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The Promise Of Infrastructure
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Book Synopsis The Promise of Infrastructure by : Nikhil Anand
Download or read book The Promise of Infrastructure written by Nikhil Anand and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From U.S.-Mexico border walls to Flint's poisoned pipes, there is a new urgency to the politics of infrastructure. Roads, electricity lines, water pipes, and oil installations promise to distribute the resources necessary for everyday life. Yet an attention to their ongoing processes also reveals how infrastructures are made with fragile and often violent relations among people, materials, and institutions. While infrastructures promise modernity and development, their breakdowns and absences reveal the underbelly of progress, liberal equality, and economic growth. This tension, between aspiration and failure, makes infrastructure a productive location for social theory. Contributing to the everyday lives of infrastructure across four continents, some of the leading anthropologists of infrastructure demonstrate in The Promise of Infrastructure how these more-than-human assemblages made over more-than-human lifetimes offer new opportunities to theorize time, politics, and promise in the contemporary moment. Contributors Nikhil Anand, Hannah Appel, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Dominic Boyer, Akhil Gupta, Penny Harvey, Brian Larkin, Christina Schwenkel, Antina von Schnitzler
Download or read book Hydraulic City written by Nikhil Anand and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Hydraulic City Nikhil Anand explores the politics of Mumbai's water infrastructure to demonstrate how citizenship emerges through the continuous efforts to control, maintain, and manage the city's water. Through extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Mumbai's settlements, Anand found that Mumbai's water flows, not through a static collection of pipes and valves, but through a dynamic infrastructure built on the relations between residents, plumbers, politicians, engineers, and the 3,000 miles of pipe that bind them. In addition to distributing water, the public water network often reinforces social identities and the exclusion of marginalized groups, as only those actively recognized by city agencies receive legitimate water services. This form of recognition—what Anand calls "hydraulic citizenship"—is incremental, intermittent, and reversible. It provides residents an important access point through which they can make demands on the state for other public services such as sanitation and education. Tying the ways Mumbai's poorer residents are seen by the state to their historic, political, and material relations with water pipes, the book highlights the critical role infrastructures play in consolidating civic and social belonging in the city.
Book Synopsis Infrastructures and Social Complexity by : Penelope Harvey
Download or read book Infrastructures and Social Complexity written by Penelope Harvey and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary forms of infrastructural development herald alternative futures through their incorporation of digital technologies, mobile capital, international politics and the promises and fears of enhanced connectivity. In tandem with increasing concerns about climate change and the anthropocene, there is further an urgency around contemporary infrastructural provision: a concern about its fragility, and an awareness that these connective, relational systems significantly shape both local and planetary futures in ways that we need to understand more clearly. Offering a rich set of empirically detailed and conceptually sophisticated studies of infrastructural systems and experiments, present and past, contributors to this volume address both the transformative potential of infrastructural systems and their stasis. Covering infrastructural figures; their ontologies, epistemologies, classifications and politics, and spanning development, urban, energy, environmental and information infrastructures, the chapters explore both the promises and failures of infrastructure. Tracing the experimental histories of a wide range of infrastructures and documenting their variable outcomes, the volume offers a unique set of analytical perspectives on contemporary infrastructural complications. These studies bring a systematic empirical and analytical attention to human worlds as they intersect with more-than-human worlds, whether technological or biological.
Download or read book Vacant to Vibrant written by Sandra Albro and published by . This book was released on 2019-03 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vacant lots, so often seen as neighborhood blight, have the potential to be a key element of community revitalization. Sandra Albro offers practical insights through her experience leading the five-year Vacant to Vibrant project, which piloted the creation of green infrastructure networks in Gary, Indiana; Cleveland, Ohio; and Buffalo, New York. Vacant to Vibrant provides a point of comparison among the three cities as they adapt old systems to new, green technology. Albro offers insights from every step of the Vacant to Vibrant project, including planning, design, community engagement, implementation, and maintenance successes and challenges of creating a green infrastructure network from vacant lots in neighborhoods. Landscape architects and other professionals whose work involves urban greening will learn new approaches for creating infrastructure networks and facilitating more equitable access to green space.
