Project Description

At the end of 2021, the United States passed the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act, allocating billions of dollars to rebuild America’s roads, bridges, and rails. This act aims to expand access to clean drinking water, ensure every American has high-speed internet, tackle the climate crisis, advance environmental justice, and invest in communities that have often been left behind (Whitehouse, 2021).

To fully realize these goals, we must clearly explain them and involve a broad population in the implementation. Many vulnerabilities in our systems exist at the socio-technical interface, requiring cooperation and communication to rebuild and strengthen America’s infrastructure.

This handbook highlights communicative practices and sets the stage for interdisciplinary scholars to address two growing concerns in the U.S.: helping the public better understand and value infrastructure, and helping organizations communicate more effectively about infrastructure. We integrate physical/built environment, technical, digital, and social policy forms of infrastructure, showing how communication humanizes and connects them. We emphasize equitable practices, sustainability, innovation, and repair as essential to generating new scholarly knowledge while making a real difference in people’s lives.

With over 30 chapters from top interdisciplinary scholars and community-engaged leaders, this handbook is poised to set a new interdisciplinary research agenda. We anticipate this being published in early 2026, so stay tuned for more updates as the handbook is finalized.