Drawing on examples from Rhodes’s railways to the tragedy of Grenfell, The Broken Promise of Infrastructure takes readers on a journey through a cultural history of infrastructure development across Britain and its Empire. The Broken Promise of Infrastructure tackles the divisive cultural politics that have been used to deflect attention away from Britain's failing infrastructure, from Brexit through to the 'levelling up' agenda and beyond. Building on more than a decade of research, Davies argues that infrastructure projects are always far more than concrete and steel: they can reinforce nationalist narratives, undermine regional identities, and place real limits on our politics. By exposing the geographies of race, class, and gender that still govern the way infrastructure is imagined, Davies invites us to break open these limits and ask what – or rather who – really makes Britain work. The promise of 'levelling up' has been broken. With case studies that range from Stoke-on-Trent and South Africa to Silicon Valley, Davies shows that this broken promise runs back through broader histories of industry and empire. As racial capitalism maintains its iron grip on Britain and the climate crisis becomes daily more apparent, this book argues that there has never been a more urgent time to challenge dominant ways of thinking about infrastructure, and to reclaim its world-shaping force for ourselves.
