Robert Farnan
(Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York)
Richard Friend
(University of York)
Jonathan Ensor
(University of York Stockholm Environment Institute)
Format:
Panel
Streams:
Infrastructure
Sessions:
Wednesday 6 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Cities, Urbanisation, and the Politics of Urban Infrastructure Systems.
Panel P24a at conference DSA2022: Just sustainable futures in an urbanising and mobile world.
Advancing scholarship on urban infrastructure systems, we invite papers that critically link theory & practice in order to reimagine the relationship between cities & marginalisation, with an applied & participatory emphasis on political capabilities, sustainable futures, & infrastructure politics.
Long Abstract:
Amidst the persistent marginalisation of urbanisation in the Global South, the issue of sustainable cities has increasingly been conceived in terms of urban infrastructure systems. Resonating across the disciplines of human geography and developmental studies, the issues of access, poverty, vulnerability and violence associated with the politics of urban infrastructure systems raise key questions. These pertain to the relationship between theory, practice, and the role of knowledge in addressing social marginalisation and fostering sustainable futures. The deep connection between theory and practice is often foregrounded by activists and engaged researchers, as well as grassroots practitioners, as a means by which to challenge positivist research frameworks and build equitable collaboration. Aimed at transforming societal injustices, participatory, action-oriented research provides a useful entry point for rethinking how critical urban theorising can be put to work for and by marginalised groups and their representative organisations. An explicitly political understanding of knowledge is central to how we understand both the persistence of marginalisation in relation to urban infrastructure systems, and the possibilities for urban transformation. For many the city remains a democratic space filled with hope, where rights may be claimed, justice recognised, and futures realised. Yet as others point out, urban systems and infrastructure are not only spaces of transformation but also vehicles for social marginalisation. These critical voices – drawing attention to the inequitable access, disruption and failure of urban infrastructure systems – urge us to revisit the political efficacy of our concepts, pointing to the political capabilities our theories may or may not engender in practice. Speaking to grassroots scholarship concerning marginalisation and urban infrastructure systems, we invite papers that critically link theory and practice in order to reimagine the relationship between cities, justice and urbanisation, with an applied and participatory emphasis on political capabilities, sustainable futures, and the politics of infrastructure systems.
We plan to run two or three synchronous paper-based panel sessions, comprising approximately six to nine papers. For each 40-minute session we plan to include three papers, inviting presenters to speak for no more than 8 minutes. This will enable plenty of time for Q&A at the end of each session. We will also ask contributors to circulate their interventions three weeks ahead of time, and encourage panellists to use non text-based mediums as part of their presentations, such as audio-visual and/or web-based materials. In addition to providing these papers and/or materials in advance of the sessions, the chair, on the basis of what has been shared ahead of each panel, will circulate a discussion question. This will be designed to provoke critical conversation amongst participants, and to draw out the three key contributions that each speaker will have been required to highlight as part of their presentation.
This paper explores people's preferences of participation in infrastructure and housing provision in Johannesburg. It unpacks how people's support of participation varies depending on their relationship with the state, which is shaped by the infrastructural support they receive from the government.
Paper long abstract:
Public participation in local planning was a promise of the first democratic government in South Africa. Despite efforts for engaging civil society in local governance, participatory schemes fail to achieve what they were set out to accomplish.
Through a factorial survey experiment in a low-income residential area in Johannesburg, this paper explores the people's support of participation by asking them about their preferences for engaging with the local government in infrastructure and housing provision. Of key interest is what forms of participation are perceived to be 'meaningful'. Drawing on the concept of differentiated citizenship, the research furthermore unpacks how public support for participation varies depending on people's existing relationship with the state, which in the given context is largely shaped by the infrastructural support people receive(d) from the state. The survey thus includes a sample with two different groups: people living in state-subsidized housing and people living in backyard dwellings without state support.
The survey experiment allows the examination of how different attributes of participatory processes have an effect on people's support. It furthermore allows a sub-group analysis, which helps unpacking differences between the two sample groups. Overall, this research explores the people's perception of the potential of participation in local infrastructure and housing provision. It serves to deepen the understanding of the differentiated relationships urban dwellers have with the state and explores the role of urban planning practices and infrastructure (here: housing) in facilitating these relationships.
This paper is based on our British Academy Project: Developing a Grassroots Sustainable Futures Platform (SSF\210084). We will share our desk research from stage 1 on creating meaningful public participation for a sustainable future through the grassroots approach.
Paper long abstract:
Cities around the world are struggling to cope with global challenges such as climate change, overpopulation, resource constraints, energy and infrastructure management. Therefore, over the past 20 years, the smart city concept and Net-zero targets have promised to be the gateway to sustainable urban development and improved quality of life through participation with citizens and users in the urban environment. Despite these promises, the concept has been widely criticised for being market-driven rather than being able to solve the problems of people living in cities. This research hopes to build the framework for meaningful public participation for a sustainable future through the grassroots approach. It has two key components: literature review and case study on the meanings and effects of collective participation with local cultural organisations, to strengthen the voice of interest of a local community and build a long-term environmental vision together.
Our paper attends to the politics of recognition underlying infrastructure. It investigates the political capability of marginalised subjectivities in relation to infrastructure, and explores how these groups collectively act, foster community, and enact citizenship through shifts in subjectivity.
