Rethinking the governance of urban infrastructural transformations: a synthesis of emerging approaches

Abstract

• There is merit in examining sustainability transformations through the lens of urban infrastructures. • Approaches to change infrastructures are often fragmented across research and practice. • There is scope to align transformative approaches of futuring, experimentation, cross-domain coordination, and assessment. • Questions relating to what is transformed or reinforced, why and by whom, need to be examined. • Issues relating to powerful incumbent actors, path determinacy and the situatedness of urban contexts cannot be ignored. Recent urban debates on the governance of sustainability transformations have witnessed an 'infrastructural turn'. Previously blacked-boxed, the role of infrastructures in sustainability transformations has been foregrounded by both growing academic scholarship and major investments in new infrastructural programs. How these changes are, and could be, governed remains somewhat opaque however, with traditional forms of knowledge and practices in need of urgent revision. To nuance public and academic debates, this paper synthesizes emerging approaches to the governance of transformative infrastructural change, revealing their underlying logics and potential contributions. These include appraisal of; alternative infrastructural pathways via ‘futuring’, their enactment via experimentation processes, supported by cross-domain coordination and new assessment methods. Such approaches may open new directions toward urban sustainability but also surface tensions and contradictions inherent to the governance of infrastructures.