‘Everyday infrastructural planning’ in the urban global south:

Urbanisation without or beyond large infrastructure?

[OR]

Access to water and service coproduction in peri-urban areas

Prof. Adriana Allen

UCL Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU)

(a.allen@ucl.ac.uk)

Urban service delivery: the technical is political

Roundtable, Monday 26th January 2015

Overseas Development Institute, London

Almost half of the Sub-

Saharan households

(rural and urban) that

according to

WHO/UNICEF 'have

access to improved

water supply', spend

more than half an

hour a day collecting

water

Total expenditures are less than half of what would be required to achieve the MDGs regionally: More than USD16.5 billion per year or 2.6% of the regional GDP

% urban population with pipe to premises

0

20

40

60

80

100

Libe

ria

Cen

tral A

frica

n Rep

ublic

Nig

eria

Togo

Mad

agasc

ar

Rwan

da

Sierra

Leo

ne

Uga

nda

Moz

ambi

que

Burkina

Fas

oDRC

Tanza

nia

Banglad

esh

Cam

eroo

n

Benin

Mal

awi

Angola

Indo

nesia

Nig

er

Ethiopi

a

Kenya

Indi

a

Vietn

am

A broken nexus: Infrastructure ≠ access to services ≠ entitled citizenship

Source: Satterthwaite, D. Personal communication Nov 2013.

Slummification / Yuppification

Where is the locus of this broken nexus?

[Peri]urbanisation without infrastructure

“a private estate set in delightful seclusion”

East Legon Hills, Accra

Old Fadama, Accra

An ecological mosaic of ‘natural’, ‘productive’ and ‘urban’ sub-systems

Affected by material and energy flows demanded by both rural and urban areas.

Key role in the extraction and replenishment of water resources and acts as an environmental sink

Heterogeneous and fast changing socio-

economic structures

Mix of farming, residential and industrial land uses.

Mix of newcomers and long-established dwellers with different outlooks + Diversified livelihoods strategies

Fragmented institutional landscape

Made worse by rapid change and unclear boundaries and jurisdictions.

Peri-urban landscapes are typically characterised by highly asymmetric relations spatially, socially and in the way in which nature is metabolized

“the kidney of the city”

“We are so close to the city,

yet so far from the pipes”

East Kolkata Wetlands: ‘Free’ ecosystem services versus land speculation

Sewage constitutes a resource to cultivate fish while organic solid waste serves as fertiliser for vegetable plots that are also partially irrigated with sewage that has undergone treatment through a long-term established system of

aquaculture ponds.

Muddling through the ‘water wheel’

Source: Allen, Dávila and Hofmann (2006).

Policies embody

naturalised

myths.

Difference

between legal

and legitimate

rights – popular

struggles are

for legitimacy!

The production and reproduction of policy myths: The ‘push’ for water neoliberalisation

Water neoliberalisation

as the outcome of

three overlapping

processes:

commodification

(market exchange of

processes previously

outside marketised

spheres),

commercialisation

(adoption of

commercial principles

and methods) and

privatisation (changes

in resource and utility

ownership) (Bakker,

2005)

A landscape of everyday planning practices

Everyday planning

through coping

Everyday

entrepreneurial planning

Everyday collective planning

under ‘episodic consensus’

Everyday planning under

institutionalized service

coproduction

The ‘dialectics of scarcity’ in Lima

Long history of water problems & elitist supply

Aggravated by the massive urban expansion since the 1940s and sporadic, ill managed investments

Struggle for water as part of the consolidation of new settlements (barriadas)

Over-reliance on three small rivers, groundwater and, increasingly on the Andean glaciers

Water service problems reflect a ‘dualistic’ megacity

“water is never scarce in absolute terms but under specific

allocative and institutional circumstances” (Ioris, 2011)

1970-80s: Urbanismo popular autogestionario

1990s up today: A different story …

Mega-infrastructural development in Lima

‘Without water there is no democracy’

Over USD 2.3 million committed by SEDAPAL to large water infrastructural projects in 2007

The ‘old settler’

the ‘newcomer’ the ‘tourist’

and the ‘corrupt’

The ‘urbanisation of hope’

Everyday planning through coping mechanisms

and entrepreneurialism : The endless

internalisation and externalisation of risk

Maps of Nueva Generacion showing sub-division of lands for the attainment of a

certified map with existing plots and boundary. Produced by ESD participants.

Planning the occupation of the

slopes

Purpose:

1. Avoid outsiders/ insiders from claiming land.

2. Reaching critical mass to request basic water

provision points from water utility

3. Safeguard generation of funds to support

improvements.

.

Collective everyday planning under

neglectful tolerance

Mal-distribution=

Mis-recognition

The politics of

non-provision

RRRedistribution and

recognition are two

indivisible dimensions of

justice

Curbing ‘informal’ growth: Smart or unjust

urbanisation?

“We are so close to the city,

yet so far from the pipes”

From Zero Growth

Pact to Payment for

Environmental and

Hydrological

Services (PSAH)

programme

Milpa Alta, Mexico D.F.

Exploring the interpenetration between distribution

and recognition through parity of participation

Objective preconditions related to the material inequalities and

economic dependencies that hinder the parity of participation.

Inter-subjective preconditions associated with the social, political

& institutional status of those involved in participatory practices and

how these affect their ability to engage in meaningful deliberation

Participation:

Instrumentalisation

or transformation?

‘Authorised’ ‘Un-authourised’

Reformed public-

private utilities

Small independent

providers

Community-led service provision

Institutionalised

co-production platforms

Water user

associations

Water

technical

fora

Water

committees

?

?

?

??

Everyday planning under institutionalized service coproduction in Caracas

Infrastructural

investments prioritise

the practical and

strategic needs of the

urban and periurban

poor

“Communities as

engineers”

Junctures and disjunctures in the governance of urban and

periurban service provision

Source: Allen, Dávila and Hofmann (2006).

The geography of urban

infrastructure matters and it

increasingly has little to do with

‘networked’ urban futures

The search for urban

sustainability is increasingly being

driven through a dispositif of

differential sustainability

Moving beyond environmental

injustice as maldistribution:

Practical needs & strategic needs

Searching for more agile &

progressive institutionalized forms

of state engagement with

everyday infrastructural planning

Testing and translating research into action Small town water and sanitation delivery: Taking a wider view Working with Building Partnerships for Development (BPD) and WaterAid, funded by Gates Foundation (Bangladesh, Madagascar, Nepal, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda) Moving down the ladder: Governance and sanitation that works for the urban poor. Study commissioned by the International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) Rural-Urban Transformations and wastewater management. Desk study and online course with UNESCO-IHE

Re-conceptualisating urban water transitions

Translocal learning for water justice: Peri-urban pathways in India,

Tanzania and Bolivia (WatJust) (ISSC)

https://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/dpu/water-justice Urban water poverty halfway through the Decade of Water for Life.

Interdisciplinary dialogue and publication within UCL GCSC

Cities, Decoupling and Urban Infrastructures Report of the International Resource Panel (IRP), commissioned by the

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Ecosystem services of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Accra (Ghana) ESD MSc in partnership with International Water

Management Institute (IWMI), Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor and People’s Dialogue

Learning Lima (www.learninglima.net)

www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/dpu