Download or read book Infrastructure written by Brian Hayes and published by W. W. Norton. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering agriculture, resources, energy, communication, transportation, manufacturing and waste, this volume explores all the major ecosystems of the modern industrial world, revealing what the structures are and why they're there and uncovering beauty in unexpected places. Photos.
Book Synopsis Power to the Public by : Tara Dawson McGuinness
Download or read book Power to the Public written by Tara Dawson McGuinness and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-18 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Worth a read for anyone who cares about making change happen.”—Barack Obama A powerful new blueprint for how governments and nonprofits can harness the power of digital technology to help solve the most serious problems of the twenty-first century As the speed and complexity of the world increases, governments and nonprofit organizations need new ways to effectively tackle the critical challenges of our time—from pandemics and global warming to social media warfare. In Power to the Public, Tara Dawson McGuinness and Hana Schank describe a revolutionary new approach—public interest technology—that has the potential to transform the way governments and nonprofits around the world solve problems. Through inspiring stories about successful projects ranging from a texting service for teenagers in crisis to a streamlined foster care system, the authors show how public interest technology can make the delivery of services to the public more effective and efficient. At its heart, public interest technology means putting users at the center of the policymaking process, using data and metrics in a smart way, and running small experiments and pilot programs before scaling up. And while this approach may well involve the innovative use of digital technology, technology alone is no panacea—and some of the best solutions may even be decidedly low-tech. Clear-eyed yet profoundly optimistic, Power to the Public presents a powerful blueprint for how government and nonprofits can help solve society’s most serious problems.
Book Synopsis The Promise of Prosperity by : Judith Bovensiepen
Download or read book The Promise of Prosperity written by Judith Bovensiepen and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2018-12-18 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the people of Timor-Leste, independence promised a fundamental transformation from foreign occupation to self-rule, from brutality to respect for basic rights, and from poverty to prosperity. In the eyes of the country’s political leaders, revenue from the country’s oil and gas reserves is the means by which that transformation could be effected. Over the past decade, they have formulated ambitious plans for state-led development projects and rapid economic growth. Paradoxically, these modernist visions are simultaneously informed by and contradict ideas stemming from custom, religion, accountability and responsibility to future generations. This book explores how the promise of prosperity informs policy and how policy debates shape expectations about the future in one of the world’s newest and poorest nation-states.
Book Synopsis Infrastructure Investing by : Rajeev J. Sawant
Download or read book Infrastructure Investing written by Rajeev J. Sawant and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Invaluable information regarding one of the biggest worldwide growth areas in investing-infrastructure assets Infrastructure investing is about to explode on the worldwide scene. The fact is that real money will need to be spent on real projects-which will present real opportunities for stable, long-term returns. But infrastructure assets have unique characteristics and the investments and funds that will likely rise up must be suitably structured to serve investor needs. Author Rajeev Sawant has been analyzing infrastructure investments, funds, and project financing programs for nearly five years, and with this book, he presents information that will be invaluable to lenders, pension funds, insurance companies, investment funds, rating agencies, and even governments. Presents comprehensive data analysis on infrastructure cases worldwide Analyzes the opportunities as well as the pitfalls of infrastructure investing Focuses on the needs of pensions, insurance companies, and endowments interested in infrastructure investing For the next decade, worldwide economic growth and increased employment-as well as investment returns-will come from infrastructure projects. This book will help you understand today's dynamic infrastructure asset class and quickly get you up to speed on the unique risks and rewards associated with it.
Book Synopsis Infrastructure, Environment, and Life in the Anthropocene by : Kregg Hetherington
Download or read book Infrastructure, Environment, and Life in the Anthropocene written by Kregg Hetherington and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-31 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infrastructure, Environment, and Life in the Anthropocene explores life in the age of climate change through a series of infrastructural puzzles—sites at which it has become impossible to disentangle the natural from the built environment. With topics ranging from breakwaters built of oysters, underground rivers made by leaky pipes, and architecture gone weedy to neighborhoods partially submerged by rising tides, the contributors explore situations that destabilize the concepts we once relied on to address environmental challenges. They take up the challenge that the Anthropocene poses both to life on the planet and to our social-scientific understanding of it by showing how past conceptions of environment and progress have become unmoored and what this means for how we imagine the future. Contributors. Nikhil Anand, Andrea Ballestero, Bruce Braun, Ashley Carse, Gastón R. Gordillo, Kregg Hetherington, Casper Bruun Jensen, Joseph Masco, Shaylih Muehlmann, Natasha Myers, Stephanie Wakefield, Austin Zeiderman
Book Synopsis Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure by : National Academy of Engineering
Download or read book Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure written by National Academy of Engineering and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1995-06-09 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While societies have always had information infrastructures, the power and reach of today's information technologies offer opportunities to transform work and family lives in an unprecedented fashion. This volume, a collection of six papers presented at the 1994 National Academy of Engineering Meeting Technical Session, presents a range of views on the subject of the revolution in the U.S. information infrastructure. The papers cover a variety of current issues including an overview of the technological developments driving the evolution of information infrastructures and where they will lead; the development of the Internet, particularly the government's role in its evolution; the impact of regulatory reform and antitrust enforcement on the telecommunications revolution; and perspectives from the computer, wireless, and satellite communications industries.
