Hard Infrastructure Research Articles

Colonial capitalism, boundary demarcation and imperial placemaking in South Arabia

This study analyses the means through which indigenous stakeholders and British imperialists competed for influence in the shaping of Aden’s built environment, thus complementing a robust body of literature highlighting the importance of the port city within the framework of the world capitalist system. Yet in much of the historiography highlighting the colonial port city as an object of historical analysis, the coast of South Arabia – and the city of Aden in particular – remains overshadowed by the wealthy port cities of the Eastern Mediterranean. Crucially, the imperial politics of demarcation and development found in Aden grounds for experimental placemaking, a process consisting of military and civilian infrastructure projects and the securitisation of territory both within and beyond Aden’s walls. Attempts to territorialise space through the imposition of hard borders and infrastructure exemplify the colonial embrace of geo-spatial abstractions, a process that occurred alongside the consolidation of direct rule within Aden and the concurrent projection of capitalist market forces into the hinterland. British incapacity created room for local agents of change to contest the construction of colonial space; attempts to integrate Aden and neighbouring polities into the imperial orbit entailed negotiation, compromise and occasionally the use of violence.

Land use management recommendations for reducing the risk of downstream flooding based on a land use change analysis and the concept of ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction

Sustainable management of ecosystems can provide various socio-ecological benefits, including disaster risk reduction. Through their regulating services and by providing natural protection, ecosystems can reduce physical exposure to common natural hazards. Ecosystems can also minimize disaster risk by reducing social and economic vulnerability and enhancing livelihood resilience. To showcase the importance and usefulness of ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (Eco-DRR), this study (1) analyzed the land use change in a watershed in central Japan, (2) applied the concept of Eco-DRR, and made land use management recommendations regarding the watershed scale for reducing the risk of downstream flooding. The recommendations that emerged from the application, based on the land use change analysis, are: the use of hard infrastructure and vegetation to store and retain/detain stormwater and promote evapotranspiration is recommended for downstream, urban areas; the sustainable management of upland forest ecosystems and secondary forest-paddy land-human systems, and proactive land use planning in the lowland delta, where built land is concentrated, are key to the watershed-scale landscape planning and management to reduce downstream flooding risks.

Transport Infrastructure and Regional Integration in the Middle East

AbstractThe soft aspects of the infrastructure of regionalism in the Middle East have previously been studied, while the impact of the region’s hard infrastructure, in particular transport infrastructure, has received little attention. This paper contributes to the study of regionalism in the Middle East by investigating the relationship between hard infrastructure and economic integration. It analyzes whether the state of domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure in the region promotes regional trade. This is done by addressing the following sub‐questions: 1) What is the condition of domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure in the Middle East? And 2) What is the relationship between domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure and regional trade in the Middle East? These questions are answered by examining Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey as representative samples of the broader region. It is argued that regionalism relies on the development of domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure and where the latter is limited, regionalism cannot deepen. The study concludes that domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure performance is weak in several of the countries studied and that this weakness hinders regional economic integration regardless of the level of the region’s soft infrastructure.

The role of occupational therapy in accessible tourism

Abstract Disability is an increasing area of scholarship across all areas of citizenship due to the 182 signatory nations to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Accessible tourism is one area of the convention that is becoming increasingly important and popular among tourism scholars and practitioners alike. Yet, existing literature recognises the uncertainty among practitioners of what essentially entails accessible tourism, with a lack of awareness toward the wider disability spectrum clearly present. However, tourism scholars and practitioners have yet to acknowledge the role of occupational therapy in delivering accessible tourism experiences in the areas of hard infrastructure development (transport, built environment, destination management) and quality service experience development (adaptive activity, interpretation, universal experience development). This is despite their expertise in understanding the capacities of individuals with a wide range of disabilities and how environments might be adapted to increase inclusivity. This note finds a need exists for interdisciplinary approaches to accessible tourism research.

