Snow as Urban Infrastructure: Engineering, Extending, and Eliminating Winter

Résumé :

Snow is often perceived as a fleeting meteorological phenomenon, yet in urban environments, it functions as a highly engineered, managed, and contested material. This article explores the infrastructural dimensions of snow, analyzing how urban authorities and private companies actively produce, manage, and erase winter through diverse technological and political interventions. The article introduces a new atmospheric metabolism of snow, conceptualizing it as a managed urban material, akin to water and waste, that is collected, stored, melted, and repurposed in response to urban demands. Yet crucially, the article also demonstrates an extension of infrastructural control into the domain of air, temperature, and seasonal variability. It contrasts the extension of winter through artificial snow infrastructures with the erasure of winter via snowmelting technologies, revealing profound climate and energy contradictions. A series of cases illustrates how different cities navigate the challenges of snow as both a resource and a burden. Applying insights from urban political ecology, infrastructure studies, and climate engineering, this study argues that snow is no longer a passive seasonal condition. Instead, the article shows how snow is an active site of urban governance, energy use, and spatial inequality. Ultimately, the article questions whether the future of cities involves engineered winter for leisure and tourism while eliminating winter from everyday urban life, transforming snow from a shared climatic experience into a privileged, commodified atmosphere.