Paper short abstract:

Drawing on three examples of heterogeneous infrastructural processes in Nairobi we show different ways progress, disruption and completion are imagined, described, adjusted to and politicised.

Paper long abstract:

Infrastructure has long been understood as central to enabling ‘progress’, a visible sign of modernity and development. Southern urban scholarship has pushed back against modernist notions of the networked city as the teleological end of infrastructure, yet what ‘finished’ infrastructure entails remains the subject of inquiry. Here, we show how considering infrastructure as always in formation-- a work in progress-- helps us to understand infrastructural processes and politics and contemplate infrastructural futures. We draw on three examples in Nairobi to show different ways progress, disruption and completion are imagined, described, adjusted to and politicised. In our analysis of the creation of a bus rapid transit system, we see incremental changes and proclamation of an envisioned final state. In our consideration of the laying of pipes, wires and sidewalks in Kasarani, however, we see negotiations, adaptations and acceptance of what are seemingly indefinite disruptions. Finally, we examine sanitation infrastructure in Mathare, and call attention to uncertainties associated with off-grid infrastructures; individual artefacts may be built, but anticipated wider infrastructural configurations remain ambiguous. Throughout our paper, we also consider the politics of making progress through infrastructure, including the salience of visions of completeness and the political challenges of more open-ended infrastructural configurations.