Rust never sleeps : infrastructural urbanism and planning for change

The research project explores the potential that exists when infrastructure is used to plan for cities that are experiencing economic restructuring. The North American Rust Belt is used as an example to better understand the process of economic restructuring, the possible consequences of this for municipalities, and for examples of how infrastructure can be used to repurpose, reconfigure and regenerate these places. Planning literature looking at decline and regional disparity informs this. The emerging theory of landscape urbanism and its understandings of infrastructure are used as a potential way of planning infrastructure for places that are experiencing change. Examples of planning initiatives that use infrastructure to plan in innovative ways are presented and analyzed, and a conceptual planning response is developed for Oshawa, Ontario which synthesizes this research.