Examining nature-society relations through urban infrastructure
Historically, the modern infrastructure ideal has dominated the imagination of engineers and planners. As a consequence, urban water and sanitation networks comprising of pipes, pumps, and reservoirs, have largely been built in the same way all over world. However, the multilayered challenges experienced by cities worldwide demand a new approach as part of imagining future urban infrastructures. Building on recent urban scholarship, we mobilise the concept of ‘Heterogeneous Infrastructure Configuration’ (HIC) to advance theoretical and empirical insights on nature and society relations in urban regions where heterogeneous infrastructures and networks are - or are about to become - challenged. We will combine theoretical insights with grounded empirical work in Guwahati (India) Stockholm (Sweden) and Kampala (Uganda). These three cities are at interesting historical junctures in terms of their water infrastructures and appear to be breaking out of the modern infrastructure ideal. The project is timely in its attempt to learn across Northern and Southern urban experiences and will generate new insights about how to create more socially inclusive and resilient urban infrastructures.
Final report
Project aims
The project has focused on understanding how relations between nature, society and urban infrastructure are changing across contexts of the Global North and Global South. A key concept utilised by the project has been the concept of ‘heterogeneous infrastructure configurations’, which has provided a theoretical lens to explore shifts in mindsets and practices of actors around infrastructure and to further disentangle the meaning of these shifts for thinking around the relationship between nature, society and infrastructure. The project focused primarily on infrastructure change in urban contexts in three primary cities of Guwahati, Stockholm and Kampala. The specific urban infrastructures that were explored related closely to how infrastructure mediates both water and wastewater flows in cities and included stormwater and flood management in Guwahati, drinking water supply in Stockholm and sanitation provision in Kampala.
Overall approach and implementation
An important way in which the project explored shifts in infrastructure is through narrative enquiry. Which in other words means the ways in which infrastructure is talked about by those actors that make use of different infrastructures (the users of infrastructure) but also what we refer in the project as ‘regime actors’ (which are the actors that often are situated centrally in decision making and planning).
Our main data therefore took the form of narratives about infrastructure in the three cities of interest to our project. Narratives were developed and synthesised from documents as well as semi-structured interviews with actors. Field observations were used to substantiate our claims about how urban infrastructure works in practice.
Beyond the empirical collection of data and the documentation of infrastructure narratives, our project also had an important action research component whereby through designing collaborative processes with key stakeholders we placed efforts on how to change dominant ways of seeing infrastructure and providing alternative lens and visualisations. In Stockholm for example, we collaborated with Färgfabriken to develop an exhibition titled ‘Symbiosis’. In the exhibition we utilised experimental methods (including posters, videos and even art installations that make use of augmented reality) to probe alternative narratives of infrastructure.
Important findings of the research
Our first important finding is that in the three cities we have found examples of heterogeneous infrastructures that are increasingly normalised, not as temporary responses to modernist infrastructure, but as important and long-term coping strategies to manage uncertain water and waste flows. This normalisation is more prominent in the narratives of actors as opposed to regulations and state plans but represents a notable shift in how regime actors and users of infrastructure are thinking around infrastructure today in a different way. As a result, mundane technological interventions to deal with floods, such as the role of mobile pumps in Guwahati, India, are narrated as part of a solution to flood management when previously they would have been discarded as inefficient or informal.
Our second important finding has been that actors narrated traditional modes of building urban infrastructure as something that has over time distanced users and planners from nature. This has been explained as both a consequence of making water flows often invisible to many urban residents, but also a result of thinking around nature in stationary terms. Actors usually narrated that this stationarity has collapsed largely because of increasing evidence of the way in which nature deteriorates but also changes. In contrast, when actors talked about the role of heterogeneous infrastructure configurations, we identified that the narratives opened other ways of thinking around nature situated in a belief that infrastructure is not only there to provide services but also to help dealing with more volatile and uncertain environmental conditions.
Through the project’s focus on heterogeneous infrastructures, and the explanations that underpin why heterogeneity exists, a theorisation of an alternative infrastructure imaginary to the modern infrastructural ideal emerged in the project which we termed as a ‘modest infrastructure imaginary’. The modest infrastructure imaginary allowed the project to engage with and develop a deeper understanding of new rationalities and visions of infrastructure that do not conform to modernity. Instead, our empirical encounters with infrastructure users and regime actors in the cities of study brought forward evidence of new cognitive associations between infrastructure, society and nature that can be of major importance for helping to rethink what just and sustainable infrastructure might entail, and what urban technologies might enable this.
