Call for Papers: RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, London, 28-30 August 2019

 

Now, infrastructural futures

 

Session convenors: Shaun Smith (Utrecht University) and Gabriele Schliwa (Utrecht University) 

Seemingly, the hopeful answer to the question originally posed by Star and Ruhelder (1996:112) of “when is an infrastructure” is, increasingly, the future. This trend is reflected in the international targets of the SDGs, the ambitions of municipalities such as those in the Netherlands for infrastructures to be carbon neutral by 2030 and circular by 2050, as well as in the emergence of research ‘hubs’ and ‘labs’ centered on particular ‘pathways’ to infrastructural futures. Therein, modernist ideals of city-making are seemingly being colonized by new future ideals (e.g. circularity, resilience, smartness) that are supported by the partial un-black boxing of infrastructures (Luque-Ayala and Marvin 2016) and realized through techniques such as urban experimentation (Evans, Karvonen and Raven 2016), transformative governance (Monstadt and Schmidt 2018) or by design “with an eye towards a climate-changed future” (Collier, Cox and Grove 2016). 

‘The future’ has become both discipline and orientation. Meanwhile, discourses portray a sense of urgency to act now. Infrastructures are increasingly conceived of as ‘co’ produced between the is and the ought amongst participating actors. The positionality of academics has thus become more explicit, suggesting academic knowledge production becomes a facilitator of/for future-oriented urban infrastructuring. Yet, that this drive towards infrastructural futures might enable or legitimize certain forms of governance for which there is already uneven potential, is often under-acknowledged. Critiques have emerged, for example, of nexus-thinking across traditional infrastructural ‘domains’ as a mantra of integration leading to forms of market-environmentalism (Williams et al., 2018), of ‘smart’ cybernetic urbanism to supersede planning through environmental-behavioural control (Krivý 2016) and foregrounded the need to repoliticize emerging resilience and design practices (Cowley et al. 2017). Arguably, these critiques suggest that immediately ‘innovative’ techniques fall within a paradigm of predominantly Western-orientated governmentalities. 

This session aims to explore how understandings of “becoming infrastructural” (Adams 2017) and process-oriented “medium thinking” (Easterling 2017) can inform critical analysis of the future or transitional turn in infrastructural thinking. Can alternative knowledges and governance models emerge when addressing anticipated ‘troubled’ infrastructural futures?  This session reflects upon such thinking and futures as a set of ongoing normative and existing ‘techniques’ - including experimentation, design, futuring – which re-orientate epistemological, institutional and governmental alliances. 

We welcome contributions focused on themes including (but not reducible to):

• Techniques of infrastructuring (e.g. urban experimentation, urban co-design, co-production, urban futuring, transformative governance) 
• Methodological considerations regarding positionality, reflexivity and normativity in infrastructural research.  
• Empirical cases with attention to logistical and operational infrastructure configurations.
• Historical perspectives on changing role of futures/futuring in infrastructure governance.
• Reflections on disciplinary/institutional reorientation of academia in (re)configuring urban infrastructure futures.
• The tension between (infrastructural) inertia in the present and sustainability targets in the future. 

We invite abstracts for a paper session, as well as expressions of interest for a panel discussion by Tuesday, 5th February 2019. Please send your abstract (approx. 250 words) to either Shaun Smith ([log in to unmask]) or Gabriele Schliwa ([log in to unmask]) and do not hesitate to get in touch in case you have any further questions. 

 

References 

Adams, RE (2017). Becoming infrastructural.e-flux architecture. Link: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/positions/149606/becoming-infrastructural 

Collier, S., Cox, S. and Grove, K. (2016). Rebuilding by design in post-Sandy New York. Limn, Issue 7 Public Infrastructures/Infrastructural Publics. Link: http://limn.it/rebuilding-by-design-in-post-sandy-new-york 

Cowley, R., Barnett, C., Katzschner, T., Tkacz, N. & De Boeck, F. (2017). Forum: Resilience & Design.  Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, 6(1): 1-34. DOI: 10.1080/21693293.2017.1348506

Easterling, K. (2017). Medium Design. Strelka Press. 

Evans, J., Karvonen, A. and Raven, R. (2016). The Experimental City. London: Routledge. 

Krivý, M. (2016) Towards a critique of cybernetic urbanism: The smart city and the society of control. Planning Theory. DOI: 10.1177/1473095216645631

Luque-Ayala, A., & Marvin, S. (2016). The maintenance of urban circulation: An operational logic of infrastructural control. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34(2), 191–208. DOI:10.1177/0263775815611422

Monstadt, J. and Schmidt, M. (2018). Urban resilience in the making? The governance of critical infrastructures in German cities. Urban Studies DOI: 10.1177/0042098018808483 

Star, S. and Ruhleder, K. (1996). Steps towards an ecology of infrastructure: Design and access for large information spaces. Information Systems Research 7 111–134  

 

Williams, J., Bouzarovski, S., & Swyngedouw, E. (2018). The urban resource nexus: On the politics of relationality, water–energy infrastructure and the fallacy of integration. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. DOI:10.1177/0263774X18803370