Negative Accumulation: Two Stadiums, a Convention Center, and a Sugar Refinery in Jamaica

Since the early 2000s, Caribbean governments have turned to Chinese state banks and construction firms to finance and develop sports and other public infrastructure, including cultural infrastructure, agribusiness, and housing, in the region. Emphasizing the Jamaican experience, this article examines the outcomes of these projects, focusing less on architectural typologies or diplomatic agendas and more on the patterns of disuse and failure that emerge across various sectors, including sports. Situating these patterns within the postcolonial built environment, the article draws on the descriptor "negative accumulation" as a framework for exploring spatially how current infrastructure-construction processes simultaneously produce excess and deficit. Through this lens, failure is not merely an endpoint but a dynamic through which specific forms of value, exclusion, and loss are produced and sustained.