Infrastructural Optimism: Reshaping Urban America

Description

Infrastructural Optimism investigates a new kind of twenty-first-century infrastructure, one that encourages a broader understanding of the interdependence of resources and agencies, recognizes a rightfully accelerated need for equitable access and distribution, and prioritizes rising environmental diligence across the design disciplines. Bringing together urban history, case studies, and speculative design propositions, the book explores and defines infrastructure as the basis for a new form of urbanism, emerging from the intersection of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. In defining this new infrastructure, the book introduces new dynamic and holistic performance metrics focused on "measuring what matters" over growth for the sake of growth and twelve criteria that define next generation infrastructure. By shifting the focus of infrastructure – our largest public realm – to environmental symbiosis and quality of life for all, design becomes a catalytic component in creating a more beautiful, productive, and optimistic future with Infrastructural Urbanism as its driver. Infrastructural Optimism will be invaluable to design, non-profit and agency professionals, and faculty and students in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design, working in partnership with engineers, hydrologists, ecologists, urban planners, community members, and others who shape the built environment through the expanded field of infrastructure. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Half Title Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOREWORD / Imagining the Architecture of Possible Futures INTRODUCTION / The Importance of Optimism The Case for Optimism And then, 2020… Our Optimistic Imperative Infrastructural Opportunism → Infrastructural Urbanism → Infrastructural Optimism 01. INFRASTRUCTURAL URBANISM in the Expanded Field Two Decades of Urbanisms: New, Everyday, Landscape / Ecological → Infrastructural Infrastructural Urbanism: Two Lineages Infrastructure as Architecture Architecture as Infrastructure Landscape as Infrastructure Infrastructure in the Expanded Field 02. REINVENTING INFRASTRUCTURE / Why Now? Three Colliding Crises Infrastructure Crisis: Collapse + Inequity + Underfunding Environmental Crisis Economic Collapse Three Evolutions New Forms of Activism Demonstration Projects Changes in the Urbanism Discourse Capitalizing on the Perfect Storm: WPA 2.0 and Next Generation Infrastructure Next Generation Infrastructure Criteria Perfect Storm Practice Case Studies: PITCH_AFRICA, Kalundborg Symbiosis, Sixth Street Viaduct WPA 2.0 Finalists 03. INFRASTRUCTURAL OPPORTUNISM / Three Strategies All Growth is Not Good Growth Broadening the Process, Transforming the Prototype, and Measuring What Really Matters to Evolve the Paradigm 04. INFRASTRUCTURAL OPPORTUNISM / Two Cases I-11 Supercorridor I-11 Supercorridor Studio Mapping and Methods Green Arrow Solutions / Findings I-11 Supercorridor: Studio Projects After the Projects: I-11 Supercorridor Impacts Mobility For All By All: Northside-Southside MetroLink Expansion MFABA Studio: Megaregion to Rail City, County, and Regional Mapping Northside-Southside Metrolink: Studio Projects After the Projects: MFABA Impacts A New Greenway The Slow Pace of Implementation 05. CONCLUSION: Next Generation +10 / Options for a Contentious Era WPA 2.0 + 10 Make No Little Plans / Infrastructure As Public Works 06. Notes from Sheltering in Place Post-COVID Urbanism and Three Scales of Opportunity National and Megaregional: Zero-Emissions Logistics, Geographic Symbiosis, Equitable Access and Distribution City & Metro: Rethink Multi-modality, Value the Commons, Make All Infrastructure Next Gen Infrastructure Neighborhood, Block, and Lot: Protect Density, Celebrate Cohesion, Support Local Micro-economies and Closed-Loop Living Twelve Criteria for Next Generation Infrastructure CREDITS INDEX