The Future of Metropolises: Time and Infrastructure
Nathalie Roseau
MétisPresses, 2022, 256 p. (Coll. vues Densemble)
A controversial subject, infrastructure is the entry point through which this book examines the imaginary and concrete production of urban space. The study of three cities—New York, Paris, and Hong Kong—provides an in-depth look at the relationship between cities and their infrastructure, which is built to last even though its functions are destined to evolve.
Nathalie Roseau offers a reinterpretation of the major urban artifacts that surround us, recounting the debates that accompanied their creation and the crises they still face today. She considers infrastructure from a situated and transnational perspective and, like an archaeologist, identifies the visible and invisible traces of its sedimentation. The stories of the New York parkway, Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle, the Parisian ring road, and Hong Kong's infrastructure reveal society's expectations for the future and clarify the power relations between authorities and representations, establishing the project as a chain of convergences and conflicts, decisions and reversals.
Reflecting on urban planning as knowledge and practice, this book questions the value of projected futures and proposes a change of perspective in the face of the transformations imposed on metropolises. Anchored in the history of cities, infrastructures engage in dialogue with the challenges of the present.