GSD

ADV 9302 - INDEPENDENT STUDY

SPRING 2013

DESIGN / INFRASTRUCTURE / REGIONSENGAGING WITH TEXTS BY:

BRENNERGRAHAMHARVEYSWYNGEDOUWVAN LAAk

THE 5TH THESIS

ADVISER:

NEIL BRENNER

THE 5TH THESIS TEAM:

JAMES WHITTEN / MAUDDAIA PACO / MLAUD

OSCAR MALASPINA / MAUDJUAN CRISTALDO / MAUD

01

James Whitten

Preliminary speculations for engaging the territory through design

This collaborative research project is a response to design’s inability to engage effectively at the “regional” scale. Its goal is to establish a conceptual framework and set of methodological tools to equip design to intervene meaningfully and decisively in the “engineering” of the territory. The tradition (discipline?) of “regional engineering” or “regional planning” has oscillated in relevance since the consolidation of its practices during the 1920s under the authorship of Benton MacKaye. His seminal The New Exploration: A philosophy of regional planning (1928) outlined an epistemology for designing at the territorial scale, while From Geography to Geotechnics (1969) codified the frameworks and tools of regional planning practice.

Since the demise of the Westphalian world order and the erosion of nation-state powers by “Glocalized” political units during the 1970s, the sociospatial dimension of territorial organization has entered a phase of dynamic instability. As a result, design’s license to engage at the territorial scale was revoked. If the goals of this research project are to be achieved, then we must establish new alignments between the scale of the political units influencing the organization of the territory, and the methodological tools that are within the grasp of designers. Prior to developing these tools, however, a more thoroughgoing understanding of the present scale of state-space restructuring processes, and their impact on the organization of the territory, is required.

From two of the authors selected for this week’s readings – Neil Brenner and Erik A. Swyngedouw – two opportunities for intervening at the territorial scale may be discerned. Both emanate from processes intrinsic to territorial organization and state-space restructuring. The first is derived from the layering of “historically produced forms” and the friction or resistance these apply to the new scales of organization imposed by sociopolitical agents with modernizing agendas. The second is derived from the dynamic instability generated by these overlaps, and in turn, the space this opens for “anticipatory” design to harness and redirect the momentum of modernization to socially productive ends.

The simultaneous layering and coexistence of temporally specific scales of state-space is the defining characteristic of territorial organization. For Brenner, this has resulted from a contemporary culture of fiscal austerity that has super-imposed contemporary “Glocalization” strategies onto Keynesian-Fordist modalities of state-space.

“[…] state spatial configurations represent outcomes of earlier regulatory practices that in turn provide temporarily stabilized institutional-geographical arenas in and through which new regulatory arrangements may be forged. Thus conceived, the spatiality of state power is at once a presupposition, a medium and a product of the conflictual interplay between inherited geographical parcelizations of state space and emergent political strategies intended to instrumentalize, restructure or transform the latter.” (Brenner, pp. 452)

Does the “spatial target” of these parcelizations, which increasingly align with sub-national political units (regions), forecast an avenue for engaging with the design of territorial scale systems? As pointed out by Brenner, the logic defining the scale of these interventions is in fact connected to multi-scalar systems that are simultaneously local, regional, national and global. However, the integration of regional political units is highly selective, and this has led to the uneven patterns of social development within even the most economically advanced nation-states. Highlighting the “endogenous” nature of regional growth, Brenner emphasizes the internal (natural?) disparities between regions as the primary source of this uneven development. To establish the “exogenous” forces – or potentials, rather – giving rise to the “new-regionalism” we will turn to Swyngedouw whose exploration of the “space/technology nexus” focuses attention on infrastructure’s role in the rescaling of state-space.

Channeling Lefebvre, Swyngedouw claims “territorial organization should be conceptualized in a double form, i.e. as a dialectical unity of a social relationship and a force of production.” (Swyngedouw, pp. 417) By emphasizing the productive forces influencing the scale and structure of territorial organization, he alludes to the exogenous potentials driving the integration of sub-national (regional) scale political units. In his reading of “Glocalization Strategies” Swyngedouw claims that the plateauing of a region’s capacity to extract a surplus form labor resources drives the search for new markets to reinvigorate accumulation. He goes on to claim that:

“[…] the spatial division of labour, as it is organized at a given time and at a given level of development of the productive forces, no longer permits the increase in absolute or relative surplus value production; an increase which then calls for a restructuring of the organization of the relations of production, a reorganization which proceeds in and through changes in the techno-spatial structure of the production and circulation process.” (Swyngedouw, 428)

