Hot Spots/Cold Spots: Infrastructural Politics in the Urban Age

Tracing the political stakes of contemporary global urbanization requires a shift in focus from cities to infrastructure. Focusing on the dynamics of infrastructural urbanism gives a clearer understanding of the ontology and politics of the global urban than analyses focused on the city (for example, Magnusson 2011). This reorientation reveals a political dynamic of (dis)connection at the heart of global urbanization. This dynamic is exemplified by the hot and cold spots of global urbanization where infrastructural connectivity is at stake. Brenner and Schmid (2014:744) note that current understandings of the “urban age” conceptualize “urbanization primarily or exclusively with reference to the concentration of population within cities or urban settlements.” This is perhaps best exemplified by those who see the politics of the global urban in terms of the relocation of the locus of political authority from the state to the city (for example, Sassen 2010). Such accounts of the politics of the urban age are often focused on the growth of centers of population density and the questions of governance raised by the attendant intensification of flows of money, people, and goods. However, infrastructures de-center the city, leading to polycentric urban agglomerations. A focus on infrastructures thus leads us to think about the urban beyond the constraints of the city.