This programme supports interdisciplinary research across the social and engineering sciences and the humanities looking to explore how formal and informal infrastructures interact to affect the well-being of people in cities across the Global South.

Urban infrastructure connects all domains of city life; objects, facilities, capacities, flows, possibilities, social relationships, expertise, places to live and ways of getting by. What cities are able to hold together, how they do so, and whether these operations are inclusive are crucial considerations. Interdisciplinary, innovative research which brings together the expertise and methods of different communities of knowledge and practice is needed to inform policy thinking and interventions aimed at making cities more liveable, especially in the Global South where stresses related to rapid urbanisation are particularly pronounced. Urban infrastructure also sits at the interface between top-down (official-government) initiated imperatives and bottom-up responses to the challenges that arise in surviving shifting conditions in the everyday life of communities as cities expand. This provides an opportunity to develop a broader picture of infrastructure – one that meaningfully connects and explains the technicalities of infrastructure provision with the broader political, economic, historical and socio-cultural context