Admittedly, when first thinking about infrastructure, only roads, transportation, public space, and schools came to my mind. I did not consider even much of how data and information, let alone social cues too make up infrastructure. But as we have read and discussed in class, infrastructure is the physical, technological, and social materials undergirding everyday social life. Social infrastructure is perhaps the most significant because it is the least tangible and thus intertwined in our everyday lives in complex and enigmatic ways. Simone describes how she found that social infrastructure in Johannesburg notably consisted of economic collaboration among marginalized residents. [1] This kind of infrastructure is also noteworthy in the way that it was created from the bottom up. That is, this “conjunction of heterogeneous activities, modes of production, and institutional forms” [1] grew out of both cultural practice and the existing physical infrastructure in the area implying development beginning from within the culture itself. This infrastructural progress could be vastly different than those suggested by the smart city because much smart technology is usually begun from city management then down to the people. I argue that infrastructure of physical and technological kind must be appropriately implemented so as to consider the underlying culture in order to ensure the most successful installment into cities. Social infrastructure, like laws and regulations which already have underlying cultural reason behind them usually, is inherently cultural and so it will in most cases begin from the bottom up and compliment the beliefs of the people.
However, there have been many cases in the past where a top down approach was used to develop infrastructure in cities. One of the first times that such an approach was used on the city of New York was in 1811 when the Jeffersonian grid was implemented for northern Manhattan. The approach was successful at the time because there simply were very few settlers (except maybe Native Americans, but U.S. history marginalizes them anyway) north of the area around the old Dutch colony and thus the implementation of the grid structure had little impact on current people. Conversely, despite the millions of people that then lived in New York a century and a half later, Robert Moses led nearly countless infrastructural projects in the mid-twentieth century that drastically changed the structure of the city. He famously described how to complete these projects that in some ways literally tore up the city, he had to hack his way with a meat ax. Yet, Berman reflects that “Moses was destroying our world, yet he seemed to be work in the name of values that we ourselves embraced” [2] which were principles like progress and modernity. The power invested in him as the city planner allowed him to have such control over the development of the city. Finally, a recent example of the top down approach was described in Sorkin’s article about the shutting down of crosswalks at 50th and 5th by Mayor Guiliani in 1999. [3] In this mindset, pedestrians were an inconvenience to cars and not the other way around. This approach, however, was against the social infrastructure that had developed in the area (which in this case was actually more of a free for all constructed by the movements of tourists). Although the “car is the main means for activating the landscape” [3] in the eyes of Guiliani and Moses, this was not always the case for the way that social structure had developed upon that landscape. In fact, years later, NYC city planners would realize this and begin to shutdown roads to cars in places like Times Square. Thus, though a top down approach can be a successful approach at city planning, it does generally need to consider the preexisting social infrastructure of a city in its implementation.
The other approach to be considered is a bottom up approach in city planning. By bottom up, I mean, that the potential for more physical (or even legal) infrastructure beginning with the already developed social infrastructure of the people. The Johannesburg example described by Simone is a good example because it highlights how “residents experience new forms of solidarity through their participation in makeshift, ephemeral ways of being social.” [1] This illustrates one of the many ways that this infrastructure contributes to the common good. An outsider could certainly view the less technological ways commerce in the city is organized and simply dismiss it as rudimentary, but the interactions are certainly complex in their own way and allow for more personal interaction. Jimenez also describes how open source urbanism is a great way for smart technology to be implemented in a bottom up approach. Developing the term “right to infrastructure” (following from Lefebvre’s “right to the city”), Jimenez focuses on the importance of the ascent of free and open source software [4]. This sort of approach is also novel because it simultaneously gathers and juggles media systems, interfaces, and social relations together to product a produce an infrastructure that also has the right to produce any existing infrastructure and us. [4] When we discussed in class how social infrastructure can be just as durable, apparent, and reinforcing as physical infrastructure, I recalled reading an article about Nathan Pyle’s book of NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette. [5] His book includes many tips about how to navigate city and also describes many of the rules of behavior that is often expected, but not usually policed. And since this book is simply written and created by a New Yorker, it demonstrates a bottom up approach in developing social infrastructure. The article is here and I will try to post some of the images below (in .gif form so click on them to see the movement!):
Ultimately, city planners need to be as culturally relativistic as possible when considering an implementation of new physical and technological infrastructure. For instance, IBM and Amazon developing lobster drones to deliver goods around the city of Portland may not be the most practical idea because residents of the city may have strong negative feelings about the idea (although they admittedly could be positive – I do not think any research has been done on the matter). There are advantages and disadvantages to both kinds of approaches of infrastructure development, and Portland needs to consider how balancing them both. Free and open source software seems like a right to city development and perhaps it is only practical to allow people to do some of the development work. Of course, city government can always hold the final say, so it simply makes sense that city councils could reach out to exactly the people they are trying to please (the people who live in the city).
References
[1] Simone, AbdouMaliq. “People as Infrastructure.” In The People, Place, and Space Reader, edited by Jen Jack Gieseking, et al, New York: Routledge, 2014. 241-246.
[2] Berman, Marshall. “All that is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, Verso.” 1983. 287-348
[3] Sorkin, Michael. “Introduction: Traffic in Democracy.” In The People, Place and Space Reader, edited by Jen Jack Gieseking, et al, New York: Routledge, 2014. 411-415.
[4] Jiménez, Alberto Corsín. “The right to infrastructure: a prototype for open source urbanism.” Environment and Planning: Society and Space 32 (2014): 342-362.
[5] Pyle, Nathan. “NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette”. 2014.