Regionalizing the infrastructure turn: a research agenda

Jean-Paul D Addie,Michael R Glass,Jen Nelles

doi:10.1080/21681376.2019.1701543

Jean-Paul D Addie, Michael R Glass + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/21681376.2019.1701543

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Abstract

ABSTRACT An interdisciplinary ‘infrastructure turn’ has emerged over the past 20 years that disputes the concept of urban infrastructure as a staid or neutral set of physical artefacts. Responding to the increased conceptual, geographical and political importance of infrastructure – and endemic issues of access, expertise and governance that the varied provision of infrastructures can cause – this intervention asserts the significance of applying a regional perspective to the infrastructure turn. This paper forwards a critical research agenda for the study of ‘infrastructural regionalisms’ to interrogate: (1) how we study and produce knowledge about infrastructure; (2) how infrastructure is governed across or constrained by jurisdictional boundaries; (3) who drives the construction of regional infrastructural imaginaries; and (4) how individuals and communities differentially experience regional space through infrastructure. Analysing regions through infrastructure provides a novel perspective on the regional question and consequently offers a framework to understand better the implications of the current infrastructure moment for regional spaces worldwide.

Highlights

These are auspicious times for social scientific research on urban infrastructure
This paper forwards a critical research agenda for the study of ‘infrastructural regionalisms’ to interrogate: (1) how we study and produce knowledge about infrastructure; (2) how infrastructure is governed across or constrained by jurisdictional boundaries; (3) who drives the construction of regional infrastructural imaginaries; and (4) how individuals and communities differentially experience regional space through infrastructure
The fact that much infrastructure transcends the boundaries of local jurisdictions may, be reason enough to view infrastructure through a broader regional lens; one that has been less developed within the firmament of the current infrastructure turn

Summary

Introduction

These are auspicious times for social scientific research on urban infrastructure. An interdisciplinary ‘infrastructure turn’ is revealing the profound complexity behind infrastructural solutions to contemporary social problems (Anand, Gupta, & Appel, 2018; Dodson, 2017). We lay out a research agenda for future scholarship on infrastructural regionalisms premised on: (1) interdisciplinary dialogues that critique how we study and produce knowledge about infrastructure; (2) explorations of collaborative and competitive governance that foreground how infrastructure is governed across or constrained by jurisdictional boundaries; (3) interrogating the construction of regional infrastructural imaginaries and the contested ways in which actors and institutions ‘see like a region’; and (4) integrating political economic and experiential–affective perspectives to reveal the complexities of ‘infrastructural lives’.

Results

Conclusion