Finance, water infrastructure, and the city: comparing impacts of financialization in London and Mumbai

Abstract

This paper examines how financialization changes the financial ecologies of urban water infrastructure provision, and the consequences of these impacts. It begins by illustrating the current state of research on the financialization of infrastructure, and then details the method for contributing towards this literature. A comparative approach, based on the financial ecologies of urban infrastructure, is introduced and explained. The changing financial ecologies of London (UK) and Mumbai (India) are presented by means of a twin approach that examines, on the one hand, new state-level initiatives that introduce municipal bonds into their respective countries, and, on the other, highly individualized financial constructs that aim to enable similar, large water infrastructure projects in the two cities. The findings include the importance of local knowledge and the expertise needed to translate these knowledges/risks between actors in the financial ecology. Faults in these processes lead to compromised decision-making, which is largely enabled by weak oversight. Closer scrutiny and more transparent tendering processes are recommended as policy tools to overcome these shortcomings.

Keywords

• infrastructure
• financialization
• urban water
• waste water
• municipal bonds
• london
• mumbai
• privatization