Adapting or Atrophying? China's Belt and Road after the Covid-19 Pandemic

executive summary: This article analyzes Chinese policy discourse and activities before and after the Covid-19 outbreak and evaluates the prospects of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). main argumentFrom January to June 2020, China experienced the full cycle of Covid-19: outbreak, containment, economic reopening, and return of political life. The country's policy discourse and activities during the cycle show that the BRI strategy maintains a high level of continuity after the pandemic. Specifically, motivations for the initiative today are similar to those at its launch in 2013, and interests developed during its implementation have grown following the Covid-19 outbreak, albeit with different emphases. Overall, Chinese "middle elites" will continue to help stabilize BRI and globalization during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. policy implications • The Covid-19 pandemic has intensified geopolitical and societal tensions between China and other countries. Yet beyond political and popular rhetoric, Chinese policy elites are pragmatic and remain committed to BRI and globalization. They offer a stabilizing force against the potential "deglobalization" wave in a post-pandemic world. • China's motivations and activities behind BRI have continued during the Covid-19 cycle. As the country recovers from the pandemic, it is likely to pursue BRI with more deliberation at home and more opportunities abroad. • Inevitably, post-pandemic globalization will have different priorities. In BRI, plans for some hard infrastructure projects are likely to give way to softer and more socially inclusive areas of cooperation, such as information technology, medicine, education, and the environment. • Going beyond the pandemic, we need to pay attention to discourse and activities by professional and policy communities in China and other countries. The "middle elites" are likely to foretell and shape future trajectories in BRI and globalization.

Integrating Spatial and Ethnographic Methods for Resilience Research: A Thick Mapping Approach for Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico

Hurricane Maria left unprecedented impacts to communities in Puerto Rico, leaving some without infrastructure services and unable to communicate with family for several months. Toward understanding the forms of community-level resilience that enabled coping, recovery, and adaptation while hard infrastructure systems took time to regain functionality, this paper aims to (1) abductively illuminate the forms of social capital and adaptive capacity that emerged in Puerto Rico during and after Maria, (2) explore how physical variables manifest in community experiences, and (3) illustrate how quantitative and qualitative approaches for resilience assessments can be integrated given the nature of disasters as complex adaptive systems. We leverage a mapping approach by combining ethnographic and geospatial methods into an interactive GeoApp for analysis. A series of signifiers for resilience capacities were developed that are self-coded by participants who share anecdotes regarding Maria, and a series of geospatial indicators (e.g., social capital, elevation, electrical recovery) were layered and aggregated against ethnographic information as “thick maps”. The resulting geo-application facilitates quantitative and qualitative analysis of data at several scales, while enabling qualitative query of collected narratives. For example, it was found that trust in public institutions, local innovation, and community bonding and bridging were key themes for recovery. The multiplicity of mappings available through the application show how top-down assessments can be nuanced by thick data, and how multiple framings can be taken from the same system or place. These findings are important to inform and integrate community-oriented and technocentric solutions toward resilience enhancing measures.

New structural economics: A framework of studying government and economics

New structural economics is a new framework for rethinking economic development following structuralism and neoliberalism after World War II. This framework uses a neoclassical approach to study the determinants of economic structure and its evolution in a country's economic development (Lin, 2011). We argue that a country's economic structure is endogenous to its factor endowments, and that the key for developmental success is to have a facilitating government to help entrepreneurs overcome soft and hard infrastructure bottlenecks so as to enable industries with comparative advantages to have competitive advantages in domestic and international markets. New structural economics is highly related to the field of government and economics. Both areas of research study the role of the government in the economy.

BRI in Central Asia: People-to-People Projects

Along with financing hard infrastructure projects, Beijing also promotes soft power projects in the form of peopleto-people initiatives. However, such projects are low priority within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Central Asia. The Confucius Institutes, which appear to be an important vehicle for Chinese soft power in the region, are not directly linked to BRI and was launched before and independently of BRI.

Understanding Urban Flood Resilience in the Anthropocene: A Social–Ecological–Technological Systems (SETS) Learning Framework

Urban flooding is a major concern in many cities around the world. Together with continuous urbanization, extreme weather events are likely to increase the magnitude and frequency of flood hazards and exposure in populated regions. This article examines the changing pathways of flood risk management (FRM) in Portland, Oregon; Seoul, South Korea; and Tokyo, Japan, which have different histories of land development and flood severity. We used city governance documents to identify how FRM strategies have changed in the study cities. Using a combined framework of social learning with an integrated social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) lens, we show what components of SETS have been emphasized and how FRM strategies have diversified over time. In response to historical flood events, these cities built hard infrastructure such as levees to reduce flood risks. The recent paradigm shift in urban FRM, such as the adoption of socioecological elements in SETS, including floodplain restoration, green infrastructure, and public education, is a response to making cities more resilient or transformative to the anticipated future extreme floods. The pathways that cities have taken and the main emphasis across SETS elements differ by city, however, suggesting that opportunities exist for learning from each city’s experience collectively to tackle global flooding issues.

