Intro to infrastructures_slides_December 2022.pptx

Introduction to Infrastructure

1. Introduction to infrastructures Explorations in Urban Geography Week 20, December 2022 Dr Nabeela Ahmed

2. What is infrastructure?

3. Today’s aims We will … ...define infrastructure (networks, systems, material, social) Discuss how we experience (splintering, people as infrastructure, accessibility) And identify how we govern (public, private) infrastructure in cities

4. Defining infrastructure Infra – structure = under/below + structures What happens when you turn on a tap in the kitchen sink?

5. Understanding infrastructure A system of different layers ”Invisible” and part of the background (Star, 1999) … but depends on who you are! “one person’s infrastructures is another’s topic, or difficulty” (Star, 1999: 380).

6. Essential infrastructures

7. INPUTS OUTPUTS NODAL POINTS LINKS Infrastructure systems: ideally work as networks

8. Capacity

9. Physical or material connections between places that carry people, materials, information and energy. Social and political infrastructures e.g. services, communities, governments, schools, banks.

10. Defining infrastructure Infrastructure is a materialisation of social relations Infrastructure reflects and impacts social relations Infrastructures are built networks that facilitate the flow of goods, people, or ideas and allow for their exchange over space (Larkin, 2013) Infrastructure shapes: the nature of a network, the speed and direction of its movement, its temporalities, and its vulnerability to breakdown

11. 2. Experiencing infrastructure

12. How do we experience infrastructure? Material Relational Everyday life Shaped by politics and economics – who invests, funds and plans the city? Infrastructure can be violent (Rogers and O’Neil, 2016) or subject to violence (Gregory, ) Presence/absence = affects people in different and unequal ways Affects mobility, access, safety, freedom, inequality

13. Splintering Urbanism (Graham & Simon 2001) Infrastructure fractures the experience of the city Infrastructure does not provide homogenous connected cities Infrastructure enables the fragmentation of the city into parts with different kinds of provisions.

14. Infrastructure and Geography Time and Space at the moment: Time-Space Compression based on the availability of transport and communication infrastructure, which can create and stabilise new temporalities and spatialities . Evolution of infrastructure is uneven: postcolonial cities; imperialist cities; megacities; global cities …… etc. Time-Space compression becomes more complicated, and subject to negotiation and contestation under globalisation. 16

15. “People as infrastructure” Findings from Johannesburg, South Africa

16. “ African cities are characterized by incessantly flexible, mobile, and provisional intersections of residents that operate without clearly delineated notions of how the city is to be inhabited and used.. [...] These conjunctions become an infrastructure—a platform providing for and reproducing life in the city ” (Simone, 2004: 407-408) “ Every ten yards, it seems, there is a shop or improvised street stand with a telephone—an important service for the majority of residents who cannot afford their own phones ” (Simone, 2004: p. 414) Source: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/openglobalrights-openpage/streets-at-stake-in-johannesburg/

17. Accessible cities? Cities are full of ‘n o-go’ areas for people with different accessibility needs, because of the way infrastructure is designed. If the focus is on cars, then limited accessible public transport becomes available – accessibility and infrastructure is multi-dimensional Access to basic infrastructure is a political and social issue: As a woman Aine (Ireland) said: “ if you’re going to a shopping centre, going to a pub, going to a hotel; if you are going to a cinema, or any type of entertainment, or if you’re going to a class in a school or college, you have to check to see if there is a toilet there. Otherwise, you can’t spend longer than three hours away from the house.” (Kitchen and Law, 2001)

18. 3. Governing infrastructure

19. Public sector infrastructure National responsibility and scale = requires government A direct impact on everyone in the city, not just the people who choose to use it. Linked to democracy and accountability

20. Private infrastructure The private sector, i.e. profit making businesses, is generally responsible for non-essential infrastructure . However, the private sector is sometimes involved in major ‘public’ projects too . If private company goes out of business or; Rural areas are even more expensive to connect (because of the larger land to cover, and the lower population to sell network access to) so the government will often subsidise a part of the cost.

21. Maintaining Infrastructure: Infrastructure is prone to error and neglect and breakage and failure, whether as a result of erosion or decay or vandalism or sabotage Maintenance and repair: an ongoing process which can be designed in different ways to produce different outcomes Breakdown and failure are not atypical; they are the means by which societies learn and learn to re-produce (Graham et al., 2007) Who is responsible? 23

22. 4. Green infrastructure

23. Sustainability Sustainable infrastructures - capable of supporting the environmental, social and economic needs of the city both today and in the future Requires maintenance and upkeep According to European Commission: Based on the principle that ‘protecting and enhancing nature and natural processes […] are consciously integrated into spatial planning and territorial development’. Green infrastructure measured by indicators including: Share and distribution of green space Green space in interface of urban-rural areas

24. References Collier and Venables, 2016. Urban infrastructure for development. https:// urbanisation.econ.ox.ac.uk /materials/papers/110/oxf-rev-econ-policy-2016-collier-391-409.pdf Accessed 16 May 2018. Goovaerts , 2015. iGR Study Forecasts $104B Cost to Upgrade LTE Networks, Build Out 5G Network. https://www.wirelessweek.com/news/2015/12/igr-study-forecasts-104b-cost-upgrade-lte-networks-build-out-5g-network Accessed 16 May 2018 . Gotbaum , 2011. The Difference Between Soft And Hard Infrastructure, And Why It Matters. https:// stateimpact.npr.org /new- hampshire /2011/10/26/ infrustructure -soft-and-hard/ Accessed 16 May 2018. TheONEbrief , n.d. Urban Infrastructure: Keeping Economies and People Healthy. http:// theonebrief.com /urban-infrastructure-keeping-economies-and-people-healthy/ Graham, Stephen, and McFarlane, Colin (2014) Infrastructural Lives : Urban Infrastructure in Context . Abingdon: Routledge Larkin, Brian. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.”  Annual Review of Anthropology  42 (2013): 327–343 Anand, N., Gupta, A. and Appel, H. (2018) The Promise of Infrastructure. Duke University Press: Durham and London. Graham, Stephen, and Marvin, Simon. (2001) Splintering Urbanism : Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition  . London: Routledge Star, S. (1999) ‘Ethnography of infrastructure’ American Behavioural Scientist . Vol 43, Issue 3. Simone, A. (2004) ‘People as infrastructure…’ Public Culture , 16(3), pp. 407-429.