Examining Nature-Society Relations Through Urban Infrastructure

For over a century, infrastructure planning has been heavily influenced by modernity and in particular an engineering ideal of universal, uniform, networked infrastructure materialized in infrastructures such as grid electricity networks, water and sanitation networks and other similar large socio-technical systems. However, we believe that we are witnessing a set of processes that vary globally, but at their core, are about embracing infrastructure heterogeneity. Discourses focusing on resilience, circularity and sustainability in infrastructure planning are examples of other forms of imaginaries directing attention to a different way of thinking about the role of nature and society as part of infrastructure.

During the project, we seek to widen the perspective of how ideas of nature and society shape urban infrastructure by considering different forms of water infrastructure for sanitation, drinking water and flood protection. Our empirical focus are the cities of Stockholm (Sweden), Guwahati (India) and Kampala (Uganda).

Central to our methodology are the narratives created about infrastructure. By focusing on socio-technical regime actors such as engineers and planners we attempt to bring to the surface potentially unaddressed narratives of infrastructure, nature and society.

People involved

Timos Karpouzoglou, Division of History of Science, Technology & Environment, KTH, Sweden (Principal Investigator)

Mary Lawhon, University of Edinburgh, Institute of Geography and the Lived Environment, United Kingdom

Sumit Vij, Sociology of Development and Change group, Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands

Credits: Picture by Sumit Vij.