Doctoral Dissertation Research: Evaluating Risk and Uncertainty in Urban Infrastructural Planning

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Large-scale infrastructural planning proposes that increased investment in a nation's basic systems and services might bring about a transformed future for its citizenry. Yet, previous research on governmental investment plans stresses that the futures promised by ambitious state-planning often remain out of reach, given that expansive projects are rarely completed on time or as according to plan. Thus, state planning might equally be a source of hope and a source of fear for people impacted by the protracted implementation processes inherent to complex plans. With proposals to invest in the rebuilding of national infrastructure growing in popularity, both in the United States and in industrializing nations across the globe, an understanding of the ultimate effects of investment in long-term, large-scale infrastructure planning is urgently needed. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in scientific methods of rigorous data collection and analysis, the project would engage a wider audience in the scientific process, and broadly disseminate its findings to organizations invested in optimizing urban infrastructural planning. Harvard University doctoral student Courtney T. Wittekind, advised by Dr. Jean Comaroff, will explore what strategies for investment, speculation, and planning are employed in the context of a large-scale infrastructural plan. Extended ethnographic research will be conducted in the city of Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Myanmar's cultural and economic center. As the site for an impressive state-led plan that proposes to expand the city by over 20,000 acres, Yangon is an ideal location for the study of the advantages and disadvantages of large-scale state-led planning. The researcher will focus on the Yangon region's southwestern outskirts, including three townships targeted for redevelopment by this city expansion plan. There, she will ask two sets of questions about the effects of large-scale infrastructural planning. The first set asks about the relationship between everyday decisions made by those living in the Yangon region's southwest, and their perception of the city expansion plan, its progress, and future potential. The second set of questions contextualizes the first within Myanmar's ongoing democratic transition, asking how people's impressions of municipal and regional planning relate to their perceptions of national politics. The researcher will collect data through ethnographic research, including participant observation, household surveys, semi-structured and unstructured interviews, and archival analysis. The conclusions of this research will provide new insights into the relationships between planning occurring at the level of the individual, the municipality, and the nation, while also helping policymakers and civil society organizations better assess the promise of infrastructural investment, in light of its possible risks. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.