Managing erosion of mangrove-mud coasts with permeable dams – lessons learned

Mangrove-mud coasts across the world erode because of uninformed management, conversion of mangrove forests into aquaculture ponds, development of infrastructure and urbanization, and/or extraction of groundwater inducing land subsidence. The accompanied loss of ecosystem values, amongst which safety against flooding, has far reaching consequences for coastal communities, exacerbated by sea-level rise. To halt erosion various nature-based solutions have been implemented as an alternative to hard infrastructure sea defenses, including mangrove planting and erection of low-tech structures such as bamboo fences, permeable brushwood dams, etc. These structures have been designed on the basis of best-engineering practice, lacking sufficient scientific background. This paper investigates the use and success of permeable dams over a period of about 15 years, describing their application in Guyana, Indonesia, Suriname, Thailand and Vietnam, summarizing the lessons-learned, and analyzing their functioning in relation to the physical-biological coastal system. Also an overview of relevant costs is given.The basic philosophy behind the construction of permeable dams is the rehabilitation of mangrove habitat through re-establishment of the (fine) sediment dynamics – we refer to Building with Nature as the overarching principle of this approach. Our main conclusions are that a successful functioning of permeable dams requires (1) a thorough understanding of the physical-biological system and analysis of the relevant processes, (2) patience and persistence, including maintenance, as the natural time scales to rehabilitate mangrove green belts take years to decades, and (3) intensive stakeholder involvement. We give a list of conditions under which permeable dams may be successful, but in qualitative terms, as local site conditions largely govern their success or failure.

Trade Facilitation Effects on International Trade: Evidence From Lower-Middle and Upper-Middle-Income Countries

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the impact of trade facilitation on international trade, as well as the effects of two dimensions: hard and soft infrastructure. Using 18 primary variables, we constructed four indicators of 30 lower-middle-income and 33 upper-middle-income countries over the period 2011-2017. After applying the system-generalised method of moments (GMM), the main finding is that all trade facilitation indicators have a significant effect on exports. However, improvements in physical infrastructure are more likely to increase exports than the efficiency of borders, transport, information and communication technologies (ICTs) and institutions, from the most significant to the least significant. It is also found that the effect of hard infrastructure on exports is virtually the same as that of soft infrastructure. Hard and soft infrastructure must therefore be considered at the same level, as the effectiveness of international trade depends on both.

Improving Climate Change Resilience in Global South Cities Through South-South Climate Finance

Climate change is likely to exacerbate inequality and poverty in Global South cities despite the presence of international agreements and conventions to enhance sustainable development such as the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Moreover, replicating Global North development models in the Global South might not be sufficient to address the climate change and development aspirations in the context of Asia; hence, Global North innovation capabilities might not be sufficient to address Global South climate change challenges. This paper provides an inductive analysis of the innovations and policies that could facilitate improved climate change mitigation and adaptation in the context of developing Asian cities. The paper concludes that innovative climate change policies should utilise emerging climate finance mechanisms such as South-South climate finance modalities to promote community science/citizen science and social innovation rather than building hard infrastructure as this could improve the governance and distribution of resources in cities.

Measuring public service quality: Revisiting residential location choice using emergy synthesis of local governments in Pennsylvania

In this article, we present a study of local governments in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania measuring public service quality and revisiting residential location choice. This study adopts “emergy” (spelled with an “m”), a relatively new unit of measuring energy quality, to quantify the quality of public service. The concept of neighborhood choice has evolved to incorporate distance to center, transportation modes and commute time, match between household income and housing price, availability of public services and education, and own-group preference by ethnic or socioeconomic status. Despite the quality of public service by local governments being identified a critical factor affecting residential location choice, it has received less attention because of the nebulous concept and immeasurable characteristics. The emergy analysis of a local government system allows for testing of incompatible units of a socio-economic phenomenon. This study confirms the conventional residential sorting theory that people tend to travel further for cheaper houses and for better education, but people do not travel further for a higher quality of hard infrastructure such as road network and maintenance.

