That's what she said - interpretations of infrastructure in democracy

Infrastructure has become a key analytical concept in academic discourse because it provides a lens into human lives and society. Infrastructure is also one of the biggest investments for governments around the world. This paper undertakes an examination of public infrastructure planning in relation to normative frameworks of feminist epistemology and deliberative democracy to better understand the implications for democratic practice, pluralism, diversity and inclusion. Public participation is a core principle of democracy that continues to gain importance in the planning and delivery of public infrastructure. Infrastructure sites have been defined as spaces of power and contestation and democracies like Australia, champion public engagement, collaboration and place-based solutions to build legitimacy and trust for government decisions about public infrastructure. Despite this increased focus on participation and engagement however, public infrastructure projects continue to experience delays, or even cancellations, due to public opposition and mistrust, raising questions about where a disjunction may exist and how it can be addressed. At present, solutions mainly look to improve the quality, channels and methods of public participation and engagement as infrastructure is planned and delivered. This paper however proposes to seek answers in the deliberations that occur during the planning cycle, to understand how infrastructure is framed and understood. It examines how norms of rationality may apply and considers to what extent these interpretations of infrastructure are pluralistic and truly representative of situated and embodied knowledge. This research paper will also bring theoretical debates about participation and trust into an area of practice, using examples from infrastructure projects in Australia. It will be written from the positionality of a scholar who is a person of colour, who identifies as female, and who currently works as a practitioner in infrastructure in Australia, a country she migrated to and now resides in as a visible minority. She was born and brought up in countries recovering from British colonialism and now lives in one that was also once a colony. While her study is in English, the colonial language, her positionality brings elements of a Global South sensibility to her research in the Global North.