The Pol­i­tics of Pipes: Water and the 'Mod­ern Infra­struc­tural Ideal' in Manila and Los Angeles

The pro­vi­sion of water in large met­ro­pol­i­tan areas is often con­sid­ered to be best gov­erned by a cen­tral­ized author­ity, capa­ble of pro­vid­ing stan­dard­ized ser­vices across an otherwise-varied land­scape - what Gra­ham and Mar­vin refer to as the "mod­ern infra­struc­tural ideal." Yet, in many cases, this ideal has not been fully achieved. In Manila, the site of the world's largest water pri­va­ti­za­tion project, ser­vice to low-income areas has improved sig­nif­i­cantly in the post-privatization era. But whereas expan­sion of a water util­ity typ­i­cally involves the replace­ment of infor­mal providers, the expe­ri­ence in Manila demon­strates that the rapid con­nec­tion of low-income areas actu­ally hinges, in part, on the selec­tive inclu­sion and exclu­sion of these smaller actors. Mean­while, in Los Ange­les County, nearly one hun­dred pub­lic and pri­vate enti­ties coex­ist to man­age and dis­trib­ute potable water, cre­at­ing a com­plex and frag­mented hydroso­cial net­work. In both cases, the mul­ti­tude of actors involved - each with their own geo­gra­phies, poli­cies, and con­fig­u­ra­tions - sug­gests that uneven­ness is inher­ent in the pro­vi­sion of water.

Speaker: Debbie Cheng