An exploratory assessment of infrastructure resilience to disasters

PurposeThis study aims to provide an analysis and evaluation of infrastructure resilience, one of the components of disaster resilience, to natural hazards.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis of this study consists of four stages. First, descriptive statistical analyses were carried out on the soft and hard infrastructure resilience and natural hazard index. Second, the spatial data were visualized through the exploratory spatial data analysis to understand the spatial distribution and spatial characteristics of variables of the data. Third, the local indicators of the spatial association method were used to identify areas in clusters where infrastructure resilience is weak. Fourth, comparisons were made between the soft and hard infrastructure resilience and natural hazard index: the level of natural hazard is high but the soft and infrastructure resilience remain very vulnerable to disaster.FindingsThe study found that infrastructure resilience varies from community to community, particularly in the same community, in terms of hard infrastructure and soft infrastructure. In addition, the comparative analysis between infrastructure resilience and disaster risk levels resulted in communities that were likely to suffer greatly in the event of a disaster.Originality/valueThis study is meaningful in that infrastructure resilience of Korean local governments was discussed by dividing them into soft and hard infrastructure and comparing them to natural disaster risk levels. In particular, the comparison with the natural disaster risk level identified local governments that are likely to experience significant damage from the natural disaster, which is meaningful in that it serves as a basis for policy practitioners to actively build infrastructure and respond to disasters.

Australian water policy reform: lessons learned and potential transferability

ABSTRACTThis article sharpens consideration of aspects of policy transfer to address climate change and gives greater attention to the context that might support efficient adaptive resilience. Using the example of Australian reforms to water policy, we evaluate how different elements of policy proved more (less) successful in facilitating efficient adaptation to climate variability and thus expose elements that might be more (less) attractive as candidates for policy transfer. Overall, we find that Australian policy reforms in the water sector provide useful guidance in some instances and not others. Establishing caps on extraction, flexible water markets and individual carry over rights generally facilitated flexible and efficient adaptation, and could be transferred. Related policy concepts, like formulating clear water planning rules and entitlements, are worth considering for implementation elsewhere, even if the groundwork on governance is a prerequisite. We also note the importance of shaping drought responses from government in such a way as not to distort the incentives for individual adaptation, and there is some evidence of this working in the Australian setting. Achieving transferability of these policies, however, may be a challenge. Australian policies around ‘hard infrastructure’ investments have generally proved less desirable and ideally should not be considered as a roadmap. These relate specifically to: (1) extravagant augmentation of urban supply; (2) using infrastructure to supposedly improve irrigation efficiency for environmental water provision; and (3) governments’ infrastructure responses after flooding. None of these approaches is consistent with the aim of fostering adaptation to a more variable climatic future.Key policy insightsAustralian water policies that have focussed on capping water extractions, development of flexible markets and specifying rights to allow greater flexibility have generally worked well against a changing climate, and could be transferred.The development of clear planning rules and entitlements also proved important, although the conditions to favour transfer are difficult to engender.Policies dealing with hard physical infrastructure have proven problematic and their adoption elsewhere is discouraged, even if transfer is more amenable.Encouraging more individual adaptation to flooding is a particularly significant challenge, even in a country renowned for drought.

Unequal Economic Growth Between Regions in Indonesia: Hard Infrastructure or Soft Infrastructure?

Infrastructure is one of the inputs that could affect the growth of a region. The difference in infrastructure development between regions is an obstacle for Indonesia in the rise of economic growth, which will be directly proportional to the increase of inequality between regions. In this study, infrastructure is divided into 2: hard infrastructures, where there are electrification variables, access to water and road access, and soft infrastructure, explained through variables of life expectancy, literacy rates, and school enrolment rates. This study is conducted using the Ordinary Least Square analysis techniques to explain the growth-inequality between regions using the Williamson Index. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied in this study to define hard infrastructure variables and soft infrastructure. The results of this study show that the development of hard infrastructure and soft infrastructure in various regions in Indonesia has reduced the number of inequality in various regions in Indonesia.

