The generative power of suspension in large-scale infrastructure projects: Insights from the Port of Trieste,Italy

Abstract

This article explores the generative role of suspension in large-scale infrastructural projects. While dominant narratives tend to categorise halted or incomplete projects as failures or stalls, this study reframes infrastructural suspension as a productive condition capable of catalysing urban transformations. This issue is examined drawing upon the case of Trieste, Italy, a port city involved in a variety of large-scale infrastructural projects, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. Despite the volatility of these initiatives – whether they will ever materialise is unknown, fluctuating investment flows, strategic ambiguity and delayed execution are creating new spatial and economic configurations. In this context, widening development trajectories and unpredictable shifts are producing a state of constant becoming, generating conflicts and complicating efforts to coordinate and govern urban transformations. By foregrounding these dynamics, the article contributes to debates on infrastructure-led urbanisation by expanding understandings of megaprojects in flux and highlighting the value of long-term, place-based research to capture the unforeseen urban transformations they engender. In sum, it calls for a reframing of spatial planning: from the management of linear trajectories to a critical engagement with uncertainty that keeps urban futures open and negotiable.