Light infrastructures and intimate publics in the vertical city

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how the uneven distribution of light and darkness in the vertical city conditions residents’ capacities to form meaningful attachments to the places in which they dwell. Drawing on ethnographic material collected on a recent high-rise development in London, the paper explores how residentsilluminate their homes in improvisatory engagement with the basic infrastructures that support their domestic lives and with the wider urban context. Four biographic vignettes reveal how people alter, adapt to or overturn the inadequacies of domestic infrastructures to carve out intimate spaces of inhabitation. The paper advances the idea of “light infrastructure” as a conceptual proposition for attending to the affective, esthetic and performative compositions of infrastructures in the night, and as an analytical proposition for developing a more hopeful and inclusive outlook on the ways people come to dwell, inhabit and feel at home in the vertical city at night.

KEYWORDS:

• Night
• lighting
• domesticity
• publicness
• social infrastructure
• high-rise
• verticality

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the research participants for their generosity and kindness. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the ‘Social Infrastructures’ session organised by Alan Latham and Jack Leyton at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in Washington, DC in 2019. I would like to thank Alan and Jack for their editorial advice and support and the anonymous reviewers for very helpful and constructive feedback. A special thanks goes to the fabulous Kerry Holden for providing indispensable sparring sessions in Write Club. All errors remain my own.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

no conflicts of interest are identified

Notes

1. While the unit calculation clearly demonstrates that the scheme only offers 31.8% “affordable housing”, the calculation of the habitable rooms split reveals that the scheme meets the council’s minimum target at 35% – “affordable homes” have more rooms to accommodate an assumed greater relative proportion of families.

Additional information

Funding

Leverhulme Trust - ECF-2017-389