The Value of Assetised Highways in City Logistics: Class, Commodities, Contradictions

Urban highways are built to accelerate the circulation of commodities—including labour power—across space, and they play a central role in global supply chains within urban landscapes. What happens when highways themselves are transformed into commodities, or asset classes? How can we understand the role of the state in these dynamics and its social reproduction? Drawing on a historical‐geographical materialist approach, I examine the relationship between Highway 407—one of the world's highest‐toll roads—and Canada's largest logistics hub in the Toronto region, where truck freight predominates. I argue that Highway 407 emerged from, and remains deeply entangled with, the class and spatio‐temporal dynamics of capital accumulation shaped by city logistics. I further contend that the capitalist state has facilitated this process—albeit in incomplete and contradictory ways—through highway expansion and labour restructuring aimed at accelerating commodity circulation across space.