Libraries, laundrettes, and lidos. Pizzerias, plazas, and playgrounds. Sidewalks, swimming pools, and schools. These are just some of the kinds of spaces and facilities that contribute to the public life of cities. Drawing on the arguments of the sociologist Eric Klinenberg, this article develops the concept of “social infrastructure” as a way to research and value these kinds of spaces. Social infrastructure helps in recognising the public dimensions of often overlooked and undervalued spaces. It draws attention to the breadth, depth, and textures of sociality that can be afforded by different urban environments. In developing the concept of social infrastructure, this article pulls together four related strands of social scientific inquiry: work on infrastructure; publicness and public space; sociality and encounter; and the politics of provision. An infrastructural approach to the topic of public space presents geographers with some productive tools for understanding the public life of cities.
Cities need social infrastructure, places that support social connection in neighborhoods and across communities. In the face of austerity in many places, the provision of such infrastructures are under threat. To protect such infrastructures, it is important to have robust arguments for their provision, maintenance, and protection. Through a case study of a dispute about the appropriate use and provisioning of an everyday park located in London, UK, this article examines what social infrastructure is and why it matters. The dispute has brought to the surface a number of critical questions about how to fund and provide collective, public social life. It has also raised questions about what types of social and collective life should be valued. To examine the dispute a sixfold typology is developed to explore the different registers of sociality afforded by social infrastructure: co-presence, sociability and friendship, care and kinship, kinesthetic practices, and civic engagement.
Developing the concept of kinaesthetics, this article undertakes a critical re-description of amateur sports and fitness to explore the topographies, materials, innovation, and socialities that make up urban environments. Extending work on affect and urban materiality within geography and elsewhere, we argue that amateur sport and fitness animates many cities in ways that are frequently overlooked. The paper aims to 1) broaden understandings of amateur sport and fitness practices; 2) reframe perspectives on the kinds of environments cities are; 3) develop a prospective politics of provision involving the design and maintenance of a social infrastructure of amateur sport and fitness.
Cities are full of disputes about organizing public life. These disputes are important for deciding how spaces get used, and they are integral to how publics form and develop. In all sorts of ways they define the potentialities of urban public life. This article tells the story of the Southbank Centre's plans to redevelop their central London site, and Long Live Southbank's protest of these plans to save their skateable space. Through this detailed case study the article develops a distinctive conceptual apparatus for making sense of public disputes. Drawing links between Deweyan pragmatism and assemblage theory, the article explores how publics were drawn together as assemblages of humans and non‐humans with the capacity to act and argue. It follows the arguments that each side made—and the justifications underpinning them—to explore the different ideas of public‐ness that were at stake in the disagreement. This also helps highlight the space for cooperation that existed. The article emphasizes the part affect played in shaping the dispute; recognizing its role in public reasoning, and in how people get pulled into different publics. This is a story not only of disputation, but of how a corner of London expanded its public‐ness.
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