Absent Urbanization in Global Infrastructures: Spatial Issues and Design Challenges in the Case of the BRI

The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is at once one of the most suggestive expressions of the Global Infrastructuring processes of Planetary Urbanization (Brenner, Schmid 2012) and a litmus test of the new geological era, the Anthropocene, since on the one hand it strengthens international cooperation, providing a great opportunity for development, and on the other provokes the overturning of territories. This work aims to investigate the spatial transformations generated by the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and XXI Century Maritime Silk Road, a phenomenon so macroscopic that it only takes on significance when observed on a global level. The hypothesis of this work is that studying the BRI as a case of the Global Infrastructure may underlines some of the main contemporary spatial issues concerning the Anthropocene as the actual effect of Planetary Urbanization. After a short overview of the initiative, based on official Chinese documents, the first part considers six significant places - Gwadar, Khorgos, Djibouti, Kyaupkyu, Duqm, Great Stone - to discern the traces of the spatial transformation and identify some issues connected with it. The second part focuses on the European study case of the Operational Landscape embedded between Turin, Milan, and Genoa. The latent transformations in this medial territory that have the Mortara Dry Port as core, has the potential to become explicit by the influence of dynamics such as the Belt and Road.