Infrastructuring the Imaginary: How Sea-Level Rise Comes to Matter in the San Francisco Bay Area

Information infrastructures have become integral components of policy debates related to climate change and sustainability. To better understand this relationship, we studied the tools used to forecast and respond to sea-level rise in the San Francisco Bay Area, where active debates on how to best prepare for this issues are underway and will have important consequences for the future of the region. Drawing on 18 months of qualitative research we argue that competing visions of the problem are intimately intertwined with different elements of information infrastructure and beliefs about the role of data in policymaking. Current infrastructure in the region, far from being a neutral actor in these debates, exhibits an infrastructural bias, privileging some approaches over others. We identify some of the tactics that community organizations deploy to subvert the claims of sea-level rise experts and advance their own perspective, which prioritizes considerations of justice over technical expertise.