Infrastructure

Question 1

How can ‘infrastructure’ be defined?

Answer 1

“Infrastructures are matter that enable [the movement of] other matter” (Larkin, 2013)
X - does not have to be material e.g. hard and soft infrastructure
X - may enable and constrain mobility

“Infrastructures are always relational; they concern materialities as much as technologies and organizations, and they emerge for people in practice” (Parks & Starosielski, 2015)

• Far from fixed phenomena
• Mean different things to different people
• Embedded in (and learned through) social structures

“Infrastructures must be understood as processual, evolving over time (Korn & Voida, 2015).

Question 2

What is the role of the National Infrastructure Commission?

Answer 2

Give infrastructure the right priority;
Enable decisions to be made in good time on good projects;
Make full use of leading edge technology – smart infrastructure for a smart nation;
Incorporate innovation in finance and funding – managing demand and driving efficiency;
Focus on design from the beginning – good design is the starting point for delivering high quality infrastructure;
Enhance the environment and protect natural capital, including by improving air quality and driving down carbon emissions;
Involve people and businesses up and down the country – a national framework that incorporates local and regional priorities.

Question 3

Explain Cresswell’s (2010) ‘politics of mobility’.

Answer 3

Venn diagram of;
MOVEMENT - physical movement
REPRESENTATION - meanings which become socially coded
PRACTICE - embodied, emotional experiences
(with mobility in the middle)

Question 4

Explain Larkin’s (2013) ‘politics of infrastructure’.

Answer 4

TECHNICAL - moving people/goods around
REPRESENTATIONAL - Feeling/ambient experience: (dis)comfort, sense of (not) belonging, etc.
FEELING/AMBIENT EXPERIENCE - (dis)comfort, sense of (not) belonging, etc.

Question 5

How can infrastructure be problematic?

Answer 5

It can enhance social divisions within cities;
It can contribute to ‘enclave urbanism’ and socio-spatial separation of elites from the less advantaged (much like gated communities and securitised shopping malls do).
Decisions in this sector are made by a homogenous group who create infrastructure that does not represent the multiplicity of travel experience.

Question 6

Describe Harvey & Knox’s (2012) ‘Enchantments of Infrastructure’.

Answer 6

Harvey and Knox attempt to engage infrastructural relations as moments of enchantment in ways which add texture and depth to understandings of the way in which infrastructure like roads generate their powerful affects of social promise.
The three enchantments, promises of emancipatory modernity:
1) The enchantment of speed
2) The enchantment of political integration
3) The enchantment of economic connectivity