Beyond connectivity: Embedding spatial justice in global infrastructure-led urbanization

Abstract

This commentary extends shift ‘from infrastructure-led development to infrastructure-led urbanization’ by explicitly embedding a spatial justice lens. We define spatial justice in this context as the equitable distribution of infrastructural benefits and burdens, meaningful recognition of marginalized groups’ claims on urban space, and genuine participatory parity in decision-making. Drawing on feminist, environmental justice, postcolonial, and Indigenous scholarship, we show how major infrastructure projects often reproduce dispossession, displacement, and socio-ecological inequalities. Concrete contrasts – for example, co-designed transit schemes versus top-down megaproject evictions – illustrate how justice can be materially operationalized. Methodologically, we advocate corridor ethnographies, participatory GIS mapping, and algorithmic justice audits to document and redress infrastructural (in)justices. We conclude by calling for comparative, justice-sensitive research agendas and governance innovations – such as community benefit agreements and inclusive zoning – to ensure that global infrastructure corridors foster equity, inclusion, and collective care rather than marginalization.

Towards spatial justice in infrastructure-led urbanization

Vegliò et al. (2025) make a significant contribution by shifting the analytical focus from ‘infrastructure-led development’ to ‘infrastructure-led urbanization’, arguing that foregrounding the urban dimension reveals geo-economic and geopolitical complexities obscured by traditional development studies. Their nuanced account of corridor urbanism and Digital Silk Road politics implicitly gestures toward the uneven social impacts of global infrastructure – but stops short of engaging with justice as an explicit concern. It is important to acknowledge that while Vegliò et al. (2025) do not explicitly foreground spatial justice, their discussion of power asymmetries, contested geographies, and uneven urbanization patterns creates fertile ground for such a lens.

Building upon Vegliò et al.'s foundational insights, we introduce spatial justice – defined here as the equitable distribution of infrastructural benefits and burdens (Harvey, 1996), meaningful recognition of marginalized groups’ claims to urban spaces (Young, 1990), and genuine participatory parity in decision-making (Schlosberg, 2007) – to extend their framework. Far from critiquing an omission, our commentary seeks to deepen and complement the original dialogue by transforming infrastructure as ‘a way of seeing’ (Angelo, 2017) into ‘a way of caring’ (Datta, 2016), attentive to gendered, racialized, and ecological dimensions of infrastructural transformations.

Methodologically, embedding spatial justice demands mixed-method toolkits – participatory mapping, feminist infrastructure audits, and co-designed corridor ethnographies – that co-produce knowledge with affected communities rather than imposing external frameworks. By explicitly mobilizing spatial justice to anchor Vegliò et al.'s six analytical strands – from Silk Road urbanization to Digital Silk Road politics – this commentary frames global infrastructure corridors not merely as vectors of capital, but as potential pathways toward equity, inclusion, and collective care rather than dispossession and marginalization.

Uneven corridor regimes: extending Vegliò et al.'s analysis through a spatial justice lens

In examining uneven corridor regimes, we extend Vegliò et al.'s (2025) foundational insights by explicitly foregrounding spatial justice, revealing how linear infrastructures – far from being neutral conduits of capital – become battlegrounds of both opportunity and dispossession. Vegliò et al. conceptualize Silk Road Urbanization as assemblages of railways, ports, SEZs and smart-city enclaves; yet the justice implications of these multi-layered corridors remain implicit rather than explicit. A spatial justice perspective brings those latent tensions to light, exposing forced evictions, environmental degradation, and speculative land grabs that accompany many corridor projects (Wiig and Silver, 2021).

Concrete contrasts between just and unjust corridor regimes illustrate this extension. Infrastructural justice emerges when accessible public transit networks are co-designed with marginalized communities, enabling affordable mobility and livelihood opportunities. By contrast, the Namuwongo evictions in Kampala starkly reveal the human costs of corridor expansion when local voices are sidelined (McFarlane and Silver, 2019). Simone’s (2004) notion of people-as-infrastructure further enriches our understanding, showing how remittance flows, informal lending circles and communal support systems constitute vital care networks that uphold corridor-side populations even as megaprojects disrupt their territories.

Building on McFarlane and Silver’s (2019) idea that infrastructure is continuously contested and remade through everyday practices, we see in East Africa's Northern Corridor how roadside mechanics and boda-boda food vendors enact moments of justice – repairing vehicles, feeding workers, sustaining social ties – despite exclusionary planning paradigms. A postcolonial critique (Bhambra, 2014) and critical topographies (McFarlane and Desai, 2015) reveal how top-down corridor designs routinely override customary land rights and local sovereignties, reinforcing dependency rather than alleviating marginalization. Comparative work beyond Chinese-led corridors (Robinson, 2016) can surface alternative models of inclusive corridor governance, pointing toward more equitable futures.

Methodologically, a justice-centred corridor urbanism demands mixed methods that amplify subaltern voices. Participatory corridor ethnographies, co-conducted with truck drivers, traders and repair crews, surface the lived textures of marginalization and care. Multi-scalar GIS mapping, co-designed with community groups, visualizes hotspots of environmental harm, informal settlement, and civic innovation. Sensor-based mobility tracing can then pinpoint chokepoints where rights to movement and services are most contested.

