Hardback
Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities
Contributing towards a thriving research area, this comprehensive Handbook presents a broad discussion of infrastructure as social phenomena. It compiles diverse perspectives to delineate the current ‘infrastructural turn’ and assess policy and research challenges relating to contemporary forms of infrastructural development.
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Critical Acclaim
Contributors
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Contributing towards a thriving research area, this comprehensive Handbook presents a thorough discussion of infrastructure as a social phenomenon. It compiles diverse perspectives to delineate the current ‘infrastructural turn’ and assess policy and research challenges relating to contemporary forms of infrastructural development.
Providing cutting-edge insights into the field, the Handbook explores the analytical category of infrastructure, clarifying and expanding upon the importance of an infrastructural perspective within academic and policy debates. An interdisciplinary range of contributors provides an ambitious examination of infrastructures and cities, with chapters covering the transformations of traditional networked infrastructure systems; novel understandings of how infrastructures matter; socio-technical processes of infrastructuring; forms of social violence involving infrastructural developments; and the role of infrastructures in human pressures on the biosphere. Ultimately, this Handbook proposes directions for further infrastructure research, highlighting its relevance in a shifting socio-political landscape.
The Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities provides valuable insight for scholars of urban studies, urban sociology, human geography, planning and regional studies. It will also prove to be a vital reference point for academics and policy-makers seeking to progress social equality and challenge current structural obstacles to the advent of more sustainable infrastructures.
Providing cutting-edge insights into the field, the Handbook explores the analytical category of infrastructure, clarifying and expanding upon the importance of an infrastructural perspective within academic and policy debates. An interdisciplinary range of contributors provides an ambitious examination of infrastructures and cities, with chapters covering the transformations of traditional networked infrastructure systems; novel understandings of how infrastructures matter; socio-technical processes of infrastructuring; forms of social violence involving infrastructural developments; and the role of infrastructures in human pressures on the biosphere. Ultimately, this Handbook proposes directions for further infrastructure research, highlighting its relevance in a shifting socio-political landscape.
The Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities provides valuable insight for scholars of urban studies, urban sociology, human geography, planning and regional studies. It will also prove to be a vital reference point for academics and policy-makers seeking to progress social equality and challenge current structural obstacles to the advent of more sustainable infrastructures.
Critical Acclaim
‘At last we have a guide to the so-called “infrastructure turn” in the social sciences and humanities! Coutard and Florentin’s Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities combines incisive coverage of how infrastructure studies have evolved with a superb and erudite range of thematic essays. It is essential reading for anyone trying to get to grips with the radical transformation in the infrastructural structuring of our cities and our world.’
– Stephen Graham, Newcastle University, UK and Simon Marvin, University of Sheffield, UK
‘This monumental Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities offers a forward-looking perspective on the study of the material relations that humanity inhabits, demonstrating that studies of urban technology and territories are living through an enormously generative moment. The 29 contributions put together by Coutard and Florentin illustrate the contradictory nature of relations around infrastructure, from the mundane to the monumental. Whether examining the prosaic ways in which infrastructures structure and apportion time in the rhythms of daily life or the deployment of infrastructural violence in routine and spectacular ways, the Handbook portrays infrastructure not only as a fixture of urban life but also as a means to imagine and make urban futures. In contemporary societies, infrastructure is increasingly deployed as a remedy for all urban ailments, from economic growth to inequality and environmental degradation. This Handbook takes a detour showing infrastructure’s dirty realities in a compendium that resonates with Bruno Latour’s adage, “there is no cure for the condition of living in the World.”’
– Vanesa Castán Broto, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield, UK
– Stephen Graham, Newcastle University, UK and Simon Marvin, University of Sheffield, UK
‘This monumental Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities offers a forward-looking perspective on the study of the material relations that humanity inhabits, demonstrating that studies of urban technology and territories are living through an enormously generative moment. The 29 contributions put together by Coutard and Florentin illustrate the contradictory nature of relations around infrastructure, from the mundane to the monumental. Whether examining the prosaic ways in which infrastructures structure and apportion time in the rhythms of daily life or the deployment of infrastructural violence in routine and spectacular ways, the Handbook portrays infrastructure not only as a fixture of urban life but also as a means to imagine and make urban futures. In contemporary societies, infrastructure is increasingly deployed as a remedy for all urban ailments, from economic growth to inequality and environmental degradation. This Handbook takes a detour showing infrastructure’s dirty realities in a compendium that resonates with Bruno Latour’s adage, “there is no cure for the condition of living in the World.”’
– Vanesa Castán Broto, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield, UK
Contributors
Contributors include: Jean-Paul Addie, Jens Alm, Philip Ashton, Nacima Baron, Hanna Baumann, Anselmo Cani, Damien Carrière, Sarah Charlton, Liza Rose Cirolia, Costanza Concetti, Olivier Coutard, Jérôme Denis, José-Frédéric Deroubaix, Pierre Desvaux, Ignacio Farías, Oscar Figueroa, Daniel Florentin, Julie Gobert, Jean Goizauskas, Govind Gopakumar, Emmanuelle Guillou, Carole Gurdon, Ludovic Halbert, Anique Hommels, Lindsay Blair Howe, Sylvy Jaglin, Yogi Joseph, Yassine Khelladi, Paulette Landon, Charlotte Lemanski, Claudia Mendes, Morgan Mouton, Carola Neugebauer, Binh N. Nguyen, Kei Otsuki, Alexandra Parker, Alexander Paulsson, Andrea Pollio, Sreelakshmi Ramachandran, Leonardo Ramondetti, Holly Randell-Moon, Mélanie Rateau, Margot Rubin, Julia Valeska Schröder, Wladimir Sgibnev, Elizabeth Shove, Roman Solé-Pomies, Muhammed Suleman, Carole-Anne Tisserand, Priyam Tripathy, Sarah Turner, Tauri Tuvikene
