Inverse infrastructures: Coordination in self-organizing systems

Abstract

The paper argues that a new category of infrastructures is emerging, user-driven, self-organizing and with de-centralized control: inverse infrastructures (IIs). IIs are not well-understood. Moreover, they represent a paradigm shift in infrastructure development. Their bottom-up development shows tension with the current socio-institutional framework for infrastructures. Internationally infrastructure laws and policies are based on a top-down and centralized view of infrastructures. Regulation is based on a control paradigm that does not fit the characteristics of inverse infrastructures and has no ways to deal with them. Policy (re)design is needed in the face of inverse infrastructure emergence.