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Critical Perspectives on Suburban Infrastructures: Contemporary International Cases

Edited by Pierre Filion and Nina M. Pulver

© 2019

Most new urban growth takes place in the suburbs; consequently, infrastructures are in a constant state of playing catch-up, creating repeated infrastructure crises in these peripheries. However, the push to address the tensions stemming from this rapid growth also allow the suburbs to be a major source of urban innovation. Taking a critical social science perspective to identify political, economic, social, and environmental issues related to suburban infrastructures, this book highlights the similarities and differences between suburban infrastructure conditions encountered in the Global North and Global South.

Adopting an international approach grounded in case studies from three continents, this book discusses infrastructure issues within different suburban and societal contexts: low-density infrastructure-rich Global North suburban areas, rapidly developing Chinese suburbs, and the deeply socially stratified suburbs of poor Global South countries. Despite stark differences between types of suburbs, there are features common to all suburban areas irrespective of their location, and similarities in the infrastructure issues confronting these different categories of suburbs.

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Product Details

  • Series: Global Suburbanisms
  • World Rights
  • Page Count: 424 pages
  • Dimensions: 6.0in x 1.0in x 9.0in
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SKU# SP005486

  • PUBLISHED APR 2019
    From: $39.95
    ISBN 9781487523619
  • PUBLISHED APR 2019
    From: $95.00
    ISBN 9781487504953
  • PUBLISHED MAY 2019
    From: $39.95
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Quick Overview

The book takes a critical social science perspective to identify political, economic, social, and environmental issues related to suburban infrastructures. Cases highlight similarities and differences between suburban infrastructure conditions encountered in the Global North and Global South.

Critical Perspectives on Suburban Infrastructures: Contemporary International Cases

Edited by Pierre Filion and Nina M. Pulver

© 2019

Most new urban growth takes place in the suburbs; consequently, infrastructures are in a constant state of playing catch-up, creating repeated infrastructure crises in these peripheries. However, the push to address the tensions stemming from this rapid growth also allow the suburbs to be a major source of urban innovation. Taking a critical social science perspective to identify political, economic, social, and environmental issues related to suburban infrastructures, this book highlights the similarities and differences between suburban infrastructure conditions encountered in the Global North and Global South.

Adopting an international approach grounded in case studies from three continents, this book discusses infrastructure issues within different suburban and societal contexts: low-density infrastructure-rich Global North suburban areas, rapidly developing Chinese suburbs, and the deeply socially stratified suburbs of poor Global South countries. Despite stark differences between types of suburbs, there are features common to all suburban areas irrespective of their location, and similarities in the infrastructure issues confronting these different categories of suburbs.

Continue Reading Read Less

Product Details

  • Series: Global Suburbanisms
  • World Rights
  • Page Count: 424 pages
  • Dimensions: 6.0in x 1.0in x 9.0in

  • Reviews

    "While this book contributes to the nascent field of suburban studies, it does so from an explicit infrastructural perspective. Critical Perspectives on Suburban Infrastructures is a timely contribution. I am really impressed by the quality of the individual contributions but, most of all, by the editors’ success at presenting them in a coherent manner and engaging them in an integrated argument."


    Vanesa Castán Broto, The Urban Institute, University of Sheffield

    "Using cutting-edge scholarship and institutional, social, and environmental analyses, Critical Perspectives on Suburban Infrastructures reveals the complex and varied interactions between infrastructure, urban development, and suburban lifestyles."


    Theresa Enright, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto

    "This collection makes a significant and much-needed contribution to continuing debates on infrastructure and metropolitan dynamics."


    Nik Luka, Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture and School of Urban Planning, McGill University

  • Author Information

    Pierre Filion is Professor at the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo.


    Nina M.Pulver is a PhD candidate in Planning at the University of Waterloo.

  • Table of contents

    1. Introduction: The Scope and Scales of Suburban Infrastructure

    Section 1: Situating Suburban Infrastructures
    2. In What Sense Suburban Infrastructure?
    3. Rescaling the Suburban: New Directions in the Relationship Between Governance and Infrastructure
    4. Financial Infrastructures of Suburbanism: From Suburbanization to Value Extraction

    Section 2: Suburban Infrastuctures in Crisis
    5. Phases of Neoliberal Infrastructure: Dynamic Capitalist and Institutional Learning in the Neoliberal Experiment Test Zones of Post-Soviet Europe
    6. "Designed to Fail": Technopolitics of Disavowal in an Urbanizing Frontier of India
    7. Governance by Crises and Failing Infrastructure in Michigan: The 21st Century Republican Strategy
    8. Infrastructure Interludes: Socio-technical Disposition and Planning for Water and Wastewater Systems in the Stockholm Archipelago
    9. Suburban Constellations of Water Supply and Sanitation in Hanoi iii

    Section 3: Reshaping Suburban Infrastructures
    10. The "In-Between Territories" of Suburban Infrastructure Politics
    11. Recentralization and Green Infrastructures: Seeking Compatibility between Alternatives to North American Suburban Development
    12. ‘Green Infrastructure’: The Greater Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt as Urban Boundary?
    13. Building on Quick Sand: Infrastructural Megaprojects in China
    14. Retrofitting Obsolete Suburbs – Networks, Fixes and Divisions
    15. Sustainability as an Urban Way of Living: The Uneven Outcomes of "Sustainable Mobility Infrastructure" Planning

    Conclusion: Global Suburban Infrastructure Trajectories