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Historically, water utilities have favored the modern ideal of piped infrastructure despite shortcomings in ensuring water access to the urban poor. Consequently, various state and non-state actors play influential roles in shaping water access to the poor through piped and non-piped socio-technical regimes of water provision. However, the existence of piped and non-piped water regimes and how they interact is often not seen as the work of municipalities, and as a result, a plethora of vital water services and actors are still largely ignored in water policy and decision-making. Drawing upon two empirical case studies in Delhi and Nairobi, this article foregrounds the role of conflict and cooperation in the interaction between piped and non-piped water regimes using an analytical framework that builds on Science Technology Studies and Urban Political Ecology.

DE OSYNLIGA SYSTEMEN handlar om den kommunala infrastrukturens historia i Sverige och utvecklingen från privata eller halvprivata arrangemang för gator, vatten och sanitet till fullt utvecklade offentliga infrasystem från mitten av 1800-talet och fram till idag. Vi är idag beroende av de tjänster som infrasystemen levererar och det är svårt att tänka sig ett modernt samhälle utan dem. Men när systemen väl var byggda tog vi dem snart för givna, vi glömde bort att sköta om dem, och infrastrukturen dras därför med en mycket omfattande underhållsskuld.

En annan sak som bidrar till svårigheterna med att hantera och underhålla de stora infrasystemen är att den tekniska och organisatoriska design som valdes när systemen byggdes påverkar våra möjligheter att anpassa dem till en förändrad verklighet. De fysiska nätverken är gigantiska konstruktioner med en historiskt betingad tröghet, där samhälle och företag investerat väldiga belopp.

Infrastrukturen är kort sagt djupt inbäddad i samhället och svår att förändra. Det här gör oss dåligt rustade att hantera framtidens klimatutmaningar. Men vi kommer inte undan att anpassa oss till ett förändrat klimat. Robusta och motståndskraftiga infrasystem är absolut nödvändiga för att mildra effekterna av klimatkrisen. Gator, vatten- och avloppssystem måste rustas upp och förstärkas.

Boken belyser de faktorer som har påverkat utformningen av de kommunala infrasystemen och hur den processen lämnat ett historiskt arv som fortfarande påverkar oss. Ambitionen är att synliggöra systemen. Hoppet är att historien ska ge uppslag till vad som ska göras idag för att framtidsäkra den kommunala infrastrukturen.

https://byggtjanst.se/bokhandel/hallbarhet/samhallsplanering/de-osynliga-systemen 

I den här rapporten presenteras en deskriptiv och kartläggande undersökning som kan betraktas som en förstudie till ett framtida mera djuplodande projekt.

Syftet är att genom litteraturstudier, kommunernas policydokument och intervjuer undersöka hur några kommuner i Mellansverige arbetar med klimatanpassningsåtgärder för sina VA-anläggningar. Den övergripande frågan gäller vilka drivkrafter och utmaningar som aktörerna har identifierat. Vi fokuserar på möjligheter och hinder för klimatanpassning av avloppssystemet inkluderande ledningar, pumpstationer och avloppsreningsverk i fyra kommuner i Mälardalsregionen.

Med hjälp av litteraturen och kommunernas policydokument (som till exempel vattentjänstplaner) beskriver vi det politiska, lagstiftningsmässiga och klimatrelaterade sammanhang som VA-organisationerna måste ta hänsyn till i arbetet med att klimatsäkra sina avloppssystem.

Resultaten visar att såväl kommunerna, i sin övergripande planering, och VA-organisationerna tar klimatfaran på allvar och arbetar med åtgärder för klimatanpassning av VA-sektorn, inklusive byggnader, och annan infrastruktur samt avloppsystemen. Generellt kan man säga att man inte hunnit särskilt långt med att implementera klimatåtgärderna. Planer och medvetenhet finns, men än så länge är man bara i början av det konkreta arbetet att klimatsäkra.