New research questions
New research questions have emerged from the project which are currently being explored in recently awarded research grants. Namely, the project leader, Timos Karpouzoglou, has been awarded funding by Formas in a project (running through 2024 – 2026) to explore the interlinkages between water regimes and embedded nature (or ecological contexts) in peri-urban spaces of India. Another project also by Formas (2024 – 2026) by the project leader approaches the role of climate action (and inaction) in the Swedish water sector as a challenge of imagination and attempts to theorise ways in which modern and modest imaginaries shape climate action work in the Swedish water bureaucracy.
Research dissemination and collaboration
The project group has been highly active in disseminating research results but also creating public dialogues with diverse publics in a variety of different formats. Including a public exhibition in Stockholm as well as an African Cities Workshop that helped to join scholars, artists, regular citizens and decision makers in conversation about the role of infrastructure in relation to nature and society.
The project group also made significant efforts to communicate research in the form of scientific publications. Therefore, the publication output of the project consists of 8 peer-reviewed open access articles in high-ranking international peer reviewed journals such as Urban Studies, Journal of Urban Technology, Geoforum, Area and Futures. In addition to one complete monograph which was also published open access, a book chapter, a peer reviewed opinion article, conference papers, and blog articles.
Notable research workshops to which the project group has actively contributed with insights from the project include the international roundtable on ‘Beyond Splintering Urbanism: New Agendas for infrastructure, urbanisation and city futures’ with leading scholars from the fields of urban and critical infrastructure studies and was hosted in France in March 2022. Earlier, the project group also contributed to the research workshop ‘Making Heterogeneous Infrastructural Futures’ which was hosted by the University of Cologne, Germany in December 2021 and which helped develop a future research agenda for urban infrastructure with a particular focus on foregrounding heterogeneity, flexibility and change as integral to infrastructural futures.
Noteworthy publications from the project
Nakyagaba, G. N., Lawhon, M., & Lwasa, S. (2023). Navigating heterogeneous sanitation configurations: How off-grid technologies work and are reworked by urban residents. Area, 55(3), 364–371. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12861
Lawhon, M., Nsangi Nakyagaba, G., & Karpouzoglou, T. (2023). Towards a modest imaginary? Sanitation in Kampala beyond the modern infrastructure ideal. Urban Studies, 60(1), 146–165. https://doi.org/10.1177/004209802110645
Lawhon, M., Follmann, A., Braun, B., Cornea, N., Greiner, C., Guma, P., Karpouzoglou, T., Diez, J. R., Schindler, S., Schramm, S., Sielker, F., Tups, G., Vij, S., & Dannenberg, P. (2023). Making Heterogeneous Infrastructure Futures in and Beyond the Global South. Futures, 103270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103270
Lawhon, M., & McCreary, T. (2023). Enough! A modest political ecology for an uncertain future. Agenda Publishing https://www.agendapub.com/page/detail/enough/?k=9781788216203 (open access)
Vij, S., Karpouzoglou, T., Lawhon, M., Deka, A., & Hazarika, N. (2025). Infrastructure imaginaries, past, present, and future: Living with the urban flood in Guwahati, India. Journal of Urban Technology, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2024.2432844
Links to popular science articles
Larsen, K. (2021). Urban water imaginaries in exhibition - co-creative dialogues between science, art, and engineering https://www.kth.se/en/abe/nyheter/berattelser-om-vatten-i-stader-i-utstallning-med-moten-mellan-vetenskap-konstnarer-och-ingenjorer-1.1102817
Karpouzoglou, T., Larsen, K., Nilsson, D. (2021) Symbiosis - a Collaboration between NATURE and Färgfabriken https://www.kth.se/philhist/historia/omoss/nyheter/symbiosis-a-collaboration-between-nature-and-fargfabriken-1.1093672
Larsen, K. (2022). Does water have a soul? Voices and reflections from the Symbiosis exhibition https://www.kth.se/blogs/hist/2022/03/does-water-have-a-soul-voices-and-reflections-from-the-symbiosis-exhibition/
Vij, S., Karpouzoglou, T., Lawhon, M. (2023). Modern flood infrastructure has failed in its promises. Is it time for a modest approach? https://www.situatedupe.net/modern-flood-infrastructure-has-failed-in-its-promises-is-it-time-for-a-modest-approach/
Links to project sites
Examining nature-society relations through urban infrastructure (NATURE). Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. www.kth.se/nature
Imagination as a tool for climate action: towards preparedness in the Swedish water sector (ImagineAction). Formas. https://liu.se/en/research/imagineaction
Peri-urban water regimes and nature (PeriNature). Formas. https://liu.se/en/research/perinature
The project has focused on understanding how relations between nature, society and urban infrastructure are changing across contexts of the Global North and Global South. A key concept utilised by the project has been the concept of ‘heterogeneous infrastructure configurations’, which has provided a theoretical lens to explore shifts in mindsets and practices of actors around infrastructure and to further disentangle the meaning of these shifts for thinking around the relationship between nature, society and infrastructure. The project focused primarily on infrastructure change in urban contexts in three primary cities of Guwahati, Stockholm and Kampala. The specific urban infrastructures that were explored related closely to how infrastructure mediates both water and wastewater flows in cities and included stormwater and flood management in Guwahati, drinking water supply in Stockholm and sanitation provision in Kampala.
