Elsevier

Cities

Volume 27, Issue 2, April 2010, Pages 87-95
Cities

Reconnecting the disconnected: The politics of infrastructure in the in-between city

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2009.10.002Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper explores the politics of infrastructure in the evolving socio-spatial landscape of what we call the “in-between city,” that part of the urban region that is perceived as not quite traditional city and not quite traditional suburb (Sieverts, 2003). We posit that this new urban landscape which surrounds urban regions in many parts of the world is the remarkable new urban morphology where a large part of metropolitan populations live, work and play. While much attention has been on the winning economic clusters of the world economy and the devastated industrial structures of the loser regions, little light has been shed on the urban zones in-between. This paper deals specifically with these zones from the perspective of accessibility issues around urban infrastructures, in particular transportation. It is argued that only a combined understanding of scaled and topological approaches allow us to capture the complexities of the politics of urban infrastructures in the in-between city. Conceptually, we outline the definitive characteristics of this new landscape with a particular view towards urban Canada. Applying these concepts to a North American city, Toronto, Canada, we look specifically at the 85 sq km around York University, an area that straddles the line between the traditional suburb and the inner city.

Section snippets

A politics of infrastructure

When we speak of a “politics of infrastructure”, we refer to a growing awareness that “governing and experiencing the fabric of the city” (McFarlane and Rutherford, 2008, p. 363) involves political acts that produce and reproduce the infrastructures of urban regions. We therefore follow McFarlane and Rutherford’s advice to open up “the ‘black box’ of urban infrastructure to explore the ways in which infrastructures, cities and nation states are produced and transformed together” (McFarlane and

The changing pattern of (sub)urbanization

The newest – 2006 – census figures in Canada reveal that 70 percent of the population live in metropolitan areas.1 However, within those urban areas they increasingly live outside of urban cores in a new kind of urban landscape. Interestingly, more Canadians also work in the suburban parts of metropolitan areas. The number of people working in central municipalities increased by 5.9% from 2001 to 2006 whereas the

Out of scale: the topology of the in-between city

Based on the recent spatial developments in Europe, German planner Tom Sieverts has proposed the term Zwischenstadt or “in-between city” (Sieverts, 2003). This concept is meant to grasp the novel urban form that has emerged beyond the traditional, more compact, uni-centred European city. Sieverts notes that this new urban form is now pervasive and home as well as workplace to a growing percentage of Europeans. Similarly, Dutch scholars Hajer and Reijndorp have pointed to the fact that we now

Infrastructures in-between

One of the most important areas of concern in the in-between city is the provision of infrastructure, its use and accessibility to it. The place-making effects of centralized rail-based transportation infrastructure in the industrial city are well-known: the topology of radial rail networks created the centred urban structures typical of many European and North American cities. During the 20th century, most urban regions experienced metropolitanization of industrial, commercial and residential

Metropolitan infrastructures: the political challenge

The renewal and expansion as well as the reform of governance of infrastructures are now top agenda items for most governments and elite groups. One of the responses to the world financial crisis of autumn, 2008 put forward at meetings of the G20 countries is that national governments should spend heavily on infrastructure (Jackson, 2008). The new American Obama Administration has pledged billions of dollars in infrastructure funding, while the first order of business of a fledgling, yet

Politics of change or war of attrition?

In our study area, the most powerful collective political actor is the provincial government. It has used its constitutional authority to radically upscale regional thinking to include a large portion of central Ontario now referred to as the Greater Golden Horseshoe, a region of some 8 million people. This upscaling has been supported by two key pieces of provincial legislation – a Greenbelt Act and a growth management plan called Places to Grow. As noted above, the province of Ontario is,

Conclusion

How can renewal come to the politics of infrastructure in the in-between city? The ideology of neo-liberal governance seemed so deeply ingrained that, in spite of ever-increasing tallies of infrastructure maintenance shortfalls and the reality of bridges and light standards collapsing onto freeways, the likelihood of governments in Canada (or Ontario or Greater Toronto) generating and freeing up the billions of dollars necessary for basic infrastructure maintenance appeared remote. The

