Metropolitan scale – Expanding toolsets for urban infrastructure

Although infrastructure shapes every urban space, there remain large gaps in theoretical terms. The open issues include interfaces, form, and our understanding. And digitalization raises additional issues related to urban infrastructure – infrastructure today ex- tends beyond what we see; it encompasses so much more than bridges and traffic lights. And it also entails things that hardly come to mind – in a sense, even global warming is now a part of our infrastructure.

The workshop led by Jesse LeCavalier and Jason Young explored through intense discussions the diversity of urban infrastructure, its meaning, and the available options for providing the “right infrastructure.” “During the sessions we moved from issues of visibility and invisibility to issues of mobility and the temporary and on to the subject of collectivity,” reported Jason Young.

To kick off the workshop, some highly provocative and useful examples of intangible types of infrastructure were presented. The participants found that behavioral patterns can also be seen as a sort of infrastructure. “You usually don’t think about these things as infrastructure,” says Young, “but when this soft infrastructure occurs in conjunction with the physical and material world, the combination can have very definite effects. And sometimes you also have to pay attention to the seemingly unimportant parts of a system if you want to understand the enormous potential of that system.”

Today we are seeing a broad shift toward the intangible. “Maybe time has replaced space in the logistical sense,” says Young. “If you consider the city and urbanism as micro-processes, that changes your notions of space and the physical environment.”

The topic of collectivity raised a great many questions. What about society, people’s daily lives? What forms of involvement and participation are there? One must see infrastructure as a form of collective intelligence, says Young. “As architects and designers, we tend to offer permanent solutions for non-permanent problems,” he quoted a speaker from the metropolitan scale workshop. “Maybe we need to be more aware of the limits of this approach. Conditions like these here in Detroit change – and it would be wrong to think that a solution that makes sense today will automatically make sense in the future, which is so difficult to foresee.”

Metropolitan scale mobile workshop

This mobile workshop, led by Dan Kinkhead and Tom Sherry, investigated the adaptation, reuse, and repositioning of infrastructure.

The first stop was Michigan Central Station. This gigantic edifice, built between 1910 and 1913, is a registered historic landmark – and has been vacant since the mid-1980s. It’s still unclear how it will be used in the future. The group moved on to the “Ponyride.” Here, artists, entrepreneurs, and organizations that support social development of the city have moved into the disused industrial building where they find plenty of space for development. These engaged people exchange their knowledge, their resources, and particularly their ideas among one another – and in doing so help Detroit overcome its crisis.

The group then embarked on a boat tour. This gave them entirely new perspectives on the fallen and gradually recovering city. The ferry departed from the Port of Detroit, which is growing increasingly important, passed West Riverfront Park – a lively area of West Riverfront, which is slated for renewal in the next few years – and historic Fort Wayne, and finally reached Belle Isle, Detroit’s most majestic example of urban civic space.

The workshop finished with a tour of the East Side. Here the group saw numerous examples of efforts being taken to make Detroit fit for the future once again: infrastructures being adapted and neighborhoods stabilized by means of multiple small interventions.

read Foundations 19 online (flip-book)