The Role Of Intermediaries In Designing Information Infrastructures In Strategic Niches: The Case Of A Sustainable Mobility Infrastructure Experiment In Berlin

This paper demonstrates the importance of intermediaries in the design of information infrastructures (II) in strategic niches, where urban infrastructures are prototyped to enable transitions to sustainable infrastructure. It shows how existing approaches to the study of such experiments fail to effectively address the design and development of information technology within them. Given the path dependency of initial design decisions in IIs, this literature gap leads to an under-appreciation of the influences that shape urban II design in the long run. The paper thus asks the question: “how are urban II prototypes designed?” In order to answer this question, the paper proposes that ICT within urban infrastructures can be conceptualized as information infrastructures (IIs), and that complex adaptive systems (CAS) provide a useful theoretical framework for examining the mechanisms that drive II design. In using this framework, the importance of facilitation and the intermediary in designing urban II prototypes becomes evident. The critical role of intermediation is illustrated through a case study of the development of an II in Berlin targeted with prototyping a sustainable mobility infrastructure, which integrates electric car-sharing into the public transport system. The paper contributes to the study of Green IT systems, providing an initial step in understanding the influence of intermediaries in urban II design, and also contributes to the examination of radical innovation processes in urban infrastructure and the development of so-called “Smart Cities”.