Call for Papers: AAG 2012, New York, 24th - 28th February
AAG Paper Session: Infrastructure shocks and the politics of urban life
Session Organizers: Vanesa Castán Broto (University College London) and
Stephen Graham (Newcastle University)
Although urban infrastructure networks are central to understand the
constitution and organisation of modern urban life, they are often
assumed, hidden, invisible. Critical analyses of the political ecologies
and economies of infrastructures have sought to open this infrastructure
“black-box” by examining how material and symbolic components are
assembled in ceaseless processes of urban circulation.
Since the publication of Splintering Urbanism, there has been a growing
interest not only in emerging forms of urbanism associated with particular
understandings of urban infrastructure, but also in how infrastructures
shape urban inequalities. Moreover, recent analyses of the securitisation
of critical infrastructures, infrastructure intermediaries, global
economic crises and climate change have mapped the emergence of purposive
attempts to reconfigure infrastructures in response to global urban
challenges.
Infrastructure shocks are important moments in which the social and
material relationships become visible, and thus, they open up a window for
a critical examination of urban networked infrastructure because
“disruptions and breakdowns in normal geographies of circulation allow us
to excavate the usually hidden politics of flow and connection, of
mobility and immobility, within contemporary societies” (Graham, 2010;
p.3). Disruption, failure and emergency are also thought to be a constant
feature in contexts of informality, economic meltdowns, environmental
crises or wars on terror.
This session will bring together papers which critically examine
infrastructure disruptions, failures and shocks either by analysing
responses to shocks and catastrophes or by using infrastructure shock as
an organising concept to analyse urban life. Topics for the session may
include, for example:
• Consequences of global crises for urban infrastructure
• The governance of infrastructure disruptions and their aftermath
• The role of infrastructure intermediaries in governing shocks
• Forms of political violence around urban infrastructure
• Disasters and urban informality
• Critical infrastructure securitization
• Social and political responses to catastrophes
• Social representations of future global catastrophes
Please submit a 250-word abstract to Vanesa Castán Broto
([log in to unmask]), Development and Planning Unit, UCL, London, and
to Steve Graham ([log in to unmask]), School of Architecture, Planning
and Landscape, Newcastle University, Newcastle, by September 3rd.
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