The ten sectors of a city programme

What is the same

What every sector has in common

Whatever the sector, the vehicle that delivers it is built the same way. It is a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) formed at the sector-delivery layer: a company with its own board, its own licence or concession, its own contracts and its own financing, secured on its own assets and revenues and on nothing else. Its rights end at its perimeter. An investor in the port is an investor in the port, and acquires no influence over the plan, the zone or the city.

Each vehicle also receives the same package from the layers above it. The master developer supplies the plan, the land-use rights and the development standards the vehicle has to build to, and holds the single interface with government on all three. The crosscutting digital layer supplies the metering, records and reporting the vehicle would otherwise have to build for itself. And the environmental and social standards the programme is designed to meet apply to every vehicle alike, written into its constitution and its covenants rather than attached afterwards.

What differs

Where the sectors part company

Three things change from one sector to the next, and they are the reason each has a vehicle of its own rather than a share of one. The first is asset life: marine works and water networks are effectively permanent, a data platform is replaced within a decade, and a terminal sits between the two. The second is the lender base: a port is assessed by institutions that finance long-dated regulated assets, a bus network by those prepared to carry availability risk, a plant by those who understand its offtake. The third is the basis on which the vehicle earns — a tariff set under the enabling framework, an availability payment from a stated public source, or a concession with user charges — and that basis decides what the vehicle may promise and to whom.

Holding those differences apart is what allows each sector to be financed and examined on its own terms, and keeps a shortfall in one from being absorbed quietly by another.

How to read these pages

Choosing a page

The ten pages follow one template, so that a reader can compare sectors line by line: what the sector covers, how it is held in the structure, how partners and capital enter, and how the sustainability principle applies to it. If the question is where a programme begins, start with special economic zones andurban development, which sit closest to the mandate and the plan. If it is how capital is structured, theinvestment platforms page describes the work without making any offer. The remaining pages describe the infrastructure sectors themselves. For how the layers above them fit together, see the approach.

Crosscutting

Sustainability is not a sector

Sustainability and climate resilience are deliberately absent from the list above. They are not a separate line of work that can be assigned to one company and reported on once a year. They are conditions placed on every sector: on how a grid is planned, where a road is routed, how water is recovered and how a district is laid out.

Each sector page therefore states how the principle applies to that sector, and the environmental and social standards the programme is designed to meet are set out under governance.

Governance and integrity