[STS-Africa] FW: Call for Papers "Infrastructures as urban solutions? Critical perspectives on transformative socio-technical change"

Tue May 11 19:06:37 SAST 2021

*** Apologies for cross-postings***
Call for papers  
Infrastructures as urban solutions? Critical perspectives on transformative
socio-technical change  
20-24 September 2021 | International Roundtable Workshop | Limburg,
Netherlands | Utrecht University & Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et
Sociétés (LATTS)    
Recently adopted global sustainability agendas such as the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) and the New Urban Agenda (NUA) consider cities and
urban regions as key sites and vantage points of societal transformations to
more sustainable, low-carbon and resilient futures. Furthermore, government
strategies for transformative urban change often have a strong
infrastructural dimension, with policies targeting energy supply, water
management, transportation systems and the development of smart
infrastructure within and across all policy domains. Urban infrastructures
thus become a powerful lens to critically explore the dynamic, relational
and situated processes and controversies of urban change and to reveal the
profound complexity behind infrastructure-based urban solutions.
Indeed, increasingly interdependent infrastructure systems mediate and
constitute crucial pathways toward urban futures which go far beyond
technical innovation, and involve questions of finance and investment,
scales of governance, issues of organization and ownership, resource flows,
user practices, and socio-spatial solidarities. They are laced with
incumbent practices of public administration, production, consumption, and
land use, while embedded in these systems are political interests and
epistemic cultures. But how are infrastructures actually being changed in
practice and how can we critically analyse and advance our understanding of
infrastructural futures and transformative approaches that address urban
sustainability challenges? Our aim with this workshop is to broaden our
knowledge on systemic transformations and to bring into conversation
empirical work in infrastructure, urban and transitions studies to
critically reflect on emerging modes of governing and reshaping urban
transformations through infrastructures.
Urban infrastructure scholarship has, for a long time, primarily interpreted
urban transformations as being framed by infrastructural inertia and path
dependencies. Over the last decade, however, the malleability of
infrastructures and cities and the urban dynamics of socio-technical change
have attracted increasing attraction. More attention has been paid to how
actors trigger significant urban changes by challenging dominant technical
designs, as well as established socio-technical orders of knowing, using,
operating and governing urban infrastructures. While much of the debate has
focused on ways to promote socio-technical transitions, understood as
systemic regime shifts, recent scholarship in Science and Technology
Studies (STS) has drawn attention to infrastructural change that results
from many slow, gradual changes instead of from extensively planned system
shifts. Rather than focusing on path dependencies or radical transitions
from one system to another, scholars have thus argued for more focus on
continuous and emergent infrastructural change and the incremental layering
of old and new socio-technical components of infrastructures over longer
periods, during which core parts of incumbent systems persist.
Since infrastructure choices have far-reaching impact on urban futures, they
impose correspondingly high requirements in terms of transformative
knowledge on how to introduce change and[GM] mcc address vested interests,
how to anticipate future risks and opportunities, and how to envision and
enact pragmatic pathways to more desirable urban futures. Our explicit aim
in this workshop is thus to critically identify and explore potential urban
infrastructural solutions in the light of available accounts and analyses
of important sustainability challenges. By foregrounding socio-technical
pathways that are claimed to enhance urban sustainability as an entry point,
we seek to reflect urgency in the need for change, and to investigate the
extent to which wider lessons for research and practice can be drawn from
concrete ongoing examples of potentially transformative approaches to urban
infrastructures.
Contributions may focus on, but are not limited to: 
*   Construction of infrastructural and urban futures: how are (un)desirable
futures being constructed, e.g. through which socio-technical imaginaries or
prospective approaches such as foresight, modelling, contingency planning,
future-proofing or future-orientation and by which specific
constellations of actors? How are the gaps between such desired futures and
the anticipated, projected or observed change processes being discussed and
addressed? Which rationales and epistemologies of urban infrastructural
futures are at play in nexus, design, resilience, circularity or transitions
thinking?
*   Progressive approaches and practices of transforming infrastructures and
cities: how can approaches such as experimentation, incrementalism and/or
strategic governance approaches, new methods in assessing and co-designing
transformations, innovative finance mechanisms, user-driven innovations
contribute to urban change? How could such approaches and practices overcome
or reshape path dependencies in order to accelerate/consolidate urban and
infrastructural change?
*   Governance capacity and dilemmas, styles and practices: how can
governance capacity be increased or improved to accelerate urban change?
Which pitfalls and dilemmas of sector governance need to be taken into
account and how can siloed governance arrangements be addressed in
different contexts? How can the coordination challenges of multi-sectoral
interventions be addressed?
*   Politics of infrastructure transformations: how do infrastructure
networks and artefacts come to matter politically in controversies on
urban development? What political rationales are implicit in unfolding urban
transformations and how might they be mobilised practically? How do social
movements, civil society or innovative entrepreneurs carve out spaces for
progressive politics in infrastructural transformations? 
We particularly invite empirical papers with conceptual, methodological and
critical ambitions. We welcome case studies focusing on urban contexts in
the global North or South, as well as studies of urban and infrastructural
transformations in historical and contemporary contexts. We also invite
critical reflection on scholarly practice, including shifting identities and
roles of academic researchers as facilitators of sustainability transitions,
and the search for impact through these engagements and modes of knowledge
production.
This international roundtable workshop will bring together scholars from
different disciplines to reflect together on urban infrastructure
transformations during 3.5 days, from 20 to 24 September 2021, in the 16th
century country estate  <https://www.oostwegelcollection.nl/en/winselerhof/>
Winselerhof in the Southern Netherlands (near Maastricht and Aachen). The
submitted papers will be distributed in advance to be discussed at the
conference in a roundtable format with commentators and open floor debates
(approx. 40 minutes per paper). Participants will not present their
individual papers. Instead, the papers will be summarized and commented by a
discussant in each session in order to allow for creative discussion.
Participants are expected to have read all the papers prior to the workshop.
The roundtable workshop will result in the publication of a selection of
papers in an edited volume or a themed issue of an international
peer-reviewed journal.
Please send us a 300-word paper proposal by 6 June 2021 for initial feedback
and confirmation of attendance by mid-June 2021. The deadline for submission
of full draft papers is 10 September 2021. Accommodation will be provided
for all participants and the conference language will be English. In
individual cases, we are able to offer travel stipends to early-career
scholars.
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us: 
 <mailto:j.monstadt at uu.nl> Jochen Monstadt (Utrecht University)
 <mailto:coutard at enpc.fr> Olivier Coutard (LATTS, Université Gustave Eiffel)
 <mailto:jonathan.rutherford at enpc.fr> Jonathan Rutherford (LATTS, Université
Gustave Eiffel)

Prof. Dr. Jochen Monstadt | Professor of Governance of Urban Transitions |
Research Hub Transforming Infrastructures for Sustainable Cities | Dept.
Human Geography & Spatial Planning | Utrecht University | Princetonlaan 8a |
Room 6.46 | 3584 CB Utrecht | Netherlands | T.  <tel:+31%2030%20253%203538>
+31 30 253-3538 |  <mailto:j.monstadt at uu.nl> e-Mail |
<https://www.uu.nl/staff/JMonstadt> Website |
<https://www.uu.nl/staff/JMonstadt/Research%20output> Selected Publications

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