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Working with Infrastructural Communities: A Material Participation Approach to Urban Retrofit
University College London, UK.
University College London, UK.
University College London, UK.
RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Digital Systems.
2021 (English)In: Science, Technology and Human Values, ISSN 0162-2439, E-ISSN 1552-8251, Vol. 46, no 2, p. 320-345Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Retrofit is a rising area of concern for Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars of infrastructure. This paper sits at the junction between applied and theoretical approaches by using STS to support interventions in urban infrastructure systems and expand STS critique of retrofit. It discusses findings from a multidisciplinary project piloting retrofit possibilities to positively impact the way water, energy, and food resources were consumed in a London housing estate. Through qualitative research, we found that residents were making social and material interventions in infrastructure systems to manage the way resources were consumed at home, driven by a commonly held motivation to avoid wastefulness. We then mapped the social and material factors that helped or hindered these individual ambitions and used them to inform our codesign process. We found it helpful to think of the residents as an infrastructural community; a group of residents that share a material connection that can help mobilize collective action on shared consumption. We suggest this concept is useful for interventions and critiques of infrastructure retrofit, particularly in cities in the Global North where retrofit programs aim to rescale national systems to neighborhood levels. The concept highlights the possibilities for participation that emerge from bottom-up retrofit. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
SAGE Publications Inc. , 2021. Vol. 46, no 2, p. 320-345
Keywords [en]
consumption, infrastructure, material participation, retrofit, STS, sustainable design, urban sustainability, water–energy–food nexus
National Category
Natural Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-44795DOI: 10.1177/0162243920916235Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85083361636OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-44795DiVA, id: diva2:1436633
Note

Funding details: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, EPSRC, EP/N005902/1; Funding text 1: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Grant Number EP/N005902/1).

Available from: 2020-06-08 Created: 2020-06-08 Last updated: 2021-03-26Bibliographically approved

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