The Routledge Handbook of Infrastructure Design explores the multifaceted nature of infrastructure through the global lens of architectural history. Infrastructure holds the world together. Yet even as it connects some people, it divides others, sorting access and connectivity through varied social categories such as class, race, gender, and citizenship. This collection examines themes across broad spans of time, raises questions of linkage and scale, investigates infrastructure as phenomenon and affect, and traces the interrelation of aesthetics, technology, and power. With a diverse range of contributions from 33 scholars, this volume presents new research from regions including South and East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, North America, Western Europe, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. This extraordinary group of authors bring close attention to the materials, functions, and aesthetics of infrastructure systems as these unfold within their cultural and political contexts. They provide not only new knowledge of specific artifacts, such as the Valens Aqueduct, the Hong Kong waterfront, and the Pan-American Highway, but also new ways of conceptualizing, studying, and understanding infrastructure as a worlding process. The Routledge Handbook of Infrastructure Design provides richly textured, thoroughly evidenced, and imaginatively drawn arguments that deepen our understanding of the role of infrastructure in creating the world in which we live. It is a must-read for academics and students.

Table of Contents:
Infrastructure Designs: Dreaming and Building Worlds Part 1 Materialities 1 Kingship and the Rocks: Infrastructure and the Materiality of Empire 2 In Between Technology and Architecture: Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and the French Royal Saline 3 Cement as Weapon: Meta-Infrastructure in the "World’s Last Cement Frontier" 4 Notes from the Underworld: Excavation as Architectural Counter-History Part 2 Embodiments 5 Virtual Gardens: Gendered Space in the History of Afghanistan’s Telecommunications 6 Mobilizing Labor for Infrastructure in Northeast Brazil, 1915–1932 7 Everyday Living in Cairo’s City of the Dead Part 3 Natures 8 Dams, Lakes, and Water Sports: Building a Hybrid Landscape in Belgium’s Eau d’Heure Valley, 1933–1987 9 Pedagogic Landscapes: Recreation, Play, and Danish Infrastructure Design 10 A Vast Demographic Void: Infrastructure, Ecology, and the Amazon Part 4 Flows 11 Visualizing the Valens Aqueduct in Early Modern Istanbul 12 The Airport Terminal: Circulation and Soft Power 13 The Porous Infrastructures of Somali Malls in Cape Town Part 5 City Making 14 Bridging the Bosporus: Mobility, Geopolitics, and Urban Imaginary in Istanbul, 1933–1973 15 Brasilia, a Story Seen from the Roadside: Narratives of Landscape Transformation and the Technological Sublime 16 More than a "Circulation Machine": Recasting the Geographies of Infrastructure in Modernist Urbanism 17 Infrastructure as a Political Tool of Regime Legitimization in Doha, Qatar Part 6 The Long Road 18 The Global Spread of Street Pavement Materials and Technology, 1820–1920 19 Parallel Lines: Urban Expressways in the United States 20 Good Neighbors and Automovilistas: Imaginaries of Hemispheric Travel along the Pan-American Highway, 1936–1942 Part 7 Power Fields 21 Nuclear Power Stations in Post-War Britain: Picturesque Landscapes for the Masses 22 TVA in the Desert: U.S. Development Projects in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 1951–1961 23 Shaped from Above: Cartographic Domination and U.S. Military Infrastructure in 1950s Spain Part 8 Liquid Worlds 24 Water and Infrastructure in Late Colonial Guanajuato 25 Land Reclamation in the Making of Hong Kong 26 Bombay/Mumbai Waterfronts in the Hindi Film Deewaar [The Wall] (1975)