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Book Summary

Graham, Stephen and Simon Marvin. 2001. Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities, and the Urban Condition. London, UK and New York, NY: Routledge.

In Splintering Urbanism, Graham and Marvin present a contemporary analysis of the impacts that networked infrastructure systems have on the greater urban environment. Through a theoretical discussion (Part I) and a series of case studies (Part II), the book highlights the consequences of changing technology and privatization on the infrastructure foundations of cities.

Our authors view cities as physical nodes within a global circulation of resources. This circulation is facilitated between and within cities by a complex web of infrastructure. Within the city itself, networked infrastructure adds a sense of cohesion to diverse districts and residents. Our authors use the analogy of a city as a process or a form of complex machinery; each level of networked infrastructure relies on the other ones to create a functioning urban environment.

According to this view, networked infrastructure plays an important role in the development in the physical and social formation of the city. Yet, like any city, this infrastructure is ever-changing, and advances in information technology have allowed a complex reshaping of the way that infrastructure is managed. Infrastructure systems have increasingly been exposed to market forces and have quickly become a substantial vehicle of international capital.

This new market model often favors the provision of infrastructure to select users, leading to increased social distancing of disparate social/racial/economic groups. This occurrence, which Graham and Marvin term splintering urbanism, involves the dissolution of these complex, networked systems and serves as the eponymous theme of the book. Our authors assert that this is especially problematic because these networks do not develop in isolation; there are physical synergies between diverse networks and the pathways they share.

Individual Chapter Summaries:

Graham and Marvin present this book in two parts. First, they lay the theoretical framework for networked infrastructure systems and their impact on the social and economic formation of the city:

Chapter 1 - Introduction: In Chapter 1, the authors establish the importance of networked infrastructure systems, their rapid unbundling, and the void in literature that this book is attempting to fill.

Chapter 2 - Constructing the Modern Networked City, 1850-1960: The authors explore the historical framework for the networked city and how technological and academic development shaped the way that society views urban space.

Chapter 3 - The Collapse of the Integrated Ideal: Chapter 3 outlines the fall of the modern ideal of monopolistic, standardized, and integrated networked infrastructures and the rise of decentralized, globally-connected areas.

Chapter 4: Practices of Splintering Urbanism: Chapter 4 discusses how networked systems are unbundling in practice, and constructs a framework for examining how this phenomenon reshapes the physical and social construction of urban areas.

Chapter 5: The City as a Sociotechnical Process: Chapter 5 attempts to explain four different theories that emerge from the first four chapters and use them, together, as a foundation to understand the parallel transformation of cities and urban infrastructures.

The second half of the book is dedicated to a series of case studies that illustrate examples of splintering urbanism throughout the world.

Chapter 6: Social Landscapes of Splintering Urbanism: Turning to a series of practical examples, Chapter 6 examines how splintering urbanism modifies the social framework of cities.

Chapter 7: Glocal Infrastructure and the Splintering of Urban Economics: Splintered networks allow for the increasing interconnection of elite global economic centers. Chapter 7 discusses the role of capital and finance in this new global economy.

Chapter 8: Conclusion: Given the increasing occurrence of splintering urbanism on a global scale, our authors close the book by outlining a number of the caveats of this trend. They also serve to point out that this splintering does have some crucial limits.