Infrastructure Alliances: Supply-Chain Expansion and Multi-city Growth Coalitions

Recent scholarship has suggested that infrastructure development is fragmenting local urban politics, but I argue that it has had the opposite impact at the multi-city regional scale. New multi-city growth coalitions are currently emerging across the United States, united by a shared interest in supply-chain expansion—the extension of effective supply chains and the intensification of circulatory possibilities in regional transportation networks. In this article I develop a theoretical account of these novel infrastructure alliances, and explore empirical examples across the domains of (1) logistics and trade, and (2) manufacturing and resource extraction supply chains. I conclude by considering possible future trajectories for infrastructure alliances and entrepreneurial urban governance.