Reconnecting the disconnected: The politics of infrastructure in the in-between city Douglas Young * , Roger Keil The City Institute at York University, S702 Ross Building, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON, Canada M4W 1P9 article info Article history: Received 16 December 2008 Accepted 14 October 2009 Available online 30 November 2009 Keywords: Urban politics Infrastructure In-between city Toronto Transportation abstract This paper explores the politics of infrastructure in the evolving socio-spatial landscape of what we call the ‘‘in-between city,” that part of the urban region that is perceived as not quite traditional city and not quite traditional suburb (Sieverts, 2003). We posit that this new urban landscape which surrounds urban regions in many parts of the world is the remarkable new urban morphology where a large part of metro- politan populations live, work and play. While much attention has been on the winning economic clus- ters of the world economy and the devastated industrial structures of the loser regions, little light has been shed on the urban zones in-between. This paper deals specifically with these zones from the per- spective of accessibility issues around urban infrastructures, in particular transportation. It is argued that only a combined understanding of scaled and topological approaches allow us to capture the complexi- ties of the politics of urban infrastructures in the in-between city. Conceptually, we outline the definitive characteristics of this new landscape with a particular view towards urban Canada. Applying these con- cepts to a North American city, Toronto, Canada, we look specifically at the 85 sq km around York Uni- versity, an area that straddles the line between the traditional suburb and the inner city. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. A politics of infrastructure When we speak of a ‘‘politics of infrastructure”, we refer to a growing awareness that ‘‘governing and experiencing the fabric of the city” (McFarlane and Rutherford, 2008, p. 363) involves political acts that produce and reproduce the infrastructures of ur- ban regions. We therefore follow McFarlane and Rutherford’s ad- vice to open up ‘‘the ‘black box’ of urban infrastructure to explore the ways in which infrastructures, cities and nation states are produced and transformed together”(McFarlane and Ruther- ford, 2008, p. 364). This ‘‘politicization of infrastructure” (ibid.) in- volves the understanding of how infrastructure policies and planning are linked to ‘‘the co-evolution of cities and technical net- works in a global context” (McFarlane and Rutherford, 2008, p. 365). There has always been recognition of the powerful dance of politics and space economics in the production of the suburbs (Knox, 2008), we now point both to a new landscape (the in-be- tween city) and to a new politics of infrastructures that underlie that development (or not). We are, therefore interested, as are McFarlane and Rutherford (2008, p. 365–6) in following John Al- len’s advice to ‘‘focus on how power’s different modalities are var- iously exercised, how it puts people into place”. These different modalities of power and politics are exercised and performed in a dialectics of centres and peripheries, of mobilities and moorings in which the spaces we are interested in appear as unmarked ter- ritory. The politics that produced the (public) modern infrastruc- tural ideal for the centres and the (privatized) modern infrastructural ideals for the peripheries, largely treated the in-be- tween cities of our metropolitan regions as residual spaces to be filled by thruways and bypasses. The increased significance of these spaces today commands our attention in new and inevitable ways. In this sense, the forgotten infrastructural politics of the in- between city implies a de-colonization from the forces that built the glamour zones at both ends of its existence: the urban core and the classical suburb (see Fig. 1). The edge cities (Garreau, 1991) and exopolis (Soja, 1996) of the post-Fordist period re-centred and re-regionalized – globalized – capitalist production. New modes of aggressive re-territorialization have occurred as regions have politically or economically found new reasons for, and institutions of, regionalism (Brenner, 2004; Boud- reau et al., 2007; Collin and Robertson, 2007). At the same time, ter- ritorialization was not the only dynamic at work. Amin (2004), among others, has concisely noted the usefulness of ‘‘a relational reading of place that works with the ontology of flow, connectivity and multiple geographical expression, to imagine the geography of cities and regions through their plural spatial connections” (Amin, 2004, p. 34). While Amin describes the new forms of economic, administrative and governance regionalism – as well as a politics of territorial management – he argues ‘‘against the assumption that there is a defined geographical territory out there over which local actors can have effective control and can manage as a social and political space. In a relationally constituted modern world in which it has become normal to conduct business – economic, cultural, 0264-2751/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2009.10.002 * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: dogoyo@yorku.ca (D. Young), rkeil@yorku.ca (R. Keil). Cities 27 (2010) 87–95 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cities journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities