The Networked City: How Blanka extended beyond its boundaries

Keywords: infrastructures, post-socialist, materialities, STS, mobility
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 26

Abstract

Prague’s Blanka tunnel project has been a site for assembling social relations in the city and the Czech Republic for decades. Today it continues to trigger controversies surrounding the planning, negotiations, and contestations of this infrastructural project. Building on the idea that infrastructure can be seen as always in a state of “becoming” (Star 1999), as always unfinished and in a state of flux, this paper argues that a new infrastructural layer such as Blanka cannot simply be seamlessly placed in the city without consequence.I draw on Barry Allen’s definition of technical “artifact”, as one that extends beyond its predetermined purpose, and onto its unanticipated, unplanned consequences (2008; 48).

Mobilizing ANT methodology, we see how the planning and construction of the Blanka tunnel has extended beyond the tunnel itself, to become a strong driving force for the development of new mobility related practices and relations in the city of Prague. Through the empirical facets presented, we see how various actors deal with the issues that emerged – the implementation of cycling, traffic intensities and pollution – by inventing solutions, moving between actors’ worlds, from one field to another, and from one expertise to another. By combining legal aspects, scientific indicators, as well as devious methods to deal with the issues at stake, the actors challenge preset understandings of the city (Yaneva 2015), such as mobility, pollution and traffic; and use imagination and creativity to deal with these problems “from within” (Boullier 2011), in terms that are unique to their context.