Re-thinking urban infrastructures as spaces of learning

Abstract

Research on urban infrastructure has advanced to the forefront of human geography inquiry in the last two decades. Among other topics, geographers have looked into the privatization and neo-liberal splintering of urban infrastructures; the failings of infrastructures and the power relations revealed within these failings; the political ecology of infrastructural provisions; the specific infrastructural challenges of cities within the so-called Global South; and the entanglements of everyday experiences, affects and emotions with infrastructures. Yet, little attention has been drawn to the ways in which infrastructures need to be learned to fulfil their role of smoothly providing people with diverse services. Given the increasing spatial mobility of populations (e.g., as refugees, migrants, expatriates, and tourists), as well as the accelerating pace of infrastructural change (e.g., in the name of Smart City developments) however, it has become more salient than ever to open-up urban infrastructural research more explicitly towards critical inquiries of learning. Thus, this paper proposes to re-think urban infrastructures not only as socio-material configurations, but more specifically as important spaces for learning.