Spatial Reconfiguration

RESEARCH OVERVIEW

A move from centralized to decentralized or distributed infrastructures necessarily involves spatial reconfiguration, as it involves physically arranging infrastructure systems in new ways. Spatial reconfiguration for infrastructure transitions extends beyond the physical systems themselves to the urban form that surrounds them. Optimizing the performance of central or decentralized systems may require arranging the physical layout of the city in new ways, emphasizing different densities, patterns of land use, and distributions of population. How a physical infrastructure system is spatially laid out, in addition to how the urban fabric around physical infrastructure systems is spatially laid out, can both inhibit or promote desired societal outcomes encompassing environmental sustainability as well as human health, wellbeing, and livability.

The network’s research efforts around spatial reconfiguration are focused on understanding what configurations of infrastructure systems themselves, as well as what configurations of urban form, best shape the effectiveness of distributed infrastructures across sectors and at different scales.