ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief introduction to different trends and perspectives on infrastructure to emphasise the complexity of interactions between social, political, economic, environmental, and technical elements in these important urban systems. It begins by pointing out the invisibility of most effective infrastructures, and their role as background to everyday life in cities. Infrastructure investment came to be seen as a key economic stimulus measure, but often in partnership with private investors and providers rather than through purely public ownership and operation. Decentralisation of infrastructure, and associated political and social institutions, has become a common theme in much environmental literature, activism, and design. Philosopher Langdon Winner has pointed out that decentralised technology may also imply decentralisation of social, economic and political organisation, though this could be to capitalist, socialist or anarchist ends. The chapter ends with some critical feminist perspectives on infrastructure and cities.
