ABSTRACT
Infrastructure investment is a common scheme to boost economic productivity, and carrying it out involves multilateral decisions. Many Central Asian Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) cities are either in the transition stage of repositioning their long-term competitiveness or in the development stage of large-scale metropolitan planning. Common facts have been found in these two settings: commitments to the modernization of infrastructure systems and transformative mindsets to recapitalize a city’s assets, including both developable and underutilized lands within the central business districts and surroundings.
The article marries investment discipline and managerial oversight. First, prior to any fund allocation, a preliminary action must decide what kind of city and region people want. Cities built around transit are different from those built around cars. Second, investment decision-making criteria need to strike a balance between the opportunity cost of capital, governance, managerial oversight, and shareholder value. Third, the review of selected case studies’ transformational and investment experiences within and across the region offers common mistakes and lessons to mobilize capital in shaping better project success. The case-study method distills transitioning and progressive projects’ familiar managerial conflicts, investment trade-offs, and corresponding measures to alleviate offset.