Overall approach and implementation
An important way in which the project explored shifts in infrastructure is through narrative enquiry. Which in other words means the ways in which infrastructure is talked about by those actors that make use of different infrastructures (the users of infrastructure) but also what we refer in the project as ‘regime actors’ (which are the actors that often are situated centrally in decision making and planning).
Our main data therefore took the form of narratives about infrastructure in the three cities of interest to our project. Narratives were developed and synthesised from documents as well as semi-structured interviews with actors. Field observations were used to substantiate our claims about how urban infrastructure works in practice.
Beyond the empirical collection of data and the documentation of infrastructure narratives, our project also had an important action research component whereby through designing collaborative processes with key stakeholders we placed efforts on how to change dominant ways of seeing infrastructure and providing alternative lens and visualisations. In Stockholm for example, we collaborated with Färgfabriken to develop an exhibition titled ‘Symbiosis’. In the exhibition we utilised experimental methods (including posters, videos and even art installations that make use of augmented reality) to probe alternative narratives of infrastructure.
Important findings of the research
Our first important finding is that in the three cities we have found examples of heterogeneous infrastructures that are increasingly normalised, not as temporary responses to modernist infrastructure, but as important and long-term coping strategies to manage uncertain water and waste flows. This normalisation is more prominent in the narratives of actors as opposed to regulations and state plans but represents a notable shift in how regime actors and users of infrastructure are thinking around infrastructure today in a different way. As a result, mundane technological interventions to deal with floods, such as the role of mobile pumps in Guwahati, India, are narrated as part of a solution to flood management when previously they would have been discarded as inefficient or informal.
Our second important finding has been that actors narrated traditional modes of building urban infrastructure as something that has over time distanced users and planners from nature. This has been explained as both a consequence of making water flows often invisible to many urban residents, but also a result of thinking around nature in stationary terms. Actors usually narrated that this stationarity has collapsed largely because of increasing evidence of the way in which nature deteriorates but also changes. In contrast, when actors talked about the role of heterogeneous infrastructure configurations, we identified that the narratives opened other ways of thinking around nature situated in a belief that infrastructure is not only there to provide services but also to help dealing with more volatile and uncertain environmental conditions.
Through the project’s focus on heterogeneous infrastructures, and the explanations that underpin why heterogeneity exists, a theorisation of an alternative infrastructure imaginary to the modern infrastructural ideal emerged in the project which we termed as a ‘modest infrastructure imaginary’. The modest infrastructure imaginary allowed the project to engage with and develop a deeper understanding of new rationalities and visions of infrastructure that do not conform to modernity. Instead, our empirical encounters with infrastructure users and regime actors in the cities of study brought forward evidence of new cognitive associations between infrastructure, society and nature that can be of major importance for helping to rethink what just and sustainable infrastructure might entail, and what urban technologies might enable this.
New research questions
New research questions have emerged from the project which are currently being explored in recently awarded research grants. Namely, the project leader, Timos Karpouzoglou, has been awarded funding by Formas in a project (running through 2024 – 2026) to explore the interlinkages between water regimes and embedded nature (or ecological contexts) in peri-urban spaces of India. Another project also by Formas (2024 – 2026) by the project leader approaches the role of climate action (and inaction) in the Swedish water sector as a challenge of imagination and attempts to theorise ways in which modern and modest imaginaries shape climate action work in the Swedish water bureaucracy.