Download or read book The Road Taken written by Henry Petroski and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned historian and engineer explores the past, present, and future of America's crumbling infrastructure. Acclaimed engineer and historian Henry Petroski explores our core infrastructure from both historical and contemporary perspectives, explaining how essential their maintenance is to America's economic health. Petroski reveals the genesis of the many parts of America's highway system--our interstate numbering system, the centerline that divides roads, and such taken-for-granted objects as guardrails, stop signs, and traffic lights--all crucial to our national and local infrastructure. A compelling work of history, The Road Taken is also an urgent clarion call aimed at American citizens, politicians, and anyone with a vested interest in our economic well-being. Physical infrastructure in the United States is crumbling, and Petroski reveals the complex and challenging interplay between government and industry inherent in major infrastructure improvement. The road we take in the next decade toward rebuilding our aging infrastructure will in large part determine our future national prosperity.
Download or read book Roads to Power written by Jo Guldi and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roads to Power tells the story of how Britain built the first nation connected by infrastructure, how a libertarian revolution destroyed a national economy, and how technology caused strangers to stop speaking. In early eighteenth-century Britain, nothing but dirt track ran between most towns. By 1848 the primitive roads were transformed into a network of highways connecting every village and island in the nation—and also dividing them in unforeseen ways. The highway network led to contests for control over everything from road management to market access. Peripheries like the Highlands demanded that centralized government pay for roads they could not afford, while English counties wanted to be spared the cost of underwriting roads to Scotland. The new network also transformed social relationships. Although travelers moved along the same routes, they occupied increasingly isolated spheres. The roads were the product of a new form of government, the infrastructure state, marked by the unprecedented control bureaucrats wielded over decisions relating to everyday life. Does information really work to unite strangers? Do markets unite nations and peoples in common interests? There are lessons here for all who would end poverty or design their markets around the principle of participation. Guldi draws direct connections between traditional infrastructure and the contemporary collapse of the American Rust Belt, the decline of American infrastructure, the digital divide, and net neutrality. In the modern world, infrastructure is our principal tool for forging new communities, but it cannot outlast the control of governance by visionaries.
Download or read book Roads written by Penny Harvey and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roads matter to people. This claim is central to the work of Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox, who in this book use the example of highway building in South America to explore what large public infrastructural projects can tell us about contemporary state formation, social relations, and emerging political economies.Roads focuses on two main sites: the interoceanic highway currently under construction between Brazil and Peru, a major public/private collaboration that is being realized within new, internationally ratified regulatory standards; and a recently completed one-hundred-kilometer stretch of highway between Iquitos, the largest city in the Peruvian Amazon, and a small town called Nauta, one of the earliest colonial settlements in the Amazon. The Iquitos-Nauta highway is one of the most expensive roads per kilometer on the planet.Combining ethnographic and historical research, Harvey and Knox shed light on the work of engineers and scientists, bureaucrats and construction company officials. They describe how local populations anticipated each of the road projects, even getting deeply involved in questions of exact routing as worries arose that the road would benefit some more than others. Connectivity was a key recurring theme as people imagined the prosperity that will come by being connected to other parts of the country and with other parts of the world. Sweeping in scope and conceptually ambitious, Roads tells a story of global flows of money, goods, and people—and of attempts to stabilize inherently unstable physical and social environments.
