Highways & Landscape 1
Georgia 2024
A serendipitous road trip through Georgia? Serendipitous, because shortly after arriving we discovered that passenger trains were virtually nonexistent, and the marshrutkas—the local minibuses weaving through the countryside—did little to inspire confidence. Naturally, we settled on the second-best option available: renting a car from a random dude’s cousin.
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The contrast between old and new roadways is perhaps nowhere more striking than in Georgia. While local drivers continue to navigate the crumbling remnants of o.g. Soviet asphalt, a newly constructed, fully electrified and illuminated capitalist asphalt steadily cuts through the landscape.
Very quickly, we developed two primary road fears during our journey: by day, massive potholes and unexpected speed bumps; by night, crossing cows and disoriented pedestrians.
Few places illustrate the effects of global connectivity – or the lack of it – as vividly as the Caucasus region. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia shifted from being part of a vast empire to an isolated periphery. With limited investment in road infrastructure, combined with a growing influx of second-hand cars from Western Europe, the country gained the unfortunate distinction of having one of the highest road-fatality rates per capita.
In 2010, significant “safety measures” were introduced, and the road situation slowly began to improve.
In recent years, international institutions have played a central role in reshaping Georgia’s transport sector. Owing to the country’s strategic position along the emerging “Middle Corridor” – a trade route between China and Europe – large-scale infrastructure projects such as the East–West Highway and the Batumi–Kutaisi connection have been funded by quasi-governmental institutions, including the European Investment Bank, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
Georgia’s roads reveal how infrastructure is shaped by outward-facing ambitions – economic, touristic, and geopolitical – rendering landscapes and space accessible, legible, and marketable.
