The Infrastructural South Techno-Environments of the Third Wave of Urbanization

by Silver, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780262546874
• ISBN10: 0262546876
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780262376730
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-10-10
• Publisher: The MIT Press
• More Book Details

Summary

An in-depth look at the infrastructural landscape of Africa amid the third wave of urbanization, drawing on case studies from Africa and extending further afield.

The Infrastructural South represents a major theoretical contribution to the study of infrastructure’s role in the third wave of urbanization centered on Africa. Based on over a decade of empirical research, Silver’s sweeping examination probes many of contemporary urbanism’s most exciting and pressing issues through the lens of the Global South. Focusing on Uganda, Ghana, and South Africa, Silver’s conceptually innovative chapters explore the way access to energy, water, sanitation, transit, and information technologies shape everyday life as they map the dynamic relations between cities, technology, and the environment.

Pushing readers to look at the wider worlds that suffuse urban systems, this theoretical and geographical perspective treats Africa’s rapidly transforming towns and cities as complex sites of disruption, emancipation, and contradiction. In doing so, it shows how the proliferating urbanisms and contested techno-environments arise from shifting priorities in infrastructure planning, politics, and financing gaps.

As urban issues become a key twenty-first-century challenge for Africa, Silver offers a comprehensive reworking of our understanding of urbanization. The Infrastructural South rethinks how global scholarship approaches infrastructure, laying pathways for future research at the intersection of technology, environmental urbanism, and urban politics.

Author Biography

Jonathan Silver is Senior Research Fellow at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield. A trained urban geographer, he has been awarded grants from the Leverhulme Trust, European Research Council, and UK ESRC.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction: Into the Infra-Future 1
2 Urban Modernity and the African City 27
3 Infrastructural Security to Eco-Segregation 53
4 Between Survival and the Prefigurative 83
5 The Extended Time/Space of Infrastructure 109
6 Promises of Development, Experiences of Displacement 131
7 Infrastructural Catch-Up "Off the Map" 159
8 Digital Disruptions from "Above" and "Below" 183
9 Postcolonial Presents in the Metropole 213
10 Toward a Popular Infrastructure 239
Notes 267
References 271
Sources 307
Index 309