Maynooth University Department of Geography invites you to attend a seminar presented by Dr Alan Wiig, University of Massachusetts Boston.
Turbulent presents, precarious futures: Urbanization and the deployment of global infrastructure
Understandings of global infrastructure within and between cities have primarily focused on two forms: the node and the corridor. Scholarship detailing the extensive growth of these infrastructure focus on standardisation to account for the underlying networks configuring urbanisation. However, standardisation fails to account for the dynamic, contested, and geographically uneven process of infrastructure deployment. Four generative concepts focus analysis on the stages of deployment: speculation, delineating, alignment and pivoting. After discussing China’s Belt and Road Initiative as the underlying geo-economic force driving the transformation of these systems, I will present an illustrative case of the London’s Royal Docks as emblematic of urbanisation through global infrastructure. Concluding, I will discuss for a research agenda that places global infrastructure at the centre of how we understand urban transformation amid contemporary political-economic turbulence, one that emphasises the contingent ways deployment proceeds.
Seminar: Alan Wiig 18th Oct 2018
Details of our upcoming seminars are available here: Geography Seminar Series 2018-2019 v2