Infrastructure

Infrastructure materially connects more or less distant places by facilitating various social processes and relations across space. Usually understood in physical terms as the material elements shaping resource flows, infrastructure also refers to the institutions and rules conditioning social practice. Recent geographic research has stressed the social, political and economic dimensions of infrastructure. As objects of empirical analysis, infrastructure discloses broad transformations in the production and management of sociotechnical systems, including the “splintering” of collective services and utilities. Conceptually, infrastructure has provided the foundations for methodological and conceptual innovations surrounding ontologies of flow and mobility, and theorizations of society-nature relations that reframe technological networks as unstable, politicized entities

Rent Gap

The rent gap refers to the difference between the capitalized rent realized from a plot of land and the potential rent possible if it were developed to its “highest and best” use. Introduced by Neil Smith in 1979, the rent gap provides a systematic production-side theory of urban rent and inner-city transformation. The concept, however, has been critiqued for dismissing the role of individual agents and consumption preferences in explanatory accounts of gentrification

Rent Gap

The rent gap refers to the difference between the capitalized rent realized from a plot of land and the potential rent possible if it were developed to its “highest and best” use. Introduced by Neil Smith in 1979, the rent gap provides a systematic production-side theory of urban rent and inner-city transformation. The concept has been critiqued, however, for dismissing the role of individual agents and consumption preferences in explanatory accounts of gentrification

Urban Life in the Shadows of Infrastructural Death: From People as Infrastructure to Dead Labor and Back Again

Grounded in the writings of AbdouMaliq Simone and the theoretical project of Southern urbanism, the concept of “people as infrastructure” has radically reframed how we understand and study urban infrastructure as a modality of social practice. This paper begins by appraising the impact that people as infrastructure has had on urban geography and critical infrastructure studies before moving to consider how notions of infrastructural violence can deepen our understanding of the concept’s content and context. In particular, this intervention brings people as infrastructure into dialogue with the Marxist concept of “dead labor” to bridge experiential and structural epistemic readings of infrastructure as human practice and as products of social labor. Doing so, I suggest, provides a novel conceptual and political terrain to: (1) highlight the “living labor” underpinning the production of socio-technical systems; and (2) think through how urban lives and livelihoods may transgress the “infrastructural alienation” generated by capitalist urbanization

Stuck Inside the Urban with the Dialectical Blues Again: Abstraction and Generality in Urban Theory

This article discusses how critical urban theory understands generalisation and particularity by unpacking the process of abstraction. It develops an urban interpretation of dialectics through the philosophy of internal relations to: (i) heuristically examine conceptual and political fissures within contemporary urban studies and (ii) critically recalibrate neo-Marxist planetary urban theorising. Examining the conceptual extension, levels of generality and vantage points of our abstractions can assist in constructively negotiating relations between urban difference and generality. The challenge is not which assertions are true based on a given epistemological position, but which abstractions are appropriate to address specific issues, given the range of politics and possibilities each establishes

Flying High (In The Competitive Sky): Conceptualizing the Role of Airports in Global City-Regions Through “Aero-Regionalism”

Airports are key catalysts for urban growth and economic development in an era of global urbanization. In addition to their global economic functions, the multiscalar connectivity and localized impacts of air transport infrastructure place them at the heart of city-regional politics and planning. Yet the relations between global air transport, economic development and city-regionalism remain under-theorized. This paper introduces the concept of aero-regionalism to explore the relationality/territoriality dialectic and mechanisms of state territorialization unfurling at the nexus of globalization, air transport, city-regionalism and air transport. I provide a relational geographic comparison of the impact of varying local institutional arrangements and policy frameworks on the political and infrastructural integration of airports in the global city-regions of Chicago and Toronto. The paper analyzes the relative significance of variations in local transportation and planning systems to develop our understanding of the relations between global aviation infrastructures and their surrounding regional spaces, and the connectivity between major global ports and local transportation capillaries in global city-regions. The concept of aero-regionalism advances our understanding of the urban political economy of airports by uncovering how competitive economic globalization, state spatiality and the development of large-scale airport infrastructures are mediated through the symbiotic, if contested, co-production of urban and air space. While divergent governance regimes have shaped the development of urban transportation networks in the two case city-regions, the imperatives of globalization and neoliberalization are pressuring the material, political and discursive regionalization of airport space while privileging the logics of premium networked mobility

Urban(izing) University Strategic Planning: An Analysis of London and New York City

hile there is a growing recognition of the mutually-beneficial relationships universities and cities can forge around local and regional development, urban and academic leaders have often struggled to harness the diverse capacities of universities as producers and analysts of urban space. This article addresses this challenge by examining the institutional and spatial strategies being prioritized by universities in the context of global urbanization. It details a Lefebvrian-influenced conceptual and methodological approach to evaluate the multifaceted, multi-scalar urban(izing) functions of ‘universities in urban society’. Comparatively assessing the organizational structures, spatial orientations, and ways of operating being pursued by universities in London and New York City reveals the scope – and variation – of university urbanism within and across global urban higher education systems. The empirical analysis points towards the need for adaptive approaches through which urban actors can leverage universities in the analysis and governance of urban processes. Conclusions are drawn for public policy and university outreach

Infrastructure

Infrastructure materially connects more or less distant places by facilitating various social processes and relations across space. Usually understood in physical terms as the material elements shaping resource flows, infrastructure also refers to the institutions and rules conditioning social practice. Recent geographic research has stressed the social, political and economic dimensions of infrastructure. As objects of empirical analysis, infrastructure discloses broad transformations in the production and management of sociotechnical systems, including the “splintering” of collective services and utilities. Conceptually, infrastructure has provided the foundations for methodological and conceptual innovations surrounding ontologies of flow and mobility, and theorizations of society-nature relations that reframe technological networks as unstable, politicized entities

On the Road to the In-Between City: Excavating Peripheral Urbanisation in Chicago’s ‘Crosstown Corridor’

This paper critically engages the uneven distribution of infrastructure provision, connectivity, and mobility in contemporary neoliberal urban landscapes by uncovering the path dependent trajectories and politics of transportation in post-suburbia. Departing from contemporary debates on the evolving geography of urban peripheries, I utilize a relational theorization of the ‘in-between city’ to empirically unpack the urbanization processes internalized in the evolution of the ‘Zwischenstadt’ in a North American context. Through a longue durée case study of transportation planning, politics, and spatial practice in Chicago’s ‘Crosstown Corridor’, in-between urbanization is demonstrated to express an on-going multiscalar mediation of co-habiting modes of urbanism and strategic state actions that challenge generalized (sub)urbanization narratives. Despite continued interest from planners, politicians, and business groups, proposals for both a major urban expressway and rapid transit line have proved political lightning rods. Consequently, neighborhood protests, personal political battles, and macro-economic trends have locked-in a neglected development pathway for Chicago’s inner suburbs. I argue that through disclosing key contradictory political-economic imperatives and conflicting scales of mobility, it is possible to identify space for political and planning interventions that can adapt to, and develop, polycentric urban practice in and through in-between urban space

From the Urban University to Universities in Urban Society

The impacts of neoliberalization and the global extension of urbanization processes demand a reappraisal of the urban university for the 21st century. The history of the modern urban university, and current calls for universities to assume proactive roles as economic drivers and civic leaders, disclose problematic tendencies, including: normalizing local/global binaries; focusing on a narrow set of university-city connections; and constructing the university and the city as monolithic rational agents. In response, this paper draws on Lefebvre’s theory of urban society to mobilize mediation, centrality, and difference as a mode of critique and strategic orientation for a ‘new urban university’