Researching infrastructures and cities: origins, debates, openings

In this introduction to a Handbook on infrastructures and cities, the authors first put forward a re-articulation of the current infrastructural moment with the diverse genealogies of (urban) infrastructure studies over the last half-century and with the conceptualisation of infrastructures as social phenomena, processes or relations. They then offer an account of the current intellectual landscape in the field, highlighting four broad themes that correspond to the four parts of the book: (1) value(s) and valuation of infrastructures; (2) the many faces of contemporary infrastructuration; (3) infrastructural violence on spaces, societies and bodies; and (4) the infrastructurocene and its discontents. The chapter closes with a brief evocation of some ‘lessons’ of ongoing conversations for future research, as well as some ‘speculations’ on how infrastructure studies can best come to grips with infrastructural futures under the combined influence of climate and other global environmental changes and of pervasive digitalisation.