Infrastructures, practices and the materiality of daily life: revisiting urban metabolism

Olivier Coutard and Elizabeth Shove

Chapter 13 in Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities, 2024, pp 212-224 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter contextualises and discusses emerging research that focuses on the mutual constitution, reproduction and evolution of infrastructural environments, materials and energy flows, and daily practices in regions of the world in which variegated grid infrastructure systems are generally available to the resident population. It argues that the networked normality that defines these regions implies that infrastructures and related material arrangements underpin a range of everyday practices. This analytical perspective allows a novel understanding of metabolisation processes - i.e., the processes of transformation of energy, water and all sorts of materials into and as resources for social purposes - and of the associated metabolic flows involved in the conduct of variegated practices. It also offers new insights into the roles of infrastructure systems in these processes.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Environment; Geography; Sociology and Social Policy; Urban and Regional Studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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