This colloquy provides an advance introduction to the Regional Studies Association Research Network on Infrastructural Regionalism (NOIR) that is scheduled to launch in late-2019. NOIR is fundamentally concerned with exploring how we study, and thus produce knowledge of, infrastructure: how are decisions on infrastructures are made, and what are their impacts on communities? What types of infrastructure are more amenable to/successful at the regional scale? How do infrastructure issues shape regional imaginaries and interpolate regional political subjects? This panel will situate and problematize the Network’s key questions and concepts by interrogating regional infrastructures in the large and complex Los Angeles region. The UAA conference location offers a fascinating and unique opportunity to use the metropolitan region’s rich experience and varied assets – from global ports and local transport through mega-project financing and governance to environmental infrastructures under climate change – as a springboard to examine the intersection of infrastructure and regional studies. Panelists include scholars and practitioners who work on questions of infrastructure in southern California. They will offer diverse perspectives on a series of questions that challenge preconceptions about the practice and theory of the infrastructures which constitute U.S. city-regions. The panel will anchor their remarks using specific examples from the LA region, but also reflect on the case of LA to open a broader interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral dialogue on how the funding, governance, and spatiality of infrastructure can promote urban, economic, and ecological sustainability at the regional scale.
Moderator: Jen Nelles, Hunter College CUNY
“Improbable Growth in the LA Region and the Catalytic Role of Public Infrastructure” Steven Erie, University of California San Diego
“Water Infrastructure, Climate Change, and the Region” Jeff Kightlinger, The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
“Public and Private Infrastructure Development and Politics in the Los Angeles Region” David Abel, Abel & Associates/Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation
"Water Infrastructure, Climate Change, and the Region" Stephanie Pincetl, University of California, Los Angeles
