ABSTRACT
In May 2019, an attack took place at the Pearl Continental Hotel in Gwadar, Balochistan, a small city set to become an intense hub of infrastructural investment for the new 2,700-km China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. The attack gained headlines around the world and signalled a period of intensified violent resistance by the Baloch Liberation Army. The $1.62 billion financing of a port expansion, as part of a 40-year lease, was part of a series of new projects, including delineating 2,292 acres for a special economic zone and promises of over $200 million for a new airport. The making of this infrastructural corridor has become a maelstrom of uncertainty and disruption for the urban majority. The Global Infrastructure Connectivity Initiative identified 30 newly established or in-planning corridors, alongside dozens of potential new projects. Infrastructural corridors disrupt both notions of global urbanism, the techno-territorial phenomenon and the research epistemology.
