nations of the world. More curious, perhaps, it is a transformation that coincides with the greatest demand for infrastructure provision the world has ever seen (KPMG 2012a). This record demand has complex origins.