This paper develops an analytical framework to place the rise of open source urbanism in context, and develops the concept of the ‘right to infrastructure’ as expressive of new ecologies of urban relations that have come into being. It describes, first, a genealogy for open source technology, focusing in particular on how open source urban hardware projects may challenge urban theory. It moves then to describe in detail various dimensions and implications of an open source infrastructural project in Madrid. In all, the paper analyses three challenges that the development of open source urban infrastructures is posing to the institutions of urban governance and property: the evolving shape and composition of urban ecologies; the technical and design challenges brought about by open source urban projects; and the social organisation of the ‘right to infrastructure’ as a political, active voice in urban governance. In the last instance, the right to infrastructure, I shall argue, signals the rise of the ‘prototype’ as an emerging figure for contemporary sociotechnical designs in and for social theory.
ArbonaJ, 2010, “Dangers in the air: Aerosol architecture and its invisible landscapes”, in Air Ed. KnechtelJ (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA) pp 8197
2.
AttohKA, 2011, “What kind of right is the right to the city?”Progress in Human Geography35669685
3.
BenjaminDYangS-IJeremijenkoN, 2011, “New interaction partners for environmental governance: Amphibious architecture”, in Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA), pp 4863
4.
BenklerY, 2006The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT)
5.
BenklerY, 2011The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-interest (Crown Business, New York)
6.
BiagioliM, 2011, “Patent specification and political representation”, in Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property: Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective Eds BiagioliMJasziPWoodmanseeM (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL), pp 2539
7.
BiagioliMJasziPWoodmanseeM (Eds), 2011Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property: Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL)
8.
BowkerGCStarSL, 2000Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
9.
BoyleJ, 2008The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT)
10.
BraunBWhatmoreSJ, 2010Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MA)
11.
BurkeATierneyT (Eds), 2007Network Practices (Princeton Architectural Press, New York)
12.
BrotoCastán VBulkeleyH, 2013, “Maintaining climate change experiments: Urban political ecology and the everyday reconfiguration of urban infrastructure”International Journal of Urban and Regional Research doi/10.1111/1468-2427.12050
13.
ColemanEG, 2012Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ)
14.
ColemanEGGolubA, 2008, “Hacker practice: Moral genres and the cultural articulation of liberalism”Anthropological Theory8255277
15.
JiménezCorsín A, 2013, “The prototype: More than many and less than one”Journal of Cultural Economy doi:10.1080/17530350.2013.858059
16.
JiménezCorsín AEstalellaA, 2014, “Assembling neighbors: The city as hardware, method, and a ‘very messy kind of archive’”Common Knowledge20150171
17.
JiménezCorsín AEstalellaA, Zoohaus Collective, 2014, “The interior design of (free) knowledge”Journal of Cultural Economy doi:10.1080/17530350.2013.859632
18.
CoutardORutherfordJ, 2011, “Post-networked cities: Recombining infrastructural ecological and urban transitions”, in Cities and Low Carbon Transitions Eds BulkeleyHBrotoCastán VHodsonVMarvinS (Routledge, London), pp 107125
19.
CrangMGrahamS, 2007, “Sentient cities: Ambient intelligence and the politics of urban space”Information, Communication and Society10789817
20.
RubioDomínguez FFoguéU, 2013, “Technifying public space and publicizing infrastructures: Exploring new urban political ecologies through the square of General Vara del Rey”International Journal of Urban and Regional Research3710351052
21.
EizenbergE, 2012, “Actually existing commons: Three moments of space of community gardens in New York City”Antipode44764782
22.
ForayD, 2006The Economics of Knowledge (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
23.
FullerMHaqueU, 2008Urban Versioning System 1.0The Architectural League of New York Situated Pamphlet Series, New York
24.
GandyM, 2005, “Cyborg urbanization: Complexity and monstrosity in the contemporary city”International Journal of Urban and Regional Research292649
25.
GhoshRA, 2005CODE: Collaborative Ownership in the Digital Economy (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
26.
GillespieT, 2007Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
27.
GoodaleMMerrySE (Eds), 2007The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law Between the Global and the Local (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA)
28.
GrahamS, 2010Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (Verso, London)
29.
GrahamSMartinS, 2001Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition (Routledge, London)
30.
HarawayD, 1990, “A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s”, in Feminism/Postmodernism Ed. NicholsonLJ (Routledge, New York), pp 190233
31.
HarveyD, 2008, “The right to the city”New Left Review532340
32.
HarveyD, 2009Social Justice and the City (University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA)
33.
HarveyD, 2012Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (Verso, London)
34.
HessCOstromE, 2003, “Ideas, artifacts, and facilities: Information as a common-pool resource”Law and Contemporary Problems66111145
35.
HessCOstromE, 2006Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
36.
HolbraadM, 2012Truth in Motion: The Recursive Anthropology of Cuban Divination (Chicago University Press, Chicago, IL)
37.
HolstonJ, 1991, “Autoconstruction in working-class Brazil”Cultural Anthropology6447465
38.
KeltyCM, 2008Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Duke University Press, Durham, NC)
39.
KeltyCM, 2011, “Inventing copyleft”, in Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property: Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective Eds BiagioliMJasziPWoodmanseeM (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL) pp 133148
40.
LamplandMStarLeigh S (Eds), 2009Standards and Their Stories: How Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY)
41.
LatourB, 1991, “Technology is society made durable”, in A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination Ed. LawJ (Routledge, London) pp 103131
42.
LatourB, 2009The Making of Law: An Ethnography of the Conseil d'État (Polity, Malden, MA)
43.
LatourBWeibelP, 2005Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
44.
LefebvreH, 1996, “The right to the city”, in Writings on Cities Eds KofmanELebasE (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 147159
45.
StarLeigh SBowkerGC, 2006, “How to infrastructure”, in Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Social Consequences of ICTs (Sage, London) pp 230245
MacKenzieA, 2006Transductions: Bodies and Machines at Speed (Continuum, London)
48.
MarresN, 2012, “The experiment in living”, in Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social Eds LuryCWakefordN (Routledge, London) pp 7695
49.
MarresNLezaunJ, 2011, “Materials and devices of the public: An introduction”Economy and Society40121
50.
MitchellD, 2003The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (Guilford Press, New York)
51.
MolALawJ, 2002, “Complexities: An introduction”, in Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices Eds LawJMolA (Duke University Press, Durham, NC) pp 122
52.
OdendaalN, 2011, “Splintering urbanism or split agendas? Examining the spatial distribution of technology access in relation to ICT policy in Durban, South Africa”Urban Studies4823752397
PottageAMundyM, 2004Law, Anthropology, and the Constitution of the Social: Making Persons and Things (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
55.
PurcellM, 2013, “The right to the city: The struggle for democracy in the urban public realm”Policy and Politics43311327
56.
RheinbergerH-J, 1997Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA)
57.
RutherfordJ, 2011, “Rethinking the relational socio-technical materialities of cities and ICTs”Journal of Urban Technology182133
58.
SadlerS, 1999The Situationist City (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
59.
SadlerS, 2005Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
60.
SassenS, 2011, “Unsettling topographic representation”, in Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA), pp 182189
61.
ShepardM, 2011aSentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
62.
ShepardM, 2011b, “Toward the sentient city”, in Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space Ed. ShepardM (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA) pp 1637
63.
SojaEW, 2010Seeking Spatial Justice (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN)
64.
StarSL, 1999, “The ethnography of infrastructure”American Behavioral Scientist43377391
65.
StrathernM, 2004Partial Connections (AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA)
66.
SwyngedouwE, 1996, “The city as a hybrid: On nature, society and cyborg urbanization”Capitalism Nature Socialism76580
67.
SwyngedouwEHeynenNC, 2003, “Urban political ecology, justice and the politics of scale”Antipode35898918
68.
ThriftN, 2009, “Different atmospheres: Of Sloterdijk, China, and site”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space27119138
69.
ThriftN, 2012, “The insubstantial pageant: Producing an untoward land”Cultural Geographies19141168
70.
TreschJ, 2007, “Technological world-pictures: Cosmic things and cosmograms”Isis988499
71.
TurnerF, 2006From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL)
72.
VismannC, 2008Files: Law and Media Technology (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA)
73.
WarkM, 200850 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International (Princeton Architectural Press, New York)
74.
WienerN, 1989The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (Free Association Books, London)