By weaving spatial justice into Vegliò et al.'s corridor framework, we transform corridors from pipelines of dispossession into terrains where equity, care and collective agency can be enacted – and where future research and governance might build more just and inclusive infrastructural futures.

Power, dependence, and digital frontiers: extending dependent urbanization through spatial justice

Building upon Vegliò et al.'s (2025) revival of dependent urbanization and their pioneering account of the Digital Silk Road, we extend their analysis by explicitly foregrounding spatial justice as a vital corrective to persistent power asymmetries. Dependency in agro-export corridors – so vividly documented by Prado (2020) in sub-Saharan Africa – locks communities into mono-cultural economies, erasing alternative livelihoods and consolidating extractive value chains under the guise of seamless connectivity. As Kanai and Schindler (2019) show, such corridors integrate elite urban cores into global markets while peripheral settlements bear the brunt of environmental degradation and social dislocation without fair access to benefits. A spatial justice lens compels us to ask not only who gains, but who is systematically disadvantaged by these techno-spatial regimes (Harvey, 1996; Young, 1990).

Parallel patterns unfold in the Digital Silk Road. Material infrastructures – undersea cables, data centres, smart sensors – draw down scarce resources such as water and electricity, imposing hidden ecological burdens on marginalized city districts (Furlong, 2016). Topological platforms, from Alibaba's City Brain to Huawei's surveillance suites, erect algorithmic enclaves that police movement, exclude informal traders, and cement ‘frictionless’ zones of privilege (McFarlane and Silver, 2019). In both material and digital domains, spatial justice demands that we surface the lived realities of dependency, recognizing data flows and metal conduits as vectors of both extraction and exclusion.

To operationalize this extended framework, we advocate for co-produced justice audits that merge material and digital methodologies. Participatory GIS mapping can chart overlaps between infrastructure footprints and community-defined sites of harm or care, while corridor ethnographies co-led with local drivers and traders reveal how everyday practices of repair and sustenance sustain urban life under precarious conditions. Algorithmic audits – whereby affected residents, municipal officials, and platform workers jointly assess biases, privacy violations, and opaque decision rules – have already shown promise in Nairobi, where community-driven evaluations of a city-brain pilot improved transparency and inclusion. This stands in stark contrast to Karachi's exclusionary smart-city trials, which reinforced surveillance inequalities and deepened dependency.

By weaving spatial justice into Vegliò et al.'s dependent and digital urbanism frameworks, we transform analyses of power and platformization from abstract critiques into actionable, collaborative processes. This extension not only enriches their original dialogue but also charts a path toward equitable infrastructures – both physical and digital – that empower rather than disenfranchise.

Enriching Vegliò et al.'s dialogue through spatial justice

While Vegliò et al. (2025) do not explicitly centre spatial justice in their analysis, their compelling exploration of uneven urbanization, power asymmetries, and the contested politics of infrastructure-led urbanization implicitly calls out for such a lens. By defining spatial justice as the equitable distribution of infrastructural benefits and burdens (Harvey, 1996), the recognition of marginalized claims to space (Young, 1990), and the guarantee of participatory parity in shaping urban futures (Schlosberg, 2007), we extend their foundational conceptualization rather than critique an omission. This justice-centred framing transforms global corridors from mere arteries of capital into ongoing sites of negotiation over care, inclusion, and collective agency.

Feminist, environmental justice, and Indigenous scholarship remind us that infrastructure is never neutral. Feminist inquiries expose how corridor security regimes and digital surveillance differentially restrict women's mobility and safety (Datta, 2016); environmental justice perspectives reveal the ‘slow violence’ of dust, noise, and contamination imposed on low-income settlements (Schlosberg, 2007); and Indigenous methodologies insist on honouring ancestral land claims and cosmologies to challenge exclusionary master plans (Whyte, 2013). Together, these lenses underscore that infrastructures – whether railways or algorithmic platforms – are sites of power struggles where justice must be actively pursued.

Looking ahead, scholars should build on Vegliò et al.'s themes by pursuing justice-sensitive comparative urbanism, moving beyond China-centric cases to examine how spatial justice unfolds across diverse BRI and non-BRI nodes (Robinson, 2016). Empirical work must weave together corridor ethnographies, participatory GIS mapping, and algorithmic justice audits to capture the full spectrum of lived experiences – from inclusionary mobility schemes to exclusionary surveillance enclaves. Such rich, grounded evidence can then inform innovative governance models: legally binding community benefit agreements that ensure material returns for affected residents; participatory budgeting that democratizes infrastructure finance; and inclusive zoning regulations that embed equity into urban form.

By explicitly mobilizing spatial justice alongside the analytical strands of Silk Road urbanization, corridor urbanism, dependent urbanization, and DSR politics, this commentary enriches the dialogue initiated by Vegliò et al., charting a pathway toward infrastructure systems that not only reshape geographies but also nurture equity, care, and meaningful participation in the global city.