Infrascape–how coevolving infrastructure and landscape shape water systems

Abstract

Ageing infrastructures and changing landscapes offer opportunities for renewal and adaptation. While traditionally seen as separate challenges, we think the integration of landscape and infrastructural renewal can bring about solutions better tailored to future needs. This paper provides a conceptual framework, called Infrascape, that can study and explain the interdependent infrastructure-landscape relationship. The Infrascape framework uses coevolution to combine nested levels of infrastructure (object, network, system) with a pattern-process perspective on landscape. We explored the analytical abilities of this framework in a case study of the Danube river landscape near Vienna, Austria. In our case study, the Infrascape framework helped identify multiple instances of coevolution between infrastructure and landscape. The coevolution of infrastructure and landscape featured in the Infrascape framework, clarifies the reciprocal implications of infrastructural renewal for landscape transformations and vice versa. As such, Infrascape forms an important contribution to the study and development of renewal strategies for sustainable infrastructure landscapes.