What’s missing from this picture? Using visual materials in infrastructure studies

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Notes

1. Two influential volumes – Manuel Castells’ The Rise of the Network Society and Graham and Marvin’s Splintering Urbanism – are symptomatic of this larger methodological trend. Castells, for example, used hand-drawn renderings by Ricardo Bofill as visual evidence for locating the Barcelona airport within a ‘space of flows’ designed for and inhabited by global managerial elites. In a similar vein, Graham and Marvin relied on ads clipped from in-flight magazines in order to illustrate the socio-spatial exclusivity engendered by long-distance infrastructure networks. See Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 420; and Graham and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism, 366–8. See also Kasarda, The Rise of the Aerotropolis; Thackara, In the Bubble; and Tiry, ‘Mégastructures urbaines.’

2. Appleyard, Lynch, and Myer, The View from the Road; Chombart de Lauwe, Paris et l’agglomération parisienne; Friedman, It Is Your Town: Know How to Protect It; Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.

3. See Skinner, ‘Trajects [sic] pendant un an d’une jeune fille du XVIe arrondissement’ and Sonnet, ‘Cartographie.’

4. See Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.

5. See Theodore, ‘“The View from the Road.”’

6. Ascher, The Works; Gutierrez and Portefaix, Rural Masses; Houben and Calabrese, Mobility.