Acknowledgements

Research for this paper has been funded by a grant under the direction of Roger Keil, Patricia Wood and Douglas Young. The project is called “In-between Infrastructure: Urban Connectivity in an Age of Vulnerability”. It was sponsored under the Peer Reviewed Research Studies (PRRS) program of Infrastructure Canada. Some financial support was also provided by Toronto Community Housing Company, one of the community partners to the project.

We thank Rob Fiedler for producing the maps for this

References (52)

  • Ash Amin

    Regions unbound towards a new politics of place

    Geografiska Annaler Series B Human Geography

    (2004)
  • E R A Architects et al.

    Mayor’s Tower Renewal: Opportunities Book (Prepared for the City of Toronto)

    (2008)
  • John Barber

    Parking-lots paved with chutzpah

    Globe & Mail

    (2009)
  • Homi K Bhabha

    The Location of Culture

    (1994)
  • Birchall, Diana and Robinson, Paul (2008) City of Vaughan Planning. Vaughan, Ontario (March...
  • Julie-Anne Boudreau et al.

    New State Spaces in Canada: Metropolitanization in Montreal and Toronto Compared

    Urban Geography

    (2007)
  • Branigan, Tania (2009a) Buy the Flat and We’ll Throw in the Job to Pay for It, The Guardian, Tuesday, February 3, 2009....
  • Branigan, Tania (2009b) Downturn in China leaves 26 Million Out of Work, The Guardian, Monday, February 2, 2009....
  • Neil Brenner

    New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood

    (2004)
  • Burns, Gary and Brown, Jim (2006) The Radiant City. Burns Film Ltd. in co-production with The National Film Board of...
  • Noel Cass et al.

    Social exclusion, mobility and access

    The Sociological Review

    (2005)
  • Stephen Dale

    Lost in the Suburbs: A Political Travelogue

    (1999)
  • Mike Davis

    Planet of Slums

    (2006)
  • Steven Erie

    Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development

    (2004)
  • Joel. Garreau

    Edge City: Life on the New Frontier

    (1991)
  • GlobeScan (2007) Megacity Challenges – A stakeholder Perspective – A Research Project Conducted by GlobeScan and MRC...
  • Kanishka Goonewardena et al.

    Creole city: culture, capital, and class in Toronto

  • Stephen Graham et al.

    Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities, and the Urban Condition

    (2001)
  • Gray, Jeff (2008a) $55-billion Toronto transit plan sets stage for political battle. The Globe & Mail, September 3....
  • Gray, Jeff (2008b) Miller backs city plan over Metrolinx draft. The Globe & Mail, September 4...
  • Gregory Elyo Guldin

    What’s a peasant to do? Village becoming town in Southern China

    (2001)
  • Marlene Habib

    Schulich lays cornerstone for new property degree

    The Globe & Mail

    (2008)
  • Maarten Hajer et al.

    In Search of New Public Domain

    (2001)
  • David Harvey

    Space as a keyword

  • Dale Jackson

    An unsexy sector looks good as world gets set to spend

    The Globe & Mail

    (2008)
  • Cited by (95)

    • Demand responsive transport: New insights from peri-urban experiences

      2023, Travel Behaviour and Society
      Citation Excerpt :

      Yet the historical heritages coupled with the globalization development usually make many neighborhoods in the PUA disconnected by public transport (PT) and thus car dependency (Young and Keil, 2010). It is not uncommon that in certain peri-urban neighborhoods PT services are poor (Young and Keil, 2010) or non-existent even in such an affluent country as Switzerland. Consequently, PT dependent user groups, including those on low incomes, the young and the elderly people face the problem of first-/last-mile connections (Thao et al., 2021).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text