Research dissemination and collaboration
The project group has been highly active in disseminating research results but also creating public dialogues with diverse publics in a variety of different formats. Including a public exhibition in Stockholm as well as an African Cities Workshop that helped to join scholars, artists, regular citizens and decision makers in conversation about the role of infrastructure in relation to nature and society.
The project group also made significant efforts to communicate research in the form of scientific publications. Therefore, the publication output of the project consists of 8 peer-reviewed open access articles in high-ranking international peer reviewed journals such as Urban Studies, Journal of Urban Technology, Geoforum, Area and Futures. In addition to one complete monograph which was also published open access, a book chapter, a peer reviewed opinion article, conference papers, and blog articles.
Notable research workshops to which the project group has actively contributed with insights from the project include the international roundtable on ‘Beyond Splintering Urbanism: New Agendas for infrastructure, urbanisation and city futures’ with leading scholars from the fields of urban and critical infrastructure studies and was hosted in France in March 2022. Earlier, the project group also contributed to the research workshop ‘Making Heterogeneous Infrastructural Futures’ which was hosted by the University of Cologne, Germany in December 2021 and which helped develop a future research agenda for urban infrastructure with a particular focus on foregrounding heterogeneity, flexibility and change as integral to infrastructural futures.
Noteworthy publications from the project
Nakyagaba, G. N., Lawhon, M., & Lwasa, S. (2023). Navigating heterogeneous sanitation configurations: How off-grid technologies work and are reworked by urban residents. Area, 55(3), 364–371. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12861
Lawhon, M., Nsangi Nakyagaba, G., & Karpouzoglou, T. (2023). Towards a modest imaginary? Sanitation in Kampala beyond the modern infrastructure ideal. Urban Studies, 60(1), 146–165. https://doi.org/10.1177/004209802110645
Lawhon, M., Follmann, A., Braun, B., Cornea, N., Greiner, C., Guma, P., Karpouzoglou, T., Diez, J. R., Schindler, S., Schramm, S., Sielker, F., Tups, G., Vij, S., & Dannenberg, P. (2023). Making Heterogeneous Infrastructure Futures in and Beyond the Global South. Futures, 103270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103270
Lawhon, M., & McCreary, T. (2023). Enough! A modest political ecology for an uncertain future. Agenda Publishing https://www.agendapub.com/page/detail/enough/?k=9781788216203 (open access)
Vij, S., Karpouzoglou, T., Lawhon, M., Deka, A., & Hazarika, N. (2025). Infrastructure imaginaries, past, present, and future: Living with the urban flood in Guwahati, India. Journal of Urban Technology, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2024.2432844
Links to popular science articles
Larsen, K. (2021). Urban water imaginaries in exhibition - co-creative dialogues between science, art, and engineering https://www.kth.se/en/abe/nyheter/berattelser-om-vatten-i-stader-i-utstallning-med-moten-mellan-vetenskap-konstnarer-och-ingenjorer-1.1102817
Karpouzoglou, T., Larsen, K., Nilsson, D. (2021) Symbiosis - a Collaboration between NATURE and Färgfabriken https://www.kth.se/philhist/historia/omoss/nyheter/symbiosis-a-collaboration-between-nature-and-fargfabriken-1.1093672
Larsen, K. (2022). Does water have a soul? Voices and reflections from the Symbiosis exhibition https://www.kth.se/blogs/hist/2022/03/does-water-have-a-soul-voices-and-reflections-from-the-symbiosis-exhibition/
Vij, S., Karpouzoglou, T., Lawhon, M. (2023). Modern flood infrastructure has failed in its promises. Is it time for a modest approach? https://www.situatedupe.net/modern-flood-infrastructure-has-failed-in-its-promises-is-it-time-for-a-modest-approach/
Links to project sites
Examining nature-society relations through urban infrastructure (NATURE). Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. www.kth.se/nature
Imagination as a tool for climate action: towards preparedness in the Swedish water sector (ImagineAction). Formas. https://liu.se/en/research/imagineaction
Peri-urban water regimes and nature (PeriNature). Formas. https://liu.se/en/research/perinature