Redeploying Urban Infrastructure: The Politics of Urban Socio-Technical Futures

Description

This book explores urban futures in the making, as seen through the lens of urban infrastructure. The book describes how socio-technical arrangements of energy and water provision are being recast in continuing efforts towards realising ‘sustainable’ transformation of cities. It critically investigates how infrastructure comes to matter by analyzing the shifting capacities and entanglements of diverse actors with these systems, the various means they use to envision, enact and contest changes, and the wide-ranging social and political implications of emerging infrastructure transitions. Drawing on original research into urban infrastructure debates and projects in Stockholm and Paris, the author develops a novel conceptual framework for studying and acknowledging the active, vital role of infrastructure in constituting a material politics of urban transformation. Straddling the latest theoretical insights and empirical investigation of urban planning practice and socio-technical engineering of systems and flows, Redeploying Urban Infrastructure forges new, timely reflections and perspectives which will be of interest to the growing multidisciplinary community of scholars investigating infrastructure and to academics and practitioners with a concern for understanding the wider politics of urban futures. Front Matter ....Pages i-xix Introduction: Redeploying Urban Infrastructure (Jonathan Rutherford)....Pages 1-44 Water Infrastructures, Suburban Living Spaces and Remaking Socio-Technical Configurations in Outer Stockholm (Jonathan Rutherford)....Pages 45-70 Engaging Urban Materialities of Low Carbon Transformation in the Green Capital of Europe (Jonathan Rutherford)....Pages 71-97 Active Infrastructures and the Spirit of Energy Transition in Paris (Jonathan Rutherford)....Pages 99-121 Infrastructure Integration and Eco-City Futures: Permeability and Politics of the Closed Loop of Hammarby Sjöstad (Jonathan Rutherford)....Pages 123-155 Smart Grids and Enhancing Urban Systems: Reflections on Ordering and Disordering the City (Jonathan Rutherford)....Pages 157-172 Conclusion: Infrastructure Futures (Jonathan Rutherford)....Pages 173-187 Back Matter ....Pages 189-191