Redeploying Urban Infrastructure

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

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2. Introduction: Redeploying Urban Infrastructure

   • Jonathan Rutherford

   Pages 1-44

3. Water Infrastructures, Suburban Living Spaces and Remaking Socio-Technical Configurations in Outer Stockholm

   • Jonathan Rutherford

   Pages 45-70

4. Engaging Urban Materialities of Low Carbon Transformation in the Green Capital of Europe

   • Jonathan Rutherford

   Pages 71-97

5. Active Infrastructures and the Spirit of Energy Transition in Paris

   • Jonathan Rutherford

   Pages 99-121

6. Infrastructure Integration and Eco-City Futures: Permeability and Politics of the Closed Loop of Hammarby Sjöstad

   • Jonathan Rutherford

   Pages 123-155

7. Smart Grids and Enhancing Urban Systems: Reflections on Ordering and Disordering the City

   • Jonathan Rutherford

   Pages 157-172

8. Conclusion: Infrastructure Futures

   • Jonathan Rutherford

   Pages 173-187

9. Back Matter

   Pages 189-191

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This book explores urban futures in the making, as seen through the lens of urban infrastructure. The book describes how socio-technical arrangements of energy and water provision are being recast in continuing efforts towards realising ‘sustainable’ transformation of cities. It critically investigates how infrastructure comes to matter by analyzing the shifting capacities and entanglements of diverse actors with these systems, the various means they use to envision, enact and contest changes, and the wide-ranging social and political implications of emerging infrastructure transitions. Drawing on original research into urban infrastructure debates and projects in Stockholm and Paris, the author develops a novel conceptual framework for studying and acknowledging the active, vital role of infrastructure in constituting a material politics of urban transformation. Straddling the latest theoretical insights and empirical investigation of urban planning practice and socio-technical engineering of systems and flows, Redeploying Urban Infrastructure forges new, timely reflections and perspectives which will be of interest to the growing multidisciplinary community of scholars investigating infrastructure and to academics and practitioners with a concern for understanding the wider politics of urban futures.

• urban infrastructure
• urban studies
• urban politics
• urban management
• sustainable urban futures
• urban materiality
• decarbonisation
• science and technology studies
• ecological urbanisms
• socionatural suburban spaces
• low carbon agendas in Stockholm
• Green Capital of Europe
• urban energy transition in Paris
• Hammarby Sjöstad
• urban planning
• eco-city
• smart cities
• Environmental Geography
• urban geography and urbanism

“The book is particularly valuable for academics and practitioners who are working to change infrastructure systems to realise more sustainable cities. … The book is a valuable contribution to the study of urban infrastructure and highlights the messy contradictions and tensions of contemporary cities while providing suggestions for how these dynamics might be steered towards improved urban futures.” (Andrew Karvonen, Buildings & Cities, April 15, 2020)

• LATTS, Université Paris Est, Marne-la-Vallée, France

  Jonathan Rutherford

Jonathan Rutherford holds a research post at LATTS (Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés), Université Paris Est and Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, France.

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