Post #5: Infrastructure Reflections, Uncategorized

Concrete Jungles

“It is neither a right to infrastructure, nor an infrastructure made right. Rather, the right to infrastructure allows us to escape the human-nonhuman and epistemology-ontology dichotomies altogether by opening up the agential work of infrastructures as a source or possibilities in their own right.” (Jiminez, 343)

Infrastructure subtly dictates all aspects of individuals’ or vehicles’ movement within a city. Not only does infrastructure physically organize the city in a way that forces traffic to flow in a specific pattern, infrastructure has the capacity to completely command the way that people think about their own movement within a city. This idea of a city’s infrastructure defining the way that we live connects to the broader idea in Jiminez that we, as a city, have the right to produce infrastructure and that infrastructure has the right to produce us by altering the decisions we make.[1]

In fueling life within the city, the local electrical is potentially one of the most important parts of a City’s infrastructure as it invisibly connects everyone. In smart cities, the electrical grid, and ones open-access to the grid, create opportunities for residents to be engaged and interacting with its many powerful components. I think the type of infrastructure that would be most useful in a smart city would be an interactive, multi-dimensional electrical grid that uses not only typical sources of power like coal or gas, but also more green energy options like wind turbines, solar energy, or hydropower. In addition, I think it would be incredibly beneficial and efficient if homeowners had all-day access to information about the type and amount of energy their homes and navigation around the city uses from the central grid. By incorporating green into the smart city’s central grid, the city would reduce its harmful impacts by reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere but also would potentially reduce its energy consumption if residents knew the ramifications of their immediate actions. Having green initiatives would also make transitioning from fossil fuels to other forms of renewable energy easier in the future.

In order for the green energy to have the largest effect on reducing a city’s energy consumption, there would need to be a very individualized and open approach to how data is transported back to the consumer. This open approach should not be a problem in smart cities – everyone is connected to technology and the grid at all times through mobile devices or mainstream computer systems, and therefore this concept of remotely controlling one’s consumption is definitely conceivable within a smart city. Residents would indeed be a part of the infrastructure (similar to ideas described in Simone) as they would be able to control the heating and electricity within their homes from a remote location and in addition, residents could use this Grid App on their phones or computers to request maintenance or help at any time. Some countries like England are already hopping on the remote controlled home heating bandwagon – http://www.britishgas.co.uk/products-and-services/hive-active-heating.html . This type of green innovations would benefit the common good most as they reduce our long-term impacts on the environment and force homeowners to be more conscientious of their (sometimes unnecessary) energy consumption.

Though I think that Portland would seriously benefit from having this hi-tech and efficient energy grid system, I do not think that it would be the most beneficial thing for the city as a whole because Portland residents may not yet have access to smart technology in order to fully utilize the system (because Portland is not yet a fully smart city). I think that the most beneficial infrastructure change for Portland would be taller buildings within the center of the city. I really liked the ideas we discussed about Times Square in New York City from Sorkin. According to Sorkin and our class discussion, the height of architecture can seriously change the way that people think about and navigate a city.[2] If Portland added some taller buildings, it would make the city seem larger, and therefore easier to get lost or be fully immersed in.

In addition to taller buildings, having one street that was closed down (or closed down on one night each week like they do in Hamilton, Bermuda every wednesday night http://www.bermuda.com/media/5360795/choc-harbnitefullpgadrg2014.pdf ) would likely have an exciting effect on the nightlife and the use of public space within Portland. This type of area would be great for tourists and local businesses and it would probably not have that large of an effect on traffic and flow patterns because Portland is a relatively small city. Even if it did affect the flow of the city, as described in Sorkin, cities are reciprocal, open and flexible ensembles and can continuously remold themselves through repeated social interactions.[3] This all being said, if the city were to commit to this much open space, they would have to stick to their current ground hierarchy of pedestrians, bikes, busses, then cars as opposed to the opposite experienced in New York City.[2]

[1] Jiminez, Alberto Corsin. “The Right to Infrastructure: A Prototype for Open Source Urbanism.” Environmental Planning D: Society and Space 32 (2014): 342-62.

[2] Sorkin, Michael. “Introduction: Traffic in Democracy “. The People, Place, and Space Reader (1999): 411-15.

[3] Simone, AbdouMaliq. “People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg.” The People, Place, and Space Reader (2004): 240-46.