Urban Infrastructures creates space for an encounter between historians, humanists, and social scientists who seek new methodological approaches to the history of urban infrastructure. It draws on recent work across history, anthropology, science and technology studies, geography, resilience/sustainability, and other disciplines to explore the social effects of infrastructure. The volume rejects narrow conceptions of infrastructure history as only the history of public works, and instead expands the definition to all business enterprises and public bodies that provide the goods and services essential for the day-to-day lives of most people. Essays examine traditional artifacts such as roads, highways, and waterworks, as well as nontraditional topics like regimes of heating and cooling, the processing and distribution of food, and even the metaphysics of electromagnetic infrastructure. Contributors reveal both the material grounding of urban social relations and the social life of material infrastructure. In the end, they show that infrastructure profoundly reshapes urban life even as residents fight to reshape infrastructure to their own ends.
"Ranging across topics, times, and places, this expansive collection illuminates and expands the history of urban infrastructure. Its rich and often surprising case studies propose new approaches and interpretations that will generate important discussions in multiple disciplines."
Margaret Crawford, University of California, Berkeley
"The volume gains in diversity by offering interesting insights and objects that are considered an infrastructure."
Dhan Zunino Singh, National University of Quilmes, Argentina
"Urban Infrastructure revolutionizes our understanding of urban infrastructure. The editors bring together a stunningly rich array of voices, case studies, and disciplinary perspectives to reveal how different forms of infrastructure have impacted people, places, and environments around the world."
Christoph Lindner, dean of the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University Colle
