Of the three topics of interest, I would be most interested in researching the infrastructure aspect. Portland, Maine, aside from being built on a small tract of land, is also a city that grew rather naturally and without the aid of a dedicated (modern) city planner. Other, more prominent, examples of a similar city design include Boston’s North End and New York City’s Business District on the southern tip of Manhattan. The reason these cities have modern,  grid-driven city plans are in direct response to these early districts and their natural city growth patterns.  Portland has never quite made a successful transition from natural growth to modern planning. The reason for the drastic planning changes in the larger cities are ultimately resultant of the horrendous infrastructure issues that follow a natural growth pattern.  Thus, I want to understand what infrastructural issues Portland contends with–roadways being the main focus, as it is the most prominent of the infrastructural issues, but also looking at water, electrical, and sewage systems, as well as more contemporary systems, like public Wi-Fi/4G access and pedestrian and bicycle transportation systems.

The Townsend lecture was most influential in my choice of infrastructure as my focus topic. The idea of a “smart city” is attractive, especially in an age where most everyone can access all of the world’s information from a rectangular tablet they carry in their front pocket. However, not every city can have an IBM mission control center to monitor and connect its citizens. I want to better understand how this smart city concept can apply to cities that aren’t Rio-sized, as well as how a city’s existing infrastructure affects potential interventions of this nature. Portland is not big; Portland is not rich. But, that said, most cities in the US have these exact qualities. Thus, Portland can function as a case study for all small cities and their ability to implement a smart city-style infrastructure.

I have spent some extended time in both Boston and Copenhagen, cities that are both similar and extremely different in their approach on infrastructure. In both cities, I rode the train to get everywhere I needed to go. Portland does not have such an organized public transportation method–and likely won’t have one unless it experiences a drastic change in size and budget. (Even then, being build on a small, steep, narrow hill, such a large public intervention would likely ruin the city before it helped it. However, I want to use this as a framework for my research approach. I want to find Portland’s infrastructural limits. Once it’s limits are understood and accepted, it will make understanding its capabilities all the easier. In order to find out what Portland can do in the future, one must first find out what it definitely cannot do. Boston and Copenhagen will not have intervention plans that Portland will be able to model, but they do offer two successful plans from which we can draw in finding Portland’s limits.

Infrastructure is wide ranging. Odds are, it will intersect greatly with both housing and public space, so working together with these groups will likely work to all of our advantages.