Assembling Policy: Transantiago, Human Devices, and the Dream of a World-Class Society (Infrastructures)

Policymakers are regularly confronted by complaints that ordinary people are left out of the planning and managing of complex infrastructure projects. In this book, Sebastián Ureta argues that humans, both individually and collectively, are always at the heart of infrastructure policy; the issue is how they are brought into it. Ureta develops his argument through the case of Transantiago, a massive public transportation project in the city of Santiago, proposed in 2000, launched in 2007, and in 2012 called "the worst public policy ever implemented in our country" by a Chilean government spokesman. Ureta examines Transantiago as a policy assemblage formed by an array of heterogeneous elements — including, crucially, "human devices," or artifacts and practices through which humans were brought into infrastructure planning and implementation. Ureta traces the design and operation of Transantiago through four configurations: crisis, infrastructuration, disruption, and normalization. In the crisis phase, humans were enacted both as consumers and as participants in the transformation of Santiago into a "world-class" city, but during infrastructuration the "active citizen" went missing. The launch of Transantiago caused huge disruptions, in part because users challenged their role as mere consumers and instead enacted unexpected human devices. Resisting calls for radical reform, policymakers insisted on normalizing Transantiago, transforming it into a permanent failing system. Drawing on Chile's experience, Ureta argues that if we understand policy as a series of heterogeneous assemblages, infrastructure policymaking would be more inclusive, reflexive, and responsible. An examination of how human beings are brought into the planning of complex infrastructure projects, through analysis of a controversial public transportation project.Policymakers are regularly confronted by complaints that ordinary people are left out of the planning and managing of complex infrastructure projects. In this book, Sebastián Ureta argues that humans, both individually and collectively, are always at the heart of infrastructure policy; the issue is how they are brought into it. Ureta develops his argument through the case of Transantiago, a massive public transportation project in the city of Santiago, proposed in 2000, launched in 2007, and in 2012 called “the worst public policy ever implemented in our country” by a Chilean government spokesman. Ureta examines Transantiago as a policy assemblage formed by an array of heterogeneous elements—including, crucially, “human devices,” or artifacts and practices through which humans were brought into infrastructure planning and implementation. Ureta traces the design and operation of Transantiago through four configurations: crisis, infrastructuration, disruption, and normalization. In the crisis phase, humans were enacted both as consumers and as participants in the transformation of Santiago into a “world-class” city, but during infrastructuration the “active citizen” went missing. The launch of Transantiago caused huge disruptions, in part because users challenged their role as mere consumers and instead enacted unexpected human devices. Resisting calls for radical reform, policymakers insisted on normalizing Transantiago, transforming it into a permanent failing system. Drawing on Chile's experience, Ureta argues that if we understand policy as a series of heterogeneous assemblages, infrastructure policymaking would be more inclusive, reflexive, and responsible. An examination of how human beings are brought into the planning of complex infrastructure projects, through analysis of a controversial public transportation project. Policymakers are regularly confronted by complaints that ordinary people are left out of the planning and managing of complex infrastructure projects. In this book, Sebastin Ureta argues that humans, both individually and collectively, are always at the heart of infrastructure policy; the issue is how they are brought into it. Ureta develops his argument through the case of Transantiago, a massive public transportation project in the city of Santiago, proposed in 2000, launched in 2007, and in 2012 called the worst public policy ever implemented in our country by a Chilean government spokesman. Ureta examines Transantiago as a policy assemblage formed by an array of heterogeneous elementsincluding, crucially, human devices, or artifacts and practices through which humans were brought into infrastructure planning and implementation. Ureta traces the design and operation of Transantiago through four crisis, infrastructuration, disruption, and normalization. In the crisis phase, humans were enacted both as consumers and as participants in the transformation of Santiago into a world-class city, but during infrastructuration the active citizen went missing. The launch of Transantiago caused huge disruptions, in part because users challenged their role as mere consumers and instead enacted unexpected human devices. Resisting calls for radical reform, policymakers insisted on normalizing Transantiago, transforming it into a permanent failing system. Drawing on Chile's experience, Ureta argues that if we understand policy as a series of heterogeneous assemblages, infrastructure policymaking would be more inclusive, reflexive, and responsible. "The absence of the general public from the planning of complex public infrastructures constitutes one of the most ubiquitous complaints against contemporary infrastructural policymaking and implementation. This book begins with the contention that such claims arise from an erroneous premise. Human beings, both individually and collectively, always lie at the heart of infrastructural policy. This means that the primary issue is not that humans are excluded, but rather when and how they are brought into infrastructural policymaking. Combining STS studies with post-structural theory, Ureta has written the first in-depth study of this topic, and he does so through a genealogical analysis of Transantiago. (Transantiago is a public transportation system in Santiago, Chile that was the result of a major public transportation system overhaul. The project was initially mired in various disasters owing to a myriad of infrastructural problems. Using smart city technologies, Transantiago promised to fully modernize the transportation system while in parallel transforming Santiago into a world-class city. But its beginnings in February 2007 were complete chaos and escalated into one of Chile's greatest controversies in the country's recent history. Challenging traditional approaches, the book looks at Transantiago as a policy assemblage formed by an array of heterogeneous elements, centrally among them the multiple artefacts and practices through which different kinds of human subjects were brought into infrastructure. Such "human devices" occupy central positions on such assemblages not only because they act as guidelines on the continual (re)assembling of infrastructures but also because through them particular ways of being human in contemporary societies are produced"--Publisher's description