Infrastructure urbanism: Roadmaps for servicing unplanned urbanisation in emerging cities

Abstract

The extension of electricity, water and sanitation networks in developing cities seems to be a priori complicated by the deficiencies of urban planning. Nevertheless, on a daily basis, utility firms do install pipes and poles in unplanned settlements. The mechanisms they resort to in Delhi and Lima are here analysed as catalysts and revelators of an actually existing urbanism. Social, commercial and technical innovations help extend the coverage; institutional creativity and bricolage compensate for the inadequacy of the planning framework. The lack of planning of the built-up environment is actually not an obstacle to service extension; nonetheless, this process is suboptimal due to coordination deficits within the larger urban fabric. Two tools hence appear as key for servicing unplanned settlements: map generation and road preservation to spatially and institutionally articulate the actors' interventions. These instruments are promising to develop and consolidate unplanned urbanisation, and to pilot future growth. Therefore, they offer new perspectives for public action and urban planning in developing cities that deserve to be considered both scientifically and politically as a fruitful infrastructure urbanism.