Urban Infrastructure: Historical and Social Dimensions of an Interconnected World reframes infrastructure history beyond public works, tracing how roads, food distribution networks, heating regimes, and electromagnetic systems actively constitute — and are contested by — urban social life.
About This Book
This volume brings historians, humanists, and social scientists into conversation around a shared provocation: that infrastructure is never merely technical. Drawing on history, anthropology, science and technology studies, geography, and resilience research, the essays collected here trace the social effects of the systems cities depend on — from waterworks and highways to the largely invisible regimes of thermal comfort and electromagnetic distribution. The result is a methodologically diverse account of how urban infrastructure shapes everyday life, and how residents, in turn, fight to reshape it. Essential reading for anyone working at the intersection of urban history, planning theory, and the social dimensions of built environment research.
Key Features
- 300 pages of interdisciplinary essays spanning history, anthropology, geography, and science and technology studies
- Edited by Joseph Heathcott and Jonathan M. Soffer, with contributions from Rae Zimmerman
- Published by University of Pittsburgh Press
What You'll Discover
- Why limiting infrastructure history to public works misrepresents the full range of systems — public and private — that sustain urban life
- How nontraditional infrastructures such as heating and cooling regimes, food processing, and electromagnetic networks carry profound social consequences
- The tension between infrastructure's material grounding and its social life — the ways systems shape communities and communities push back
- New methodological frameworks for studying urban infrastructure that cut across disciplinary boundaries in history, the social sciences, and the humanities
About the Author
Joseph Heathcott is a scholar working at the intersection of urban history and cultural geography, with a focus on cities, infrastructure, and social change. He co-edited this volume alongside Jonathan M. Soffer. Further contributor details are available upon request.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 300
- Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.54 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780822946380
- Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Urban historians, planning theorists, researchers in science and technology studies, and design academics with an interest in the social and political dimensions of built infrastructure.