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This paper explores the concept of infrastructural urbanism as an analytic for interpreting the geographies of urbanization in contemporary China. It begins with the premise that infrastructure is more than the material ‘foundation’ or substrate underlying Chinese urbanization. It is also fundamental to the state’s practice of territorial administration. That is, urbanization might be considered as a product of infrastructure power in China, driven by changes to the territorial state’s administrative divisions but shaped by large-scale infrastructures that are built in anticipation of an eventual city. The resulting landscapes of urbanization – in which huge areas of rural land have been overlaid with checkerboards of roads, highways, and high-speed rail lines, along with accompanying digital networks and basic utility grids, even before much of any ‘urban’ population moves in – might be more usefully thought of as ‘infrastructure spaces’ than cities. Such spaces have become the loadstar for urban development throughout the country. Exploring the case-study of Gui’an New Area, the paper argues that infrastructural urbanism does not merely describe a particular spatial pattern of urban development in China, but more importantly describes a process of state territorial expansion, integration, and control. The paper hopes to provide an materialist account that is increasingly relevant for understanding patterns of urbanization not just in China but throughout the Global South as well.

Tim Oakes is Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. Currently he is a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Oslo’s Department of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages. Between 2012 and 2023 he served as Faculty Director of the Colorado Center for Asian Studies, and between 2018 and 2023 he was Project Director for China Made, an international research collective exploring China’s infrastructure-driven model of development. His research concerns rural and urban development, cultural governance, and changing spaces of leisure and consumption in China.

The seminar is co-arranged by the Department of Social Anthropology and Stockholm Center for Global Asia, Stockholm University.