Infrastructure Environment

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

In this course, we explore how infrastructure interventions are used to manage and ‘improve’ the environment and livelihoods of people. The engineering solutions often promise a technical fix to complex social, economic and environmental issues. They often, however, come to materialize specific ideologies, power imbalances, and systematic ways of discrimination and exclusion. In this course, we take a critical perspective on large-scale engineering projects as socio-technical and environmental interventions. The case studies take us to different continents and different scales, from cities to cross-border regions. We learn about the history of infrastructure interventions in a variety of domains and geographies, and their impact on communities. We review contemporary infrastructure initiatives and plans in the face of climate change and urbanization, the projects’ implementation and possible future impact on communities and ecosystems, and how those are measured (e.g. environmental impact and sustainability assessments). We discuss infrastructure as a ‘promise’ for betterment, but also the racism, colonialism and violence embedded in many of those projects.