Book Synopsis In Search of Certainty by : Mark Burgess
Download or read book In Search of Certainty written by Mark Burgess and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2015-04-09 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quite soon, the world’s information infrastructure is going to reach a level of scale and complexity that will force scientists and engineers to approach it in an entirely new way. The familiar notions of command and control are being thwarted by realities of a faster, denser world of communication where choice, variety, and indeterminism rule. The myth of the machine that does exactly what we tell it has come to an end. What makes us think we can rely on all this technology? What keeps it together today, and how might it work tomorrow? Will we know how to build the next generation—or will we be lulled into a stupor of dependence brought about by its conveniences? In this book, Mark Burgess focuses on the impact of computers and information on our modern infrastructure by taking you from the roots of science to the principles behind system operation and design. To shape the future of technology, we need to understand how it works—or else what we don’t understand will end up shaping us. This book explores this subject in three parts: Part I, Stability: describes the fundamentals of predictability, and why we have to give up the idea of control in its classical meaning Part II, Certainty: describes the science of what we can know, when we don’t control everything, and how we make the best of life with only imperfect information Part III, Promises: explains how the concepts of stability and certainty may be combined to approach information infrastructure as a new kind of virtual material, restoring a continuity to human-computer systems so that society can rely on them.
Book Synopsis Repair Work Ethnographies by : Ignaz Strebel
Download or read book Repair Work Ethnographies written by Ignaz Strebel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-14 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering book homes in on repair as an everyday practice. Bringing together exemplary ethnographies of repair work around the world, it examines the politics of repair, its work settings and intricate networks, in and across a wide range of situations, lay and professional. The book evidences the topical relevance of situated inquiry into breakdown, repair, and maintenance for engaging with the contemporary world more broadly. Airplanes and artworks, bicycles and buildings, cars and computers, medical devices and mobile phones, as virtually any commodity, infrastructure or technical artifact, have in common their occasional breakdown, if not inbuilt obsolescence. Hence the point and purpose of closely examining how and when they are fixed.
Book Synopsis New Orleans After the Promises by : Kent B. Germany
Download or read book New Orleans After the Promises written by Kent B. Germany and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1960s and 1970s, New Orleans experienced one of the greatest transformations in its history. Its people replaced Jim Crow, fought a War on Poverty, and emerged with glittering skyscrapers, professional football, and a building so large it had to be called the Superdome. New Orleans after the Promises looks back at that era to explore how a few thousand locals tried to bring the Great Society to Dixie. With faith in God and American progress, they believed that they could conquer poverty, confront racism, establish civic order, and expand the economy. At a time when liberalism seemed to be on the wane nationally, black and white citizens in New Orleans cautiously partnered with each other and with the federal government to expand liberalism in the South. As Kent Germany examines how the civil rights, antipoverty, and therapeutic initiatives of the Great Society dovetailed with the struggles of black New Orleanians for full citizenship, he defines an emerging public/private governing apparatus that he calls the "Soft State": a delicate arrangement involving constituencies as varied as old-money civic leaders and Black Power proponents who came together to sort out the meanings of such new federal programs as Community Action, Head Start, and Model Cities. While those diverse groups struggled--violently on occasion--to influence the process of racial inclusion and the direction of economic growth, they dramatically transformed public life in one of America's oldest cities. While many wonder now what kind of city will emerge after Katrina, New Orleans after the Promises offers a detailed portrait of the complex city that developed after its last epic reconstruction.
Book Synopsis Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment by : Edward L. Glaeser
Download or read book Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment written by Edward L. Glaeser and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-11-11 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Policy-makers often call for expanding public spending on infrastructure, which includes a broad range of investments from roads and bridges to digital networks that will expand access to high-speed broadband. Some point to near-term macro-economic benefits and job creation, others focus on long-term effects on productivity and economic growth. This volume explores the links between infrastructure spending and economic outcomes, as well as key economic issues in the funding and management of infrastructure projects. It draws together research studies that describe the short-run stimulus effects of infrastructure spending, develop new estimates of the stock of U.S. infrastructure capital, and explore the incentive aspects of public-private partnerships (PPPs). A salient issue is the treatment of risk in evaluating publicly-funded infrastructure projects and in connection with PPPs. The goal of the volume is to provide a reference for researchers seeking to expand research on infrastructure issues, and for policy-makers tasked with determining the appropriate level of infrastructure spending"--