Paper long abstract:
Against the backdrop of marginalisation wrought by informal urbanisation, scholars of environmental justice, political ecology, and urban social movements have increasingly come to conceive of equity and social justice in terms of "political capability" (Schlosberg 2012; Holland 2017; Ensor et al 2021). Understood here as the extent to which people have control (or decision-making power) over their environment and livelihoods, this notion of political capability points towards two fundamental, yet hitherto relatively under-explored, aspects of environmental and urban transformation: subjectivity and recognition. In this paper we attend to the politics of recognition underlying infrastructure in order to investigate the political efficacy and capability of different subjectivities in relation to marginalisation and exclusion. We do this by investigating how marginalised groups of informal settlers engage in collective action, foster community, and enact citizenship through shifts in subjectivity at three infrastructural sites in Manohara informal settlement, Bhaktapur, Nepal. In doing so, we consider the fundamental entanglement of theory and practice (praxis), as well as the role that urban infrastructure systems play in fomenting knowledge controversies and galvanising affected publics in collective struggles (Latour and Weibel 2005; Barry 2013; Collier et al. 2016). These collective struggles emerge over access and inequalities in service provision, but also over social marginalisation and cultural stigma, and the lack of functioning citizenship (von Schnitzler 2008, 2016; Anand 2017; Fredericks 2018).
This paper explores to what extent an intermediary planning arrangement at a community or neighbourhood level can open up the 'room for manoeuvre' for substantial community participation in enhancing infrastructure in decayed urban areas, and bridge top-down and bottom-up planning.
Paper long abstract:
In 2017, Beijing Municipal Government proposed Refined Urban Management (RUM) which aims to improve the infrastructure of the decayed urban areas, and narrow the quality disparity in the built environment between rich and poorer neighbourhoods. However, the lack of capacity in neighbourhood government became one of the biggest challenges to materialise the goals of RUM. The Community Duty Planner (CDP) mechanism was then introduced to fill the gap between top-down planning and bottom-up demands. After being introduced, CDP appeared to open up space for extensive participation in several sites. The Shuangjing Well No. 6 site, a renovated public space located in Post-modern City (Houxiandaicheng) in Beijing, is one example of such. As a group of 'big-data' planners took the lead after being commissioned as the CDP of Shuangjing, a residents' 'thinktank', UN-Habitat, local and national government, property management and 3D printing firms, as well as local journalists were sequentially brought into the project. Intricate politics and power relations also unfolded in the process.
Based on eighteen-month ethnographic fieldwork, this paper tells the story of how the Well No.6 site was developed. Meanwhile, it attempts to examine: a) what is the role of an intermediary planning arrangement at a neighbourhood level; 2) to what extent this arrangement can open up space for substantial community participation in urban renewal; and 3) what is the power relation under this new arrangement. The paper aims to contribute to the debates and discussions in urban governance, urban infrastructure development, and planning practice.
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Richard Friend (University of York)
Jonathan Ensor (University of York Stockholm Environment Institute)
Short Abstract:
Advancing scholarship on urban infrastructure systems, we invite papers that critically link theory & practice in order to reimagine the relationship between cities & marginalisation, with an applied & participatory emphasis on political capabilities, sustainable futures, & infrastructure politics.
Long Abstract:
Amidst the persistent marginalisation of urbanisation in the Global South, the issue of sustainable cities has increasingly been conceived in terms of urban infrastructure systems. Resonating across the disciplines of human geography and developmental studies, the issues of access, poverty, vulnerability and violence associated with the politics of urban infrastructure systems raise key questions. These pertain to the relationship between theory, practice, and the role of knowledge in addressing social marginalisation and fostering sustainable futures. The deep connection between theory and practice is often foregrounded by activists and engaged researchers, as well as grassroots practitioners, as a means by which to challenge positivist research frameworks and build equitable collaboration. Aimed at transforming societal injustices, participatory, action-oriented research provides a useful entry point for rethinking how critical urban theorising can be put to work for and by marginalised groups and their representative organisations. An explicitly political understanding of knowledge is central to how we understand both the persistence of marginalisation in relation to urban infrastructure systems, and the possibilities for urban transformation. For many the city remains a democratic space filled with hope, where rights may be claimed, justice recognised, and futures realised. Yet as others point out, urban systems and infrastructure are not only spaces of transformation but also vehicles for social marginalisation. These critical voices – drawing attention to the inequitable access, disruption and failure of urban infrastructure systems – urge us to revisit the political efficacy of our concepts, pointing to the political capabilities our theories may or may not engender in practice. Speaking to grassroots scholarship concerning marginalisation and urban infrastructure systems, we invite papers that critically link theory and practice in order to reimagine the relationship between cities, justice and urbanisation, with an applied and participatory emphasis on political capabilities, sustainable futures, and the politics of infrastructure systems.
We plan to run two or three synchronous paper-based panel sessions, comprising approximately six to nine papers. For each 40-minute session we plan to include three papers, inviting presenters to speak for no more than 8 minutes. This will enable plenty of time for Q&A at the end of each session. We will also ask contributors to circulate their interventions three weeks ahead of time, and encourage panellists to use non text-based mediums as part of their presentations, such as audio-visual and/or web-based materials. In addition to providing these papers and/or materials in advance of the sessions, the chair, on the basis of what has been shared ahead of each panel, will circulate a discussion question. This will be designed to provoke critical conversation amongst participants, and to draw out the three key contributions that each speaker will have been required to highlight as part of their presentation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 6 July, 2022, -