RSA Research Network on Infrastructural Regionalisms (NOIR)

About NOIR

The RSA Research Network on Infrastructural Regionalisms (NOIR) challenges regional studies to attend to infrastructural questions by critically unpacking how infrastructure shapes regional lives, governance, and developmental pathways. Our conceptual framing of ‘infrastructural regionalism’ focuses on those infrastructures that have relevance beyond the local. Analysing regions through infrastructure provides a novel perspective on the regional question as investment and disinvestment in infrastructure reveals vital discursive and material elements that produce, structure, and modify metropolitan regions worldwide. The development of infrastructural assets – ranging from transport and telecommunications to energy and sanitation – as part of regional policies raises conceptual and applied questions about how the funding, governance, and spatiality of such infrastructure can promote urban, economic, and ecological sustainability at the regional scale.

By placing the region at the center of the ‘infrastructural turn’, NOIR brings infrastructure to the forefront of innovative, interdisciplinary, and multi-scalar research on metropolitan regions to determine how regions are constructed, territorialized, governed, and experienced. NOIR offers multiple forums to debate the terrains of regional infrastructure, develop collaborative research projects, and facilitate meaningful dialogue between academics and practitioners. During our second phase, we intend to extend and deepen the existing network, placing an emphasis on mobilizing infrastructural regionalism to assist scholars and practitioners in developing policy outcomes that facilitate equitable regional development. Key goals for Phase 2 include expanding network membership; engaging with the practitioner/policy community; and developing collaborative research around the theme of ‘infrastructures of regional connectivity’.

Research Themes

NOIR focuses on the four key themes which form the core of our ‘infrastructural regionalism’ framework:

• Interdisciplinary and Inclusive Perspectives on Regional Infrastructure: How do we study, and thus produce knowledge of, infrastructure? NOIR draws together established and emerging regional scholars from a variety of disciplines to define the conceptual and empirical parameters of infrastructural regionalisms.
• Infrastructure and Regional Governance: Regional affairs are negotiated and organized through diverse formal and informal mechanisms. NOIR critically assesses how infrastructure helps to produce regional governance structures by engaging scholars whose work addresses questions who is represented in infrastructure decision-making, how competing interests are mediated, and what complexities can undermine/empower regional partnerships.
• Seeing Like a Region: The territoriality and relationality of regions defies the simple transfer of spatial or ontological politics proscribed by seeing ‘like a state’ or ‘like a city’. Finding coherence within the ‘fuzziness’ of regional space requires alternative techniques of spatialisation and political modalities. NOIR prompts members to ask who can ‘see regionally’, what it means to ‘see like a region’, and how engaging with infrastructure issues shape regional imaginaries.
• Infrastructure and Regional Lives: The ability to produce and claim ‘the region’ is the product of a contested spatial politics; regional spaces are highly uneven, with infrastructures representing the filaments that link parts of the region together in often tenuous ways. NOIR explores regional infrastructure by assessing how they mediate global flows and everyday experiences.

NOIR’s Aims:

1. Showcase theoretically informed, empirically grounded research at the intersection of infrastructure studies and regional studies.
2. Promote the formation of collaborative, interdisciplinary, and comparative research teams to stake out and mobilize new research agendas at the intersection of infrastructure and the region.
3. Foster novel scholarship through senior/junior scholar and academic/practitioner exchanges at RSA network events.
4. Promote information exchanges that can inform regional development policies.

Key Network Outputs:

• Glass, M.R., Addie, J.-P.D., and Nelles, J. (2019). Regional infrastructures, infrastructural regionalism. Regional Studies, 53(12), 1651-1656.
• Addie, J.-P.D., Glass, M.R., and Nelles, J. (2020). Regionalizing the infrastructure turn: A research agenda. Regional Studies, Regional Science, 7(1), 10-26.
• Glass, M.R., Nelles, J., and Addie, J.-P.D. (2023) ‘On fetishes, fragments, and futures: Regionalizing infrastructural lives’, in A. Wiig, K. Ward, T. Enright, M. Hodson, H. Pearsall, and J. Silver (eds.) (2023). Infrastrucuting Urban Futures: The Politics of Remaking Cities. Bristol: Bristol University Press, pp. 188-198.
• Addie, J.-P.D., Glass, M.R., and Nelles, J. (eds.) (2024). Infrastructural Times: Temporality and the Making of Global Urban Worlds. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
• Glass, M.R., Addie, J.-P.D., and Nelles, J. (2024). A region runs through it: Representation, mediation, and partnership in regional water infrastructure governance, Territory, Politics, Governance
• Glass, M.R., Addie, J.-P.D., and Nelles, J. (eds.) forthcoming, Special Issue on Water, Governance, and the Dynamics of Infrastructural Regionalism, Territory, Politics, Governance

Plans for Future Events 

• NOIR Phase 2 Launch: RSA Winter Conference , London, UK, November 2024
• Workshop: European Perspectives on Governance and the Infrastructures of Regional Connectivity, RSA Annual Conference, May 2025
• Workshop: Building Bridges: Infrastructural Regionalism Across Theory and Practice in North America (Spring: 2025)
• Virtual Symposium: Infrastructural Regional Connectivity in Asia (Spring 2026)

Previous NOIR Events (2019-2023) – Final Report

• Pre-launch panel 1 (April 6, 2019): Pushing the Boundaries of Regional Infrastructure: The DC Region in Focus, Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Washington DC, USA – read the pre-launch report here.
• Pre-launch panel 2 (April 25, 2019): Pushing the Boundaries of Regional Infrastructure: The Los Angeles Region in Focus, Urban Affairs Association Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA, USA
• Event 1 (September 25, 2019): Network Launch and Special Sessions on Defining the Terrains of Regional Infrastructure, Regional Studies Association North American Conference, Montreal QC, Canada – see call for papers here.
• Event 2 (September 29 – October 2, 2020) NOIR Workshop on Water Infrastructure and Regional Governance, University of Pittsburgh, virtual event – read the event report here and read the NOIR regional water governance editorial here. You can watch recordings of the sessions here.
• Event 3 (June 14-18, 2021): NOIR Workshop on Infrastructural Times, RSA Regions in Recovery e-festival, virtual event – order the edited volume here.
• Event 4 (March 31, 2022): 100 years of infrastructural regionalism: Exploring the dynamic interaction between infrastructure and regional governance in metropolitan New York, RSA Regions in Recovery Global e-Festival (second edition) – watch the NOIR plenary session here.
• Event 5 (June 16, 2023) NOIR Special Sessions on Regional Infrastructure, Infrastructural Regionalism: Cases, Concepts, Contexts, RSA Annual Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia – see call for papers here.

NOIR is all about infrastructure’s place in our regional worlds and our capacity to shape our regions through its function and symbolism. We have a number of plans for networking, collaboration, and publications beyond formal NOIR events. If you are interested in joining the network, or would like further information, please contact reach Jean-Paul, Jen, and Michael. You can also follow NOIR on Twitter (@NOIR_RSA).

More information on the RSA Network on Infrastructural Regionalism can be found at the NOIR website.