Infrastructures as urban solutions? Critical perspectives on transformative socio-technical change

Jochen Monstadt, Jonathan Rutherford and Olivier Coutard
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Jochen Monstadt: Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Jonathan Rutherford: ENPC-Institut Polytechnique de Paris, CNRS, Univ Gustave Eiffel, LATTS, France
Olivier Coutard: CNRS, ENPC-Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Univ Gustave Eiffel, LATTS, France

Urban Studies, 2025, vol. 62, issue 9, 1709-1730

Abstract: This introduction to the special issue critically explores the pervasive logic of solutionism in infrastructure-led urban development and planning – a logic marked not only by the strong belief in the transformative power of infrastructures but also by a tendency to reframe how urban problems are prioritised and governed. Although infrastructures are increasingly positioned as key tools for urban decarbonisation, circularity, resilience or smartness, this introduction critically questions dominant solutionist approaches to complex urban problems. Drawing on recent urban scholarship, it explores infrastructures as ongoing, relational, and contested sociotechnical processes, rethinking transformative urban change as a situated, incremental, and ambiguous process shaped by local politics, materiality, and everyday repair and patching. Contributions to this issue highlight how infrastructural initiatives, even when partial or unrealised, can challenge dominant interests and practices and open space for alternative urban futures. Rather than repudiating infrastructural solutions, therefore, we suggest that the special issue foregrounds infrastructures’ contested potential to enable progressive, transformative change. We pull out four transversal themes from the papers, around rethinking governance, repoliticising infrastructure development, embracing incremental and context-sensitive approaches and expanding conceptions of justice. In doing so, we call for approaches to infrastructural transformation that remain open to uncertainty, friction and possibility.

Keywords: normativity; sociotechnical approaches; solutionism; transformative urban change; urban infrastructure; 规范性; 社会技术方法; 解决方案主义; å ˜é ©æ€§åŸŽå¸‚å ˜åŒ–; 城市基础设施 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:62:y:2025:i:9:p:1709-1730

DOI: 10.1177/00420980251339430

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