Material politics of images: Visualising future transport infrastructures

Abstract

Cities around the world are suffering from mobility infrastructure crises. Governments are responding to these crises through different ‘fixes’. Mobilities researchers have analysed these fixes in terms of who they privilege and who they neglect. Yet little has been said about the actual materials that are used to garner support for these fixes, with analysis often focusing on the symbolic rhetoric of talk and text. This article develops geographical thought about the material agency of images by reflecting on four types of image-object used by WestConnex, a private motorway that is the proposed ‘fix’ to Sydney’s drivetime crisis. It does this to speculate on how different forms of geovisualisation might gain their authority through the material agencies of the images themselves, rather than just being the passive representations of a supposedly dominant power. In doing so, this article develops geographical understandings of the multiple ways that images participate in the production of future infrastructures.