Making Spaces through Infrastructure

1 Making Spaces through Infrastructure – Introduction

Marian Burchardt

Dirk van Laak

In this book, we explore the ways in which infrastructures, as well as the discourses and practices of envisioning, planning, implementing, and using them, and spaces are related to one another. How do existing spaces shape infrastructural development and the scope and forms of access to vital services such as transport and water? How have imaginations of spaces as “empty” and not being anyone’s property justified the implementation of massive projects of infrastructural conquest whereby such areas were opened up, linked to global trade and tourism, and penetrated by networks of provision? How have spatial formats such as nation-states, empires, and ...