Arches of Discontent: The product vs feature problem of infrastructural residual space

Srijon Barua and Anonymous Osf
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Srijon Barua: Temple University Japan Campus

No n9cyv_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: In February 2019, Network Rail sold 5,261 railway arches to a Blackstone-led consortium for £1.46 billion, terminating the security of several thousand micro-enterprises, migrant traders, and arts producers. This article reads the transaction as a clarifying case of the asset-manager phase of rentier capitalism, in which publicly produced infrastructural value is converted into a securitized income stream through administrative decisions whose technical surface obscures their distributional content. Drawing on documentary analysis, site survey, and stakeholder interviews across London, Zurich, Kyoto, and Dhaka, the article identifies four institutional instruments through which infrastructural residual space is converted from feature of the urban commons to product extracted from it: discount rate methodology, rent-uplift trajectory, head-lease cascade, and statutory carve-out from security of tenure. Each of these instruments has a counterpart in regimes that produce different outcomes asking the question-what happens when infrastructure ends but the space remains? Commodity, or feature for community?

Date: 2026-07-24
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:n9cyv_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/n9cyv_v1

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