Infrastructure governance in the post-networked city: state-led, high-tech sanitation in Addis Ababa’s condominium housing

Liza Rose Cirolia, Tesfaye Hailu, Julia King, Nuno da Cruz and Jo Beall

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Ethiopia’s mass-scale subsidized housing delivery programme has driven the rapid expansion of middle-income, mid-rise settlements on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, requiring the provision of infrastructure to newly developed areas. In the case of the Kotari housing project, established sanitation systems were deemed inappropriate for the site, resulting in the deployment of novel technology, a Membrane Bioreactor (MBR). Such decentralised technologies contribute to the heterogenous infrastructure configurations which characterise Addis Ababa’s sanitation landscape, reflected not only in material configurations but also in how they are governed. In this paper, we use the concept of ‘infrastructure interfaces’ as an analytical device to identify the key material connection points in the system. Working across scales, we scrutinise the governance arrangements at these critical junctures: the household, the block, the condominium, and the city. Our analysis challenges established understandings of infrastructural heterogeneity driven by the private sector, either through financialized elite infrastructures or informal survivalist practices. In Kotari, the state is the driver and the target is the lower middle class. Centring the state in these infrastructure configurations provides nuance to our understanding of how heterogeneity emerges. Our methodological approach accounts for governance at various scales, providing fresh insights into the relationality of infrastructure, particularly the human/technology interface and infrastructural failures. The case shows the importance of transcending binary readings of infrastructure configurations, such as on/off grid, state/private and formal/informal. Future work on the post-network city must go beyond simply denigrating or valorising alternative modes of service delivery.

Keywords: Ethiopia; decentralisation; heterogeneity; hybridity; housing; infrastructure interfaces; post-networked city; sub-Saharan Africa; urbanisation; wastewater (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2021-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-isf and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 1, November, 2021, 39(7), pp. 1606 - 1624. ISSN: 2399-6544

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/111053/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:111053

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().