As such, infrastructures that “smash space with time” (Harvey) are a crucial weapon in the arsenal of state-space rescaling. They unfold within a contested space where the externalities leveraged by new urban technology – such as High Speed Rail – catalyze a struggle between interests wishing to socialize or privative the surplus. For Swyngedouw the very scale of “territorial coherence” is the product of the space/technology nexus, and leads to:

“[…] the struggle between the control over place (the struggle over the production, realization and distribution of surplus) on the one hand, and the control over space (to control the conditions of the struggle over the production, realization and distribution of surplus) on the other.” (Swyngedouw, 429)

To discuss: As we advance into the next phase of the research project, it may be worth reflecting on the ‘definition’ and the ‘meaning’ of the “region” in relation to our respective projects; upon the motivations of the agents promoting the re-scaling, and their desires for the internal and external organization of the political units comprising the territory.

References

Erik A. Swyngedouw. “Territorial Organization and the Space/Technology Nexus” from Transactions of the Institue of British Geographers. New Series, vol. 17, No. 4 (1992). pp. 417-433.

Neil Brenner. “Urban governance and the production of new state spaces in western Europe” from Review of International Political Economy. Vol. 11, No. 3. August 2004. pp. 447-488.

Stephen Graham. “FlowCity: Networked Mobilities and the Contemporary Metropolis” from Journal of Urban Technology. Vol. 9, No. 1. pp. 1-20

Daia Stutz

How the term ‘infrastructure’ successfully managed to overcome

Its imperialistic andliberal politcal asociations.

Dirk van Laak: The term 'infrastructure' and what it indicated before its invention.

Translated and summarized by Daia Stutz from the original Essay in German: Dirk van Laak: Der Begriff „Infrastruktur“ und was er vor seiner Erfindung besagte. In: Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Nr. 41 (1999), S. 280-299. Additional information is cited explicitly.

The new-latin neologism 'infrastructure' (latin infra = 'below' and structura = joining, fitting1) has apparently been developed in French-speaking regions in Europe. Etymologist date its first use on August 13, 1875, in a report of a French Commission supervising the construction of a new railway line in the Midi region, Southern France. The term was used to characterize the underlying construction of Railway lines, as opposed to its superstructure. Its predominant allocation to railway jargon is also evident in records from 1927, when infrastructure was defined as 'acquisition of land, embankments, cuttings, bridges, level-crossings, and the like', above which the superstructure ('rails, overhead electric apparatus, stations, signals and the like') is installed.

Before the French marxist-philosophic terminology took over 'infrastructure' to describe its societal theory of 'base and superstructure'2, the term was - up to the 1940s - primarily referring to all fixed constructions as requirement and in ordinary for mobility. However, the actual career of the term started in 1950 with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a program set up by the NATO to coordinate the development of airports, oil-pipelines, gas-reservoirs, communication and aerial defense systems.

The American politician and diplomat W. Averell Harriman, the chairman of the program and a descendant of railway industrialists, introduced the term on December 18 1951 to the international public. Harriman probably adopted the term from Jean Monnet, an influential French political economist and diplomat who is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the European Union3 and who initiated the Schuman Declaration4 as a representative of the French government. Due to him, 'infrastructure' became part of the official NATO vocabulary in 1954. Interestingly, as a result of the NATO efforts, the term was associated with supranational structures and therefore initially experienced much reservation by national-thinking politicians (e.g. Winston Churchill, who complained about the introduction of the term through arrogant intellectuals during a parliament consultation in 1950). However, infrastructure finally found its way to the international planning vocabulary via the EEC (European Economic Community) in 1957.

The association of the term infrastructure with military and economic efforts as well as as a synonym for modern capitalist development is also to be ascribed to Harriman, who was in charge of the Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program after WWII) in 1948. Soon the term became part of post-war anti-communist vocabulary and was understood as a crucial

precondition for economic prosperity and liberal thinking in the Old and New World during the Cold War era. As such, infrastructure became an operational term that included economic and social dimensions following a certain political agenda, and it became an increasingly important means for supra-national organizations such as the World Bank and Nato. (…). Not surprisingly, the strong political implications of the term further hindered its application in the socialist countries (e.g. East Germany) where infrastructure was associated with western imperialism and neo-colonial exploitation.

The planning authority of East Germany, for example, were using similar but different terms to describe infrastructure (e.g. territorial framework, basic territorial-economic structure, etc). Its relation to liberal and capitalist political economy also hindered the theoretization of the term until the 60's, when the thorough success of infrastructure as a modern term took place. Its increasingly expanded use in many different economic and cultural realms finally dissolved its political associations, what can be seen as the turning point in the term's career.

