Where are low-carbon places made? Conceptualising and studying infrastructure junctions and the power geometries of low-carbon place-making

Abstract

ABSTRACT The making of low-carbon places is crucial for achieving decarbonisation, but where are such places made? In extending and combining existing research and ideas, the authors take electricity networks as their starting point to study what they term three ‘infrastructure junctions’, which are places where various practices and processes, with material, spatial, and temporal features, collide and combine in ways that shape the power geometries of low-carbon place-making. The authors find that the junctions reveal the conflictual and consensual dimensions of low-carbon transitions and how these features shape and are shaped by the ordering and management of networked hardware. Some features are shared, such as an overarching faith in large-scale provision and unabated demand, whereas others are more unique and rooted in specific contextual realities. Such insights support attempts to assess, steer, and accelerate low-carbon place-making as a relational process that is manifest and mediated through infrastructure. The authors conclude that infrastructure junctions offer ripe grounds to examine where, how, when, and for whom low-carbon places are in the making.