Åtgärderna består av flera olika aktiviteter som dels sker i samband med planering av nybebyggelse, dels i redan existerande områden inklusive den befintliga VA-infrastruktur som där finns. I områden som planeras att bebyggas kan dessa skyfallssäkras, till exempel genom att införa en klimatfaktor vid dimensionering av ledningssystem eller genom att ombesörja att det finns möjlighet att bygga någon form av anläggning för lokalt omhändertagande av dagvatten, så kallad LOD. I befintliga områden försöker man att identifiera områden som riskerar att drabbas av översvämningar vid skyfall eller långvarig nederbörd, i avrinningsområdena kan anläggningar för omhändertagande av ovidkommande vatten eventuellt byggas. Renovering av ledningar och brunnar samt installation av backventiler för att förhindra att avloppsvatten pressas bakåt i systemet vid skyfall eller långvarig nederbörd är relativt enkla åtgärder som nämns av de VA-organisationerna. En annan viktig åtgärd som nämns är att försöka skapa samarbete med andra berörda aktörer, det kan handla om ökat samarbete mellan olika förvaltningar i en kommun, samarbete mellan den kommunala VA-organisationen och förvaltningarna eller andra aktörer, exempelvis privata fastighetsägare.

I det avslutande kapitlet presenterar vi några övergripande slutsatser – främst vad gäller behovet av samarbete mellan olika organisationer inom sektorn – och pekar ut ett intressant område för framtida forskning.

Science and technology studies and urban political ecology have made important contributions to the understanding of water provision in the Global South. In this article we develop insights from these fields with the aim to understand the blurring boundaries of urban water regimes and their power relations mediated by actors, institutions and technology. Furthermore, we explore how urban water regimes can form a critical interface which is a form of institutional–actor space where formal and informal water regimes encounter each other through conflict and cooperation.

The contribution of this book lies in the historical comparison of infrastructural systems that are normally dealt with separately. The synthesis has been achieved by an extensive literature review of research from a wide range of various fields and by using prime sources. The comparative and long-term perspective allows the discovery of similarities and differences in the development of arrangements around streets, water and sanitation. Using the analytical lens of publicness, the author challenges the common belief that these three areas have always been public concerns or obligations, an assumption based on the fact that presently they are indeed public infrastructural systems. Furthermore, the evolution of municipal streets, water and sanitation has left a historical legacy which is still affecting the way these infrastructural systems are managed today.

Water and sewage (WS) systems are, like most grid based infrastructural systems, often centralised and hierarchical and the end user has almost no possibility to influence the technical standards, business models or system architecture. The preferred method for connecting new areas to the grid are underground water pipes and gravity flow for sewage. Thus, the WS system is “tightly coupled”. It is hard to change and conservative in its system culture, exhibiting a strong “momentum” or “path dependence”.

In this article we investigate an unusual case in the development of WS-systems. As a rule, WS-systems, as most infrastructural systems, develop gradually through incremental innovations, and system owners/utilities traditionally build their systems “from the inside out”. In our case, we investigate a situation where the end users took the initiative to connect a residential area, Aspvik, part of the municipality of Värmdö, outside Stockholm, Sweden, to the municipal grid and thus expand the WS-system, not from the inside out, but from the outside in.

Furthermore, we highlight another unusual feature: the role of a resident that acted as the “entrepreneur” in this process of WS-system expansion. The entrepreneur had unique trust building abilities in the local community, which the regime actor (the WS utility), could not match. Historically, inventor-entrepreneurs have been common, acting as “system builders” in the establishment phase of new infrastructural systems. However, entrepreneurs outside the regime are not common in the WS sector.

Although atypical in mature WS systems in developed countries, these types of local initiatives or hybrid solutions are common in developing countries. In this article, we argue that there are lessons to be learnt from our case, when dealing with system expansion processes both inside and outside the Global North.

