By David Lopez Garcia, 04/08/2018. I’m currently finishing my dissertation proposal to opt for my doctoral degree in Public and Urban Policy at The New School. My project is sparked by the following research question: In what way does the state, through its transit infrastructure policy, have an influence on the trends of intra-urban inequality in the capitalist city? To find an answer to this question I am assessing the economic effects of transit infrastructure on inequality while investigating the underlying mechanisms through which these effects manifest themselves across populations, and the role of the state over the identified trends. In this context, the purpose of this text is to share the rationale underpinning my summer research trip to China.
But before going any further, I need to make the case that the links between infrastructure policy and intra-urban inequality should be studied. While some aspects of the role of infrastructure on the growth of intra-urban inequality have been widely studied, scholars have overlooked others. For instance, the literature on ‘neighborhood effects’ has multiplied exponentially. This literature is most concerned with the effects on populations of living in poor neighborhoods that lack infrastructure and basic services, and the policy alternatives to bolster social mobility. However, much less is known about the role of infrastructure in providing or denying access to economic opportunities within cities in the first place, and its subsequent effects on intra-urban inequality.
There are useful theoretical developments available to tackle this pending research agenda. One of such is the intellectual effort of the capitalist city, which conceptualizes the city as a colossal productive force and places infrastructure as one of the key explanatory variables of urban productivity and other socio-economic indicators. Nevertheless, there is still a dearth of empirical research linking these theoretical developments with the observed trends of inequality within cities. As a result, the economic effect of infrastructure on the growth of intra-urban inequality remains scarcely studied. My doctoral research project aims at narrowing this gap.
Why am I going to China? Throughout my academic work, I have been mainly focused on Latin America. This means that the way that I usually present my problem statements, pose research questions, and put forward my hypotheses, is mainly based on the workings of research settings characterized for being free-market liberal democracies. I’ll start my trip in Shanghai, and the purpose of the research trip is to test my thinking in new and different contexts. Spending time doing research in Shanghai will bring me the opportunity to assess my hypotheses in a unique and distinctive research setting, one with a completely different institutional setting, in which the state plays a completely different role in the economy than the one that I am used to thinking of in Latin American cities.
Thus, the case of Shanghai brings me an excellent opportunity to learn about the ways in which different institutional settings and different roles of the state are affecting the relationship between infrastructure and intra-urban inequality. I think that cases along the lines of the massive rural migration to the city, and the access to the new economic opportunities mediated by the hukou registration system, can yield examples of the strategies used by urban dwellers to have access to the city as a productive force. I am hoping that this trip will inform my dissertation research design and that it will make me see angles of the research problem that I have not yet think of. The next entries to this blog will be reflecting on the way that the trip is contributing to shaping my thinking about my research problem.
The literature review in which my research project is based can be accessed through this link.