The success has apparently less to do with the prefix 'infra', but more because of 'structure', which was a term already widely acknowledged in influential French philosophic jargon. Efforts to further define infrastructure in theoretical terms and to limit it to political economy failed during the 60s in West Germany, as the term continued to be vaguely used in many different fields (Urban Planning, Geography, Sociology and Politics). Infrastructure also became the favorite term for 'social engineering' and its agenda, to describe the all-embracing distribution of material and immaterial public supply. Moreover, many politicians used the term in their speeches during that time. (…).

To discuss: What are exactly the reasons why the term 'infrastructure' – despite its intrinsically neoliberal capitalist agenda - has recently experienced another terminological boom in urban-design and geo-spatial disciplines?

References

1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure2- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure3- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Monnet4- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuman_Declaration

Oscar Malaspina

About Splintering Urbanism

“Infrastructure networks provide the distribution grids and topological connections that link systems and practices of production with systems and practices of consumption.”1

Splintering Urbanism reveals how new technologies and increasingly privatized systems of infrastructure provision –telecommunications, highways, urban streets, energy and water – are supporting the splintering of metropolitan areas across the world. In order to understand this concept is necessary to discard some traditional assumptions around infrastructure:

“Fundamentally, infrastructure networks are thus widely assumed to be integrators of urban spaces. They are believed to bind cities, regions and nations into functioning geographical or political wholes”2

“The assumption, as Steven Pinch argued in his classic book Cities and Services, is that utility supplies (and sometimes public transport and telecommunication networks, too) are “Public local goods which are, generally speaking, freely available to all individuals at equal cost within particular local government or administrative areas” (1985,10) 3

The main idea of the splintering urbanism concept is to define contemporary urbanism as “an extraordinarily complex and dynamic sociotechnical process”. This idea is constructed understanding cities as “nodes” within global circulation of resources.

“The constant flux of this urban process is constituted through many superimposed, contested and interconnecting infrastructural “landscapes”. These provide the mediators between nature, culture and the production of the “city”.”4

What is important to understand here is the notion of multilayered “infrastructural landscapes”: water, electricity, gas, etc. All of them operate within its particular network but interconnected with the other ones. In the past, urbanizations emerged and became cohesive due to the overlay and relatively similar “footprint” of each of these “infrastructural landscapes” which were regulated by the public sector. Nonetheless, with the emergence of public-private partnerships and specific needs and demands in each of these networks, the infrastructural networks as well as the urbanizations process have splintered and the traditional cohesion of a city has eroded.

Today, it is becoming more and more evident that infrastructure networks are “embedded geopolitics”. “As capital that is literally “sunk” and embedded within and between the fabrics of cities, they represent long-term accumulations of finance, technology, know-how, and organizational and geopolitical power.” 5

To discuss: The splintering urbanism concept unveils a clear capitalist political and economic landscape. Nonetheless, this concept relies in probably two assumptions6: the power of the state to govern, plan, manage and administrate the processes of urbanization that these infrastructures will stimulate. And the notion of city, that is not detached from the idea of “metropolis” or “megacity”. But, what happens, when these projects are done in developing contexts, in which governability and planning are not necessarily well executed practices? Could splinter urbanism anticipate unforeseen processes of collateral urbanizations? What happens with the “hinterland” and the urbanizations that emerge out of remote infrastructural deployment? “Resource extraction” urbanism?

References

1 - Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin - “Splintering Urbanism” - p.112 - Ibid - p.83 - Ibid - p.84 - Ibid - p.85 - Ibid - p.116- This is the impression I have so far.

Juan Cristaldo

Reflections upon “Geopolitics of Capitalism”and a discussion about narratives for infrastructure.

“ We can now draw a fundamental conclusion. The ability of both capitaland labor power to move at short order and low cost from place to place

depends upon the creation of fixed, secure, and largely immobile socialand physical infrastructures. The ability to overcome space is predicated

on the production of space. But the required infrastructures absorbcapital and labor power in their production and maintenance. We here

approach the heart of the paradox. A portion of the total capital and laborpower has to be immobilized in space, frozen in place, in order to facilitate

greater liberty of movement for the remainder.”David Harvey - Spaces of Capital - P 332

Harvey undertakes the task to elaborate on a critical reading of Marx, and our task, in turn, is try to connect this broader and general reflection upon social and economic dynamics under capitalism, to a more focused discussion about space and infrastructure.

Following the classic Marxist interpretation, Harvey elaborate on some of the characteristics (limits) of capital:

The circulation of capital (and related flows of raw materials and labor) is described by Harvey as a necessarily continuous process under the capitalist model. Furthermore, this continuous flow is meant always to produce surplus. In order to exist, capital needs the two conditions of permanent flow, and permanent growth.

