Infrastructuring Urban Futures

Infrastructuring Urban Futures considers the ‘lively’ (Amin, 2014: 137) relationship between infrastructure and the ongoing production of urban worlds. It traces how infrastructure engages those who call cities their home and the conditions under which they live, and in turn how these subjects make, remake and even un-make something that they and others label ‘infrastructure’, and the political nature of these bounding, demarcating and labelling acts (Larkin, 2013).
From the ordinary to the extraordinary, all of us experience infrastructure in its various forms over the course of the day, from when we wake to when we go to sleep and much in between. In some cases, this is the presence of infrastructure for example, the digital infrastructures that support performing paid work from home, or the transport infrastructure that facilitates the dropping off and collecting of children from school. In other cases, it is the absence of infrastructure that shapes and structures the lives of some who live in cities, for example, blue infrastructure to ensure drinkable water, or libraries as social infrastructure to support the education and learning among a population. Infrastructure shapes lives, and in turn,
these lives are shaped by it (Star, 1999; Venkatesan et al, 2018). This edited collection argues that an attention to the pasts, presents and futures of infrastructure allows for an understanding of the current urban condition nas it is relationally constituted and experienced in and across cities of the Global North and South. It is the anticipation and prefiguring now about infrastructural futures – and the various temporalities embodied in these acts and practices – that is our focus, building upon and coming after, in a linear sense, infrastructural pasts (Anderson, 2010; Appel et al, 2018).

source :

https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/62353