Suchergebnisse

Scholars have called for increased attention to the practices through which residents of southern cities create and use infrastructure. The failures and disruptions of many particular artefacts have meant that people often develop multiple ways to access water, electricity, or transportation, even if all of them have limitations. For sanitation, thinking through heterogeneous infrastructure configurations can help us to see connections between toilets, and the reasons for maintaining access to different types of toilets, given their different risks and benefits. In this paper, we focus on plots in Lilongwe with both indoor flush-toilets and backyard latrines, and the lived experiences of people as they navigate choices about the use of these toilets. The presence of on and off-grid toilets is rooted in colonial urban form, yet is perpetuated – and proliferates in new places – as residents face a number of constraints, including most recently recurrent water shortages due to droughts. We consider both how this configuration challenges official imaginaries of urban sanitation, and how it helps residents to address different risks and sanitation needs. Drawing on the experience of Lilongwe, we reflect on what can be learnt from this heterogeneous infrastructural configuration in terms of planning for more resilient water and sanitation services in Global South cities and beyond.

Recent scholarship has called for widening investigations of cities through the analysis of everyday practices that shape urban life. Critical water studies have contributed to this emerging debate by using an everyday lens to document the diversity of practices of accessing and distributing water. Thus far, little attention has been given to the everyday practices of setting water prices and how these shape access. We contribute to this gap by investigating the practices of setting prices in two distinct service modalities within Lilongwe's water supply network. Our study reveals the hybrid and dynamic arrangements that shape pricing regimes, formed through the formal and informal negotiations on subsidies, incentives, tariff increases and distribution of profits. In these negotiations, the decision makers opportunistically mobilise their different and at times conflicting mandates (business and social) and guiding principles (equity versus cost-recovery). We conclude that pricing regimes are the outcome of intertwined structural processes and everyday practices that exacerbate uneven water flows in the city.