“A ‘healthy’ capitalist economy is, therefore, one with a positive growth rate. The closer we get to a stationary state (let alone actual decline), the more unhealthy the economy is judged to be. This translates into an ideology of growth (‘growth is good’) no matter what the environmental, human, or geopolitical consequences.” (Harvey, 2001 pp. 313)

Any interruption in the flows , for any reason, (for instance: absence of credit, or infrastructural obsolescence that does not allow the adequate flux of labor, raw materials or goods) will lead to a limitation on the cycles of capitalist expansion. An economic crisis, and perhaps even a recession.

This can help to explain why a constant source of preoccupation under capitalism is the creation of social infrastructures (credit systems, financial engineering, normative frames) and physical infrastructures (bridges, dams, communication networks, etc.) to support the circulation of capital.

The need of permanent growth and permanent mobility, help us to analyze a number of diverse social phenomena from a single point of view: lets for example, consider the fierce technological innovation and the correlated economic obsolescence of means of production that are not yet physically obsolete. The counterpart, is the reduction of living labor force or the reduction of wages, precisely trough the introduction of new technology and organizational processes. Both of these (new technologies and reduction of living

labor), lead to an expansion of profits trough an increased efficiency in the creation of goods and services.The other strategy to feed a process of permanent growth, is to expand the consumption of good and services.

These two dynamics however, are in clear contradiction. By reducing progressively the number of employees and the real value of the wages, the overall purchasing power of a large part of the society is reduced. Therefore, after a certain threshold, is not possible to sustain a process of economic growth, no mater how much efficient the production process is, if there are no consumers for the goods and services produced.

Harvey claims that in order to face this bottleneck, the capitalist system has developed “spatial and temporal displacements”. And both of this displacements, are related intrinsically with infrastructure.

The spatial displacement refers to the notion of integrating new hinterlands to processes of resource extraction, and goods consumption. In this way, infrastructure plays a key role on articulating the territory redefining boundaries and spaces of economic interaction.

The temporal displacement refers to – in a oversimplified way – credit. More specifically, to employ surpluses of capital, in the form of savings that are transformed in loans, in order to feed new cycles of consumption and economic growth. This can be done – as it has – by expanding consumption of non durable goods trough credit cards, or through the expansion of defense – related expenditure.

Harvey elaborates on the idea that one possible alternative that would generate broader and more stable cycles of growth, and more egalitarian social development, is to invest in long term infrastructure:

“(...) some capital necessarily circulates at a much slower pace, such as fixed capital (machinery, physical plant and infrastructures) and within the consumption fund (consumer durables, housing, and so on). The production of science and technology, and the provision of social infrastructures (...) define areas in which the gestation time of projects is typically long and the return of benefits (if any) spread out over many years. (...) We now encounter the happy circumstance that such surpluses are continuously being generated within the circulation process of capital. What better way to absorb them than to shift them into long-term projects in the formation of physical and social infrastructures?” (Harvey, 2001 pp 319)

This conclusion resemble very closely the terms of a Keynesian policy, such as the New Deal, or the Marshal Plan. The difference is that Harvey postulate the impossibility of a definitive fix for the limits of capital. In other terms: it is not possible to establish a social-ecological process of unlimited growth. What is done is to avoid bottlenecks, trough infrastructure and credit (including the very capital needed to build infrastructure in the first place).

To discuss: possible questions to pursue in our spatial – projective inquiry:

How to contrast the different theories/narratives about infrastructure with the specificity of our projects? As of this moment, I can clearly think of at least four narratives:

– Infrastructure as the positivist tool of endless linear progress and modernity. Theenlightenment – Keynesian vision of infrastructure.

– Infrastructure as tool to control space and time in order to guarantee the appropriationand exploitation of resources. A Marxist – post colonial critique of infrastructure asdomination tool.

– Infrastructure as a possible way to avoid – temporarily – crisis within the capitalist system, trough the notion of spatial fix (creation of new markets and incorporation of newhinterlands), or temporal fix (absorption of surpluses of capital and labor in long termsocially relevant investments). A Keynesian / Marxist hybrid (?) point of view.

– Infrastructure in the neoliberal, post-Keynesian capitalism. Splintering Urbanism and theNotion of Glocal. Infrastructure that selectively connects to the main nodes of exchange –and is selectively and intentionally detached from local realities.

How can in the following weeks, any (or all) of these narratives help us to read the specific realities of our projects, both as isolated case studies, and comparatively?

References

David Harvey. “Spaces of Capital” (2001). - Ch 15 - Geopolitics of Capitalism. pp. 312 - 344