Public perceptions of networked infrastructure

Abstract

Infrastructure is crucial to the functioning of society and the economy. Yet, to avoid precipitating environmental breakdown, it must undergo transformation. We argue that citizens who rely on infrastructure's services should have a say in how transformation is managed. However, the complex nature of infrastructure means that public dialogue is difficult and rarely done well. Infrastructure has several characteristics, which make elicitation of perceptions challenging: it is connective, relational, obdurate, collective and subject to fragmented governance. We held a series of deliberative workshops in a city in the UK, to examine how public perceptions of infrastructure are shaped by these characteristics. We found that using infrastructure's characteristics as a framework for deliberation built participants' capabilities to articulate perceptions of infrastructure. We argue that using these characteristics also placed more emphasis on the socio-materiality of infrastructure and can address the disconnect between scales of participation and scales of decision making. This offers an alternative way to debate the desirable attributes of infrastructure, which we argue is more productive and inclusive.

Rhine low water crisis: From individual adaptation possibilities to strategical pathways

“…Future research should enlarge the perimeter of the involved actors. Even if solutions can emerge and be negotiated by stakeholders, they have to be submitted to the civil society and confronted to the non-human entities (Roelich and Litman-Roventa, 2020). As they are not incorporated in the discussion circles, both could resist.…”

A personas-based approach to deliberating local decarbonisation scenarios: Findings and methodological insights

“…By using maps, photographs and place-specific scenarios, we sought to provide a range of interpretive resources to help participants situate themselves in relation to infrastructure change while maintaining a firm grounding in local context [7,51,59]. Working with those whose daily lives may be directly affected by place-based energy systems change, our approach allowed us to explore the responses of local people, both as citizens with broader ideas and beliefs about what kinds of socio-technical futures might be socially and ethically desirable, and as emotionally and relationally situated subjects whose wellbeing may be bound up in the local infrastructure and environment [26,28].…”

“…In cases where the long-term impacts of socio-technical change are unclear, it is often argued a more deliberative approach is needed to highlight the values and ethical orientations at stake in decisions about the future [34,35]. Not only do such qualitative methods offer greater flexibility for citizens to frame discussions and proposals in their own terms, they also tend to be better attuned to the experiences, relationships and cultural discourses that give meaning to changes which can often appear unfamiliar, technical, and removed from the knowledge and experiences of affected communities [28,36]. A range of qualitative methods have been used…”

“…Thus, there is a need to attend carefully to the specific and situated social relations embedded in communities when seeking to understand their significance for just and sustainable energy transitions [27]. While categories such as fairness, vulnerability, and energy justice provide a useful language for deliberating the relational implications of energy systems change, if we are to understand what is at stake for communities facing such transitions, some means are required to make visible the contextualised relationships through which its production and use affects our lives [6,28].…”

Identity, place narrative and biophilic urban development: Connecting the past, present and future for sustainable liveable cities

“…Focus groups rely on participants discussing and gaining understanding of certain topics by drawing mainly on their own individual knowledge, beliefs and experiences. Deliberative workshops are often used to understand public perceptions of complex, technical or emerging areas of science, technology and policy (Roelich and Litman-Roventa, 2020); areas where existing public knowledge may be limited. For this reason, steps are usually taken to provide participants with balanced information about the topic of deliberation to enable their discussions to not only be informed by their own personal knowledge, but to also be technically informed (Pidgeon, 2021;Thomas et al, 2022).…”