Who shapes the future of our cities? What role do researchers, students, and professionals play? What are the skills, competencies, and tools needed? These are important questions considering over half of the world’s population lives in urban areas and this is expected to increase globally to approximately seventy percent by 2050. Intricately linked to sustainability and equality is access to reliable infrastructures including the fundamentals of water, waste, energy, and food. Often considered unsightly, dangerous, or banal these infrastructures and their associated buildings are typically concealed within the hinterlands of urban areas and separated from (or even damaging to) other ecological systems creating a disconnect between people and biological processes. This research proposes to unpack a series of case study sites that engage successfully with these four infrastructures to understand and develop the conversation surrounding the social and spatial agency of infrastructure.
