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In this article, we focus on the mutually interrelated processes of constructing urban retrofit and the city-region as a scale for action. Urban retrofitting – the systematic reconfiguration of sociotechnologies of energy in the existing built environment and infrastructure – is critical to the achievement of ambitious carbon reduction targets. To realise the ecological and economic benefits of retrofit cities are continually searching for a 'fix' that allows them to upscale retrofit from a largely ad hoc and piecemeal activity of repair and maintenance into strategic and systemic retrofit programmes that transform existing cities. This article is primarily concerned with understanding the politics and purpose of such experimentation and analyses efforts to integrate retrofit and governing in Greater Manchester. To do this, the article draws on a programme of interviews with national, city-regional, local authority and neighbourhood scale actors, documentary analysis and observations. We address on who is constructing retrofit responses in Greater Manchester and also why they are being constructed: Is it to transform the city-region and, if so, in what ways? And ask, in what ways are governance frameworks mediating and interpreting wider sets of global pressures at city-regional scale and which of these – economic, ecological, governing, social justice, etc. – pressures are more and less prioritised? We set out dominant city-regional responses (ON), alternative responses (IN) and assess the possibilities for integrated responses (WITH).

This paper develops a theoretical and conceptual understanding of the role of space and politics in governing relationships between cities, critical energy, water, waste and transportation infrastructures and resource flows. It presents a view of cities as dynamic, experimental social spaces underpinned by infrastructural unevenness with variable provision of and access to resource flows. An emerging set of new pressures to the ways in which cities, infrastructure and resource flows are organised under conditions of neo-liberal urbanism is reviewed. The paper then reflects theoretically and conceptually on the ways in which these pressures can be appropriated in terms of the re-organisation of city, networked infrastructure and resource flows as predicated on tensions between transformative reconfiguration and obduracy from historically produced social and institutional coalitions.

Earth scientists now argue that the current geological era should be re-named the anthropocene to better reflect the impact of humans in reshaping planetary ecology. Urbanism encompasses the social, economic and political processes most closely linked to the rapid transformation of habitats, destruction of ecologies, over use of materials and resources, and the production of pollutants and carbon emissions that threaten planetary terracide. Consequently, the key concern for 21st-century global urbanism is to critically understand the wider societal and material implications of strategic responses to the pressures of climate change, resource constraint and their interrelationships with the global economic crisis. Eco-cities, eco-towns, eco city-states, floating cities and the like represent particular, and increasingly pre-eminent, forms of response. These types of response appear to promote the construction of ecologically secure premium enclaves that by-pass existing infrastructure and build internalised ecological resource flows that attempt to guarantee strategic protection and further economic reproduction. If this is so this raises difficult issues as to what is left for those outside of these privileged enclaves. The search for more equitable and just forms of response requires understanding what types of alternatives to such bounded and divisible ecological security zones could be developed that contribute towards the building of more inclusive collective planetary security. In this respect, the aim of this paper is to ask: what styles of urbanism do these transformations contribute to the production of, what are the consequences of these emerging styles and what alternatives to them are being constructed?

The increasingly complex challenges of making water management more sustainable require a critical and detailed understanding of the social organisation of water. This paper examines the hitherto neglected role that 'intermediary' organisations play in reshaping the relations between the provision and use of water and sanitation services. In response to new regulatory, environmental, social, and commercial pressures the relationships between water utilities, consumers, and regulators are changing, creating openings for both new and existing organisations to take on intermediary functions. Drawing on recent EU-funded research we provide the first systematic analysis of intermediary organisations in the European water sector, examining the contexts of their emergence, the ways they work, the functions they perform, and the impacts they can have. With a combination of conceptual and empirical analysis we substantiate and elaborate the case for appreciating the often hidden work of intermediaries. We caution, however, against over-simplistic conclusions on harnessing this potential, highlighting instead the need to reframe perspectives on how water is organised to contemplate actor constellations and interactions beyond the common triad of provider, consumer, and regulator. ; Peer Reviewed

This paper studies the performativity of smart mobility expectations in envisioning urban futures. Smart mobility, or ICT-enabled transport services, are increasingly considered a necessary ingredient for sustainability transitions in cities. Expectations of smart mobility's contribution to such a transition are constituted by a strong belief in the transformative potential of data collection and use. These knowledge claims embedded in smart mobility expectations tend to be unchallenged, yet contribute to a particular future vision of urban mobility. Our empirical analysis, which draws on two empirical smart cycling case studies in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and Bordeaux, France, underlines the politics of such smart knowledge claims in two smart cycling projects and identifies distinct processes as to how such claims may shape and structure mobility futures. We observe intimate entanglements between what is being developed in terms of technologies and services; and the societal needs that the projects' expectations promise to fulfil. At the same time, we witness a disentanglement of these interconnected knowledge claims when projects unfold, leaving the promise of (un)achieved societal benefits out of view. Indeed, smart knowledge claims carried strong inherent legitimacy in the cases studied, thereby risking to exclude non-smart alternatives.

This paper studies the performativity of smart mobility expectations in envisioning urban futures. Smart mobility, or ICT-enabled transport services, are increasingly considered a necessary ingredient for sustainability transitions in cities. Expectations of smart mobility's contribution to such a transition are constituted by a strong belief in the transformative potential of data collection and use. These knowledge claims embedded in smart mobility expectations tend to be unchallenged, yet contribute to a particular future vision of urban mobility. Our empirical analysis, which draws on two empirical smart cycling case studies in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and Bordeaux, France, underlines the politics of such smart knowledge claims in two smart cycling projects and identifies distinct processes as to how such claims may shape and structure mobility futures. We observe intimate entanglements between what is being developed in terms of technologies and services; and the societal needs that the projects' expectations promise to fulfil. At the same time, we witness a disentanglement of these interconnected knowledge claims when projects unfold, leaving the promise of (un)achieved societal benefits out of view. Indeed, smart knowledge claims carried strong inherent legitimacy in the cases studied, thereby risking to exclude non-smart alternatives.

Bruce Sterling's quote vividly captures some of the knowledge politics involved in smart urbanism. Or at least, the concerns critics raise against the Smart-City vision: the way urban processes are reduced to codified, inter-operable (and tradeable) information; whose processing through calculation and inference produces ostensibly authoritative knowledge about complex cities; and whose proprietary characteristics cedes power to 'smart-city' service providers (Greenfield 2013). At the same time, however, technological advances in sensors, data handling, internet platforms, ubiquitous computation and evermore imaginative visualisation permits wider access to information about cities and opens up the possibility for unprecedented citizen involvement in urban processes.Barcelona was an appropriate place for Bruce Sterling to make his remarks. He did so on a conference platform that later that day saw then-Mayor Xavier Trias commit Barcelona to becoming a smart, self-sufficient city within 40 years (see later). Under Mayor Trias, the city government was working hard to promote Barcelona as a world-leading smart city, and with considerable success (Continente et al. 2016). A wide variety of smart-city installations had been