Urban Infrastructures

Course goals

 

 

Content

Infrastructures (such as energy, water, wastewater, ICTs, and transport systems) guide and facilitate urban functions and social life in many ways. These networked socio-technical systems provide important conduits through which modern cities operate and assure citizens’ livelihoods and city economies. Infrastructures integrate (or splinter) cities socio-spatially and mediate resource flows between nature and the urban context. Availability of, and access to, infrastructures, and the services they provide, also reflects and shapes social ideas, principles, and notions of social justice. Equally, obdurate infrastructures can prove to be obstacles for those who aspire to bring about radical urban innovations (such as towards environmental sustainability).

The longevity and path-dependency of infrastructures mean that they are deeply embedded in the urban fabric and in current and future planning practices. They shape crucial pathways toward urban futures (e.g., questions of finance and investment, forms of governance, issues of organization and ownership, resource flows and access, and user practices). Much of the history of modern urbanism can be understood as a series of attempts to 'roll-out’, extend, and integrate infrastructures according to various normative ideals (e.g., the “sanitary city”, the “electric city”, the “auto city”, the “bike city”, the “smart city”). Historically, and continuing today, urban planning is therefore closely connected with infrastructure planning.

This course introduces the history, the key characteristics (socio-economic and political) of these urban support systems and discusses their co-evolution with urban environments. The focus is on recent governance, planning and social challenges associated with the ‘splintering’ of urban infrastructures, the risks of failing infrastructures, infrastructures as potential mediators of environmental sustainability transformations, and the role of new and emerging infrastructures in facilitating urban services and functions.

Based on urban case studies (for example, Los Angeles, Cape Town, Maputo, Rio de Janeiro, etc.) the course identifies place-based development patterns of urban infrastructures, infrastructural crises, and potential solutions to the sustainability transition of cities and infrastructures. In-depth individual student investigation and a group research project provide practical insights into the challenges of planning cities and their vital infrastructural systems.