Mobility Infrastructures in Cities and Climate Change: An Analysis Through the Superblocks in Barcelona

Cities are key actors in the fight against climate change since they are major sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while at the same time they experience the negative impact of this phenomenon. Mitigating and adapting to climate change requires fundamental changes in urbanism and city automobile traffic. Superblocks, a grid of blocks and basic roads forming a polygon, approximately 400 by 400 m, are one of the instruments for such changes. These type of city Superblocks represent a new model of mobility that restructures the typical urban road network, thereby substantially reducing automobile traffic, and accordingly GHG emissions, while increasing green space in the city and improving the health and quality of life of its inhabitants. Furthermore, the Superblocks do not require investment in hard infrastructures, nor do they involve demolishing buildings or undertaking massive development; they are in fact very low-tech urbanism. The city of Barcelona has been implementing Superblocks as one of the measures to combat climate change with very positive results. The paper analyzes the concept of the Superblock and its relation with climate change in cities. Along these lines, it analyzes the pioneer experience of Barcelona in the development and implementation of the Superblocks, as a radical plan aimed at taking back the streets from cars. The role of political power and institutional leadership has been key in societal acceptance and the achievement of tangible results. But there are also obstacles and drawbacks in the development of these types of Superblocks, such as the necessity to redesign the collective transport network so that car traffic can truly be reduced in cities, the possible negative influence on traffic going in and out of the city, the lack of visible advantages if they are not implemented in the entire city, the risk of gentrification in the areas with Superblocks, public opposition, and opposition from certain sectors of the business community.

Urban flood resilience, a discursive-institutional analysis of planning practices in the Metropolitan City of Milan

Flood risk is increasing all over the globe due to urbanization and the effects of climate change. Water managers and urban planners try to cope with flood risk by enhancing urban flood resilience. Three main discourses of resilience are engineering, ecological, and socio-ecological resilience. Whereas the discourse of engineering resilience emphasizes the use of flood protection infrastructures, the discourses of ecological and socio-ecological resilience advocate river restoration and spatial strategies to reduce flood risk. In this paper, we investigate which resilience discourse is dominant in the Lambro river basin (Metropolitan City of Milan), and how this discourse has been translated into institutions (rules-in-use) and outcomes, such as flood protection infrastructures or building regulations. Our discursive-institutional analysis is informed by the (politicized) Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, which highlights the role of discursive, institutional, and contextual factors in explaining the outcomes of strategic interactions within action arenas. It is shown that whereas bottom-up initiatives try to foster socio-ecological resilience, the engineering resilience discourse still dominates within the Lambro river basin because national policies and funds are geared towards hard infrastructure measures.

Infrastructuring the Circular Economy

The circular economy (CE), and its focus on the cycling and regeneration of resources, necessitates both a reconfiguration of existing infrastructures and the creation of new infrastructures to facilitate these flows. In urban settings, CE is being realized at multiple levels, from within individual organizations to across peri-urban landscapes. While most attention in CE research and practice focuses on organizations, the scale and impact of many such efforts are limited because they fail to account for the diversity of resources, needs, and power structures across cities, consequently missing opportunities for adopting a more effective and inclusive CE. Reconfiguring hard infrastructures is necessary for material resource cycling, but intervening in soft infrastructures is also needed to enable more inclusive decision-making processes to activate these flows. Utilizing participatory action research methods at the intersection of industrial ecology and design, we developed a new framework and a model for considering and allocating the variety of resources that organizations utilize when creating value for themselves, society, and the planet. We use design prototyping methods to synthesize distributed knowledge and co-create hard and soft infrastructures in a multi-level case study focused on urban food producers and farmers markets from the City of Chicago. We discuss generalized lessons for “infrastructuring” the circular economy to bridge niche-level successes with larger system-level changes in cities.

Determining priority infrastructure provision for supporting agrotourism development using AHP method

Agrotourism is a tourism activity using agro-business since beginning to end agriculture products in any system, scale and form as tourism object, with aims to widening knowledge, traveling, recreation, and business relationship in agriculture. Infrastructure divided into hard infrastructures (such as transportation, irrigation, drainage, electric network, clean water piping, communication network, sewerage, and waste management); and soft infrastructures (such as government policy, finance, and insurance services, information and communication services, education services, health services, and travel service). This research aim is to show how to use AHP as a tool to make a decision determining priority infrastructure provision, in the preference to support agrotourism development. This research takes Karo Regency, North Sumatera, Indonesia as a case study that has agrotourism attraction spread almost at 17 subdistricts. This research also uses AHP (analytical hierarchy process) for decision making with comprehensive characteristics, to handle complicated problems, multi-attribute, qualitative and quantitative scope. As research results, a decision with preference to get the biggest benefit value in short time for local government, and for Karo Regency peoples, is getting priority provision to start by hard infrastructure in the form of clean water supply first, then providing soft infrastructure in the form of government policy.