Sengupta, U., Ren, Y., 2022.

Architecture, Sanitation and COVID-19

Cities of the Global South are infrastructurally diverse and entangled with multiple coexisting infrastructural formations, be they planned or unplanned. They offer unique opportunities to study, design, intervene in and develop systemic approaches related to infrastructural configurations encompassed by the processes and dynamics of urban infrastructuring. In this chapter, we draw from the contributions to this volume to propose that infrastructural scholarship and practice contribute to the production and reproduction of potentially violent forms of infrastructuring. Such infrastructuring carries implications for human health, human well-being and sustainability more broadly. We argue that whether and how infrastructuring can act to transform infrastructural configurations and entanglements towards greater sustainability is fundamentally an ethical question. We suggest that an ethico-politics of care should be embedded in systems approaches to infrastructuring in both research and practice. To become sustainable, infrastructuring (as a transformative process) must be aligned with the ethico-political position of caring.