Waste Is Information: Infrastructure Legibility and Governance

— —

Dietmar Offenhuber (Assistant Professor, Northeastern University) Carlo Ratti (Director, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Waste Is Information

Infrastructure Legibility and Governance

Dietmar Offenhuber (Assistant Professor, Northeastern University), Carlo Ratti (Director, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

$79.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

MIT Press
05 December 2023

Archaeological methodology & techniques; Impact of science & technology on society; Waste management; Nuclear issues; Urban & municipal planning

Series: Infrastructures

The relationship between infrastructure governance and the ways we read and represent waste systems, examined through three waste tracking and participatory sensing projects.

The relationship between infrastructure governance and the ways we read and represent waste systems, examined through three waste tracking and participatory sensing projects.

Waste is material information. Landfills are detailed records of everyday consumption and behavior; much of what we know about the distant past we know from discarded objects unearthed by archaeologists and interpreted by historians. And yet the systems and infrastructures that process our waste often remain opaque. In this book, Dietmar Offenhuber examines waste from the perspective of information, considering emerging practices and technologies for making waste systems legible and how the resulting datasets and visualizations shape infrastructure governance. He does so by looking at three waste tracking and participatory sensing projects in Seattle, S o Paulo, and Boston.

Offenhuber expands the notion of urban legibility-the idea that the city can be read like a text-to introduce the concept of infrastructure legibility. He argues that infrastructure governance is enacted through representations of the infrastructural system, and that these representations stem from the different stakeholders' interests, which drive their efforts to make the system legible. The Trash Track project in Seattle used sensor technology to map discarded items through the waste and recycling systems; the Forager project looked at the informal organization processes of waste pickers working for Brazilian recycling cooperatives; and mobile systems designed by the city of Boston allowed residents to report such infrastructure failures as potholes and garbage spills. Through these case studies, Offenhuber outlines an emerging paradigm of infrastructure governance based on a complex negotiation among users, technology, and the city.

By: Dietmar Offenhuber (Assistant Professor Northeastern University)
Foreword by: Carlo Ratti (Director Professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262549967
ISBN 10: 0262549964
Series: Infrastructures
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 05 December 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Dietmar Offenhuber is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Art + Design at Northeastern University, with a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. He is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard metaLAB and was recently a fellow at the Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities. He is the author of the award-winning Waste Is Information (MIT Press).