Smart and disruptive infrastructures: Re-building knowledge on the informal city

Smart urbanism is an established research area in geography and the social sciences. We draw on ‘worlding-provincialising’ strategies identified in an Urban Studies Special Issue from February 2021 to explore how smart infrastructures, a form of smart urbanism, disrupt representations of informality and urban development in new and productive ways. Focussing on the disruptive or troublesome implications of smart infrastructures reveals site-level considerations for developing policy and practice, where acknowledging the nuanced context for its use can present opportunities for not only understanding energy transitions in the Global South, but also creates opportunities for cross-learning. Drawing on our collective insights on a solar mini-grid project in Qandu-Qandu, Cape Town, we sketch out three ways the disruptive aspects of solar energy can be helpful for re-building knowledge on the informal city by: (i) re-positioning notions of ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ infrastructure(s) in urban planning and policymaking; (ii) highlighting new avenues for citizen autonomy; and (iii) recasting the informal city as a site for continuous innovation and learning.