Banking Spatially on the Future

Capital Switching, Infrastructure, and the Ecological Fix

Bibliographic Data

ID8375643
AuthorsN Castree (0000-0002-0282-5319, Manchester University, corresponding author), Brett Christophers (0000-0002-6245-7378, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume105
Issue2
Pages378-386
Publication date2015-03-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnnals of the Association of American Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0004-5608 • E-ISSN: 1467-8306
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00045608.2014.985622
OpenAlexW2171467808
LanguageEN
Citations received116
References cited15

Since the onset of the global economic crisis, financiers and the institutions regulating their behavior have been subject to far-reaching criticism. At the same time, leading geo-scientists have been insisting that future environmental change might be far more profound than previously anticipated. Finance capital has long been a crucial mechanism for melting present solidities into air to create different futures. This article asks what the prospects are for the switching of credit money into green infrastructures—a switching increasingly recognized as necessary for climate change mitigation and (especially) adaptation. Most research into geographies of finance has ignored ecological questions and few contemporary society–nature researchers examine major fixed-capital investments. Unlike those geographers who criticize capitalism without offering feasible alternatives, we take a pragmatic view underpinned by democratic socioenvironmental values and attempt to identify leverage points for meaningful change. This programmatic article identifies reasons and examples to be cautiously hopeful that liquidity can be fixed in less ecologically harmful future infrastructures, thereby addressing crucial extraeconomic challenges for the century ahead

Business · Capital (architecture) · Capitalism · Climate change · Climate Finance · Criticism · Developing country · Economic growth · Economics · Futures contract · Geography · Leverage (statistics) · Market liquidity · Political science · Subject (documents) · Ecology · Finance · Housing Market and Economics · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Land Use and Ecosystem Services · Law

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Open DOISci-HubOpen Access