ABSTRACT
This chapter interrogates the notion of affective infrastructures in the context of knowledge co-production as pivotal for expanding the methodological repertoires of urban design. This notion refers to the unspoken relations that sustain trajectories of joint research endeavours. The ongoing dialogue between sociological theories of affect and postcolonial analyses of urban infrastructures has generated interest in socio-spatial interactions that escape or exceed language-based communication. In this chapter, we ask how relationships between people and infrastructures, which are dynamic and constantly reimagined, can create possibilities in unstable urban contexts. We argue that affective infrastructures allow knowledge co-producers to develop contingent human relations to navigate shared vulnerabilities and enable the collective reimagining of urban possibilities in local contexts of informality. We examine the role of affective infrastructures in supporting the social affordance of urban spaces and propelling the imagination of alternative urban futures by linking agency, interdependence, and mediation of reflexive knowledge of places. Two examples of affective infrastructures from Kampala and Lima outline potential possibilities opened through the co-production of urban design knowledge and its materialisation in urban public spaces. These affective infrastructures in turn support building trust and solidarity, facilitate co-learning, enable care, and encourage political participation to envision transformative governance practices.
