Getting to work on time: the temporalities of urban infrastructure

This chapter examines the relationship between infrastructure, cities, and the nature and meaning of time. More than an abstract universal standard, time is socially constructed, relational, and experienced differently by diverse social groups - often in partial and conflicting ways. In exploring the temporalities of: (1) infrastructural fixes; (2) infrastructural imaginaries; and (3) heterodox infrastructural lives, the chapter critically assesses the multifaceted roles that time plays in structuring the development and operation of cities, and in turn how urban infrastructure establishes the parameters of specific temporal urban landscapes. Unpacking the nature of infrastructure time results in a more nuanced understanding of the production, governance, and lived experience of urban space and society. This concluding chapter therefore demonstrates the profound importance of thinking across a multiplicity of infrastructural times for urban inhabitants and decision-makers and outlines a powerful analytical perspective to research urban infrastructural politics and practice in new and generative ways.