This article deals with ongoing attempts to recover heat and greywater at property level, based on an in-depth study of Stockholm, Sweden. We explore different socio-technical development paths from now up until 2050 using a novel combination of on-property technology case-studies, actor studies and system-level scenario evaluation, based on Artificial Neural Networks modelling. Our results show that the more conservative scenarios work in favour of large-scale actors while the more radical scenarios benefit the property owners. However, in the radical scenarios we identify disruptive effects on a system level due to disturbance on wastewater treatment plants, where incoming wastewater can be critically low for up to 120 days per year. At the same time, net energy savings are relatively modest (7.5% of heat demand) and economic gains for property owners small or uncertain. Current policies at EU and national level around energy-efficient buildings risk being counter-productive in cases when they push property owners to install wastewater heat recovery technology which, in places like Stockholm, can create suboptimal outcomes at the system level. 

The first contribution of this report lies in the historical comparison of infrastructural systems that normally are dealt with separately. The synthesis has been achieved mainly by an extensive literature review of research from a wide range of various fields and by using prime sources to some extent. I have reinterpreted earlier results and brought together research areas that not so often communicate. The comparative and long-term perspective allows me to discover similarities and differences in the development of arrangements around streets, water, and sanitation. By using the analytical lens of publicness I can challenge the common belief that these three areas have always been public concerns or obligations. An assumption that relies on the fact that presently they indeed are public infrastructural systems. The second contribution is that I connect the historical development of these three sectors with research in medical, social, cultural, economic, and political history highlighting the most important contextual factors in society at large that has profoundly affected streets, water, and sanitation. I show how their respective evolution into public infrastructural systems has been strongly influenced by the strong Swedish tradition of local independence, by urbanization, demography, and industrialization, the municipal reform of 1862, and specifically for water and sanitation, the conflict between the private and the public; the social issue (concern for, and fear of, the working class and the poor); high mortality, Cholera epidemics and new perceptions of health and sickness; the Sanitary movement; the national health act of 1874. Finally, using theoretical concepts from the research traditions of Large Technical Systems (LTS, Hughes) I show how the evolution in municipal streets, water, and sanitation has left a historical legacy still affecting the way these infrasystems are managed today.

This study investigates the Jisomee Mita, an innovation based on ICT-powered metering at property level aimed at increasing access to piped water and sewerage in low-income areas in Nairobi, Kenya. We present empirical findings from field investigations and actor interviews, which are analysed using a novel framework drawing on studies of business models, sustainability transition, and the history of technology. We explore the critical interface between utility infrastructure and potential customers as a locus of innovation. We find that the property owners are the main benefactors of self-read meters, while low-income end-users still depend on overpriced and unsafe water. The Jisomee Mita thus cannot be called a pro-poor innovation in its current implementation and context.

This article examines innovation activities in water infrastructure in Nairobi, Kenya. The focus is on efforts by Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Corporation (NCWSC) to provide water services to the inhabitants in the informal areas of the city using an automated vending machine, or Pre-Paid Dispenser (PPD). In this study, we investigate what happens when a regime actor like NCWSC tries to implement an ambidextrous (two-handed) strategy: managing the existing system according to conventional practice and at the same time innovate in new technical solutions and business models to cater for unconnected users.Besides presenting our results, our aim in this article is also to introduce a research strategy for innovation studies in infrastructural systems in low-income urban areas. Three interconnected parts stand out as our contribution:First, we present a novel conceptual framework, by adding ideas from innovation studies to the Large Technical Systems approach. We investigate how regime actors can innovate to provide water to unconnected users, without expanding the system in a traditional way.Second, we propose a novel method for analysing and understanding innovation on the margins of the infrastructural system, or in our terms, innovation in the critical interface. Central to our method is, through empirical observation, to identify misalignment between the innovation (PPD) and contextual factors at the local level, where the innovation is implemented (interface misalignment), and misalignment between the innovation and the existing water regime (internal misalignment). We use a qualitative method and results forms as a basis for further research and starting point for regime actors in search of an improved ambidextrous strategy.Third, we analyse the innovation process per se. In the Nairobi case, we assess the ambidextrous innovation strategy, and claim that the PPD functions as an adapter in the critical interface, enabling the regime actors to operate in an environment of misalignment.