The public library and the futures of social infrastructure

Abstract

The current abundance of geographical research on social infrastructure has drawn renewed attention to the enduring importance of a range of public services, including the public library. However, these works have not engaged at length with the infrastructural futures of such services, neither in their ongoing vulnerability, nor with what they may illuminate, or already contain of possible and more radical urban futures. This commentary considers the future of social infrastructure: the viability of the physical spaces themselves, and the need for the theoretical concept to engage more explicitly with questions of temporality.