A Tunnel of Many Worlds: Unfolding the Blanka Controversy

Abstract

This research offers new theoretical and methodological approaches to studying infrastructures in the making, through a pragmatist approach and by mobilising ANT methodology. This making process entails infrastructures as complex networks of things and people and as systems that co-exist and co-evolve with other forms of urban mobility. These systems are not only being built in space, but as space making mechanisms have the potential to shift relations, priorities, and the future of cities. While scholars recognise infrastructures as relational, processual, and constituents of larger heterogeneous networks of actors, the very nature of the space that is produced through their making is yet to be expressed explicitly and/or on multiple scales. More specifically, we are yet to thoroughly theorise how through their conceptualisation and construction, infrastructures extend beyond themselves to shift the very nature of cities that contain them. This thesis maps the controversy of the Blanka tunnel in Prague, where infrastructure becomes a lens through which we read the city and its constant changes. This helps us explain how a city like Prague negotiates to maintain its historic and cultural character as a modern metropolis. The pragmatic approach and ANT methodology do not see the tunnel as a stable artefact that is influenced purely by political decision-making, financial constraints or technical challenges. We refrain from using predefined explanatory frameworks or panoramic views and employ a series of oligoptica (Latour and Hermant 1996) - narrow windows that allow us to see specific aspects of its making in detail. We map the key actors and concerns of the controversy and see the network of the tunnel unfold, revealing various groups of human and non-human entities. Locating ourselves in specific places of practice, we witness how the tunnel is designed, managed, observed, controlled, discussed, and argued for, and we capture its making through as many voices and actions as possible. We follow the many planning and technical reports, road design manuals, bills of quantities, guidelines and standards, and technical drawings, allowing us to trace how the design and technology of the tunnel inform the re-making of Prague. By documenting the implementation of adopted technical design solutions that respond to the key issues of the controversy, we analyse how the discursive challenges of the project are translated onto its technical/material level and vice versa. The thesis contributes to conceptual and methodological discussions on the infrastructuring of cities, drawing on mobilities, the material turn, STS and ANT. By tracing a live infrastructural project in the making the thesis shows that the making of Blanka is an infrastructuring of Prague. This means that the procedures and actions involving its planning and implementation are not just happening in space and time but produce space and time as they transform and question the very nature of the city.

Date of Award	31 Dec 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Albena Yaneva (Supervisor) & Graham Haughton (Supervisor)