The contrast between old and new roadways is perhaps nowhere more striking than in Georgia. Local drivers still navigate crumbling remnants of Soviet asphalt, while newly built, EU-funded highways stretch gleaming and modern through the landscape.

Few regions illustrate global connectivity – or its absence – more vividly than the Caucasus. After the Soviet collapse, Georgia shifted from being part of a vast empire to a peripheral state. Limited investment in road infrastructure, combined with an influx of second-hand Western cars, contributed to one of the highest per-capita road-fatality rates in Europe.

Few regions illustrate global connectivity—or its absence—more vividly than the Caucasus. After the Soviet collapse, Georgia shifted from being part of a vast empire to a peripheral state. Limited investment in road infrastructure, combined with an influx of second-hand Western cars, contributed to one of the highest per-capita road-fatality rates in Europe.

Driving across the country, we quickly discovered some of the reasons why: by day, massive potholes and unexpected speed bumps; by night, crossing cows and disoriented pedestrians.

Since 2010, targeted safety measures and infrastructure improvements have slowly changed the landscape. International institutions, drawn by Georgia’s strategic location along the “Middle Corridor” trade route linking China and Europe, have funded major projects such as the East–West Highway and the Batumi–Kutaisi connection, including fully illuminated and electrified highways. Georgia’s roads show how infrastructure development must be understood in a broader geopolitical context and in relation to outward-facing economic ambitions—simultaneously shaping landscapes, internal mobility, and making space legible and marketable.