Infrastructure and the Future
dent “networked ecologies.�3 Varnelis and his coauthors, as well as panelist Marcel Smets in The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure, have plotted out an immediate response for architects, designers, and urbanists: to locate, map, and uncover the urban-ecological functions of seemingly impenetrable systems.4 This refreshing approach scrutinizes the physical network itself (traditionally the purview of the engineer) in light of metropolitan and regional priorities (traditionally the purview of the planner), interpreting infrastructural morphologies via the architectural reportage of multiscalar visual documentation. Studies such as these can, and should, elicit both awe at the scale and reach of infrastructure and shock at its inherent fragilities. Interlinking and overlapping, for example, creates both widespread efficiencies and potential cascading failures. In the 2003 Northeast Blackout, the electricity grid’s crash played havoc with dependent communication, sewage-treatment, transport, and water systems. Only six weeks later, all of Italy lost power for twelve hours due to the same cause: tree branches touching faraway transmission lines. Peering deep inside systems to understand their flaws and potentials is not glamorous but it is the first step toward the future of the city, which is supported and defined by accumulated infrastructure. Its deployment is a prime expression of spatial and social life, and reveals how a culture regards the public sphere. It will not, then, come as a shock that the United States collectively spends twice as much on streets and highways as on all other types of networked infrastructure combined. According to Federal Reserve economist Andrew Haughwout, the practice of funding uncoordinated local projects with state and federal dollars creates incentives to overinvest, while state-funded projects often create the illusion of growth by simply encouraging economic activities to move from one place to another.
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