Bridging ‘infrastructural solutions’ and ‘infrastructures as solution’: Regional promises and urban pragmatism

Abstract

The potential of infrastructure ‘as a solution’ is currently at the forefront of American political consciousness. Historic levels of investment in infrastructure proffer seismic material, economic, and symbolic transformations at a near-continental scale. However, the present policy context for infrastructure planning in the US is confounded by a mosaic of decision-making authorities that hamper the development of cohesive approaches to sustainable and equitable development. This situation underscores the need to identify how infrastructural futures are assembled and scaled as simultaneously continuous and emergent, old and new, and marked by the diverse capacities of various stakeholders. This paper makes a case for ‘seeing like a region’ when examining transformative approaches to infrastructural change, as infrastructure systems regularly transcend the boundaries of urban space and hence become enmeshed in the goals of broader constituencies and interests. Through a case study of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, we question how infrastructural futures are understood and materialised by the region’s central planning stakeholders. Our analysis pays particular attention to the challenges faced by regional planning organisations when navigating the spatial–temporal frames of incremental and radical change. As the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission operates with limited staff capacity, high regulatory burdens, and short time horizons for budgeting processes, incremental changes to infrastructure often are the best hope for solving regional challenges of structural inequality and uneven access to resources. This demonstrates how the solutions proffered by infrastructural development are confounded by the dynamics that come into focus when evaluated from the regional scale. Yet we also identify possibilities for regional approaches that foster equitable urban futures within the spatial envelopes created by infrastructural systems and imaginaries that transition from reactive ‘infrastructural solutions’ to a proactive materialisation of ‘infrastructures as solutions’.