Infrastructure often depicts three dimensions:
1. facilitating communication, travel, and the transportation of goods
2. a biopolitical ambition to improve the health and welfare of the population
3. the visible symbol of a visionary future
Sometimes, the infrastructure projects themselves are constructed as tourist
destinations. The infrastructural aspects (pedagogical and performance roles) of
big dams are clearly displayed by the planning that guide tourists within the dam
site, which parts they should be allowed to see, the number of visitors, the size of the
parking lot, etc. In India, family picnics are regularly organised at large dam sites,
specially designed with beautiful landscaping, flowers, gardens, lawns, and hightech fountains (water oblige!) such that people can feel some active participation in
the construction of the nation or country. Most “modern” projects in India, falling
under the infrastructure umbrella - airports, dams, power plants, and high-tech
research institutes - are enclosed within well flowered green lawns, although the
facilities, themselves, might be out of bounds to visitors. These sites are supposed to
show modern aesthetics, combining function, order and beauty, by representing a
vision of the future, while the grounds themselves explain to the admitted visitors
how to inhabit such a future. If people organise picnics to those sites, it implies that
there is a demand (or market) for such aspects of infrastructure.
Villagers to a dairy are astonished that the milk is never touched by hand, but
instead goes through a series of machines to exit in cartons at the other end. The
“visibility” of infrastructure here, does not teach hygiene to the villagers but, is rather
about the biopolitical project of producing citizens who can dream of inhabiting a
modern future.
In some cities, crossing the streets is a nightmare, arising from (1) the numerous
cars crowding the narrow roads, and, (2) the roads always being dug up for one
infrastructure project or another.
Pipes carrying water, sewage, and natural gas are being laid everywhere, as well
as pipes enclosing electric wires, high-speed Internet cables, and telephone cables.
To complicate things further, roads are dug up to build flyovers above them, to
widen them or to provide underpasses below them, notwithstanding raised platforms
for a rail/tram/metro network or some fast link road to the airport or to the coast.
A visitor from another planet or from another country might well believe that the
whole place, which once possessed motorways, and elevated rail lines, and flyovers,
has seen its infrastructure going to ruins.
Ruins are often the remains of the historical trajectory of a civilization that may be
described as ascending, flourishing, and declining, more physically by the large
infrastructure projects which heralded the rise of a nation. Thus, we have ruins of
canals (Pisaq - Peru) and aqueducts (Nîmes - France, Sumelocenna - Germany,
Patras – Greece, Segovia - Spain, Aqua Alexandrina - Italy) and the broken remains
of bridges (Pont d’Avignon - France), public buildings (Coliseum - Rome), highway
rest stops, or the stone edicts of Ashoka - India. There are also, of course, the ruins of
monuments that were built to represent the grandeur of their civilizations, to make
their spectators awestruck. Very few infrastructural projects were built simply for
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7 Economic and Social Aspects of Infrastructure
1. facilitating communication, travel, and the transportation of goods
2. a biopolitical ambition to improve the health and welfare of the population
3. the visible symbol of a visionary future
Sometimes, the infrastructure projects themselves are constructed as tourist
destinations. The infrastructural aspects (pedagogical and performance roles) of
big dams are clearly displayed by the planning that guide tourists within the dam
site, which parts they should be allowed to see, the number of visitors, the size of the
parking lot, etc. In India, family picnics are regularly organised at large dam sites,
specially designed with beautiful landscaping, flowers, gardens, lawns, and hightech fountains (water oblige!) such that people can feel some active participation in
the construction of the nation or country. Most “modern” projects in India, falling
under the infrastructure umbrella - airports, dams, power plants, and high-tech
research institutes - are enclosed within well flowered green lawns, although the
facilities, themselves, might be out of bounds to visitors. These sites are supposed to
show modern aesthetics, combining function, order and beauty, by representing a
vision of the future, while the grounds themselves explain to the admitted visitors
how to inhabit such a future. If people organise picnics to those sites, it implies that
there is a demand (or market) for such aspects of infrastructure.
Villagers to a dairy are astonished that the milk is never touched by hand, but
instead goes through a series of machines to exit in cartons at the other end. The
“visibility” of infrastructure here, does not teach hygiene to the villagers but, is rather
about the biopolitical project of producing citizens who can dream of inhabiting a
modern future.
In some cities, crossing the streets is a nightmare, arising from (1) the numerous
cars crowding the narrow roads, and, (2) the roads always being dug up for one
infrastructure project or another.
Pipes carrying water, sewage, and natural gas are being laid everywhere, as well
as pipes enclosing electric wires, high-speed Internet cables, and telephone cables.
To complicate things further, roads are dug up to build flyovers above them, to
widen them or to provide underpasses below them, notwithstanding raised platforms
for a rail/tram/metro network or some fast link road to the airport or to the coast.
A visitor from another planet or from another country might well believe that the
whole place, which once possessed motorways, and elevated rail lines, and flyovers,
has seen its infrastructure going to ruins.
Ruins are often the remains of the historical trajectory of a civilization that may be
described as ascending, flourishing, and declining, more physically by the large
infrastructure projects which heralded the rise of a nation. Thus, we have ruins of
canals (Pisaq - Peru) and aqueducts (Nîmes - France, Sumelocenna - Germany,
Patras – Greece, Segovia - Spain, Aqua Alexandrina - Italy) and the broken remains
of bridges (Pont d’Avignon - France), public buildings (Coliseum - Rome), highway
rest stops, or the stone edicts of Ashoka - India. There are also, of course, the ruins of
monuments that were built to represent the grandeur of their civilizations, to make
their spectators awestruck. Very few infrastructural projects were built simply for
214
7 Economic and Social Aspects of Infrastructure