Urban Energy Landscapes 1108419429, 9781108419420

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Three Propositions about Urban Energy Landscapes
1.2 Heterogeneous Urban Energy Landscapes
1.3 Structure of the Argument
Part I: Understanding Urban Energy Landscapes
Chapter 2: Energy Transitions and Urban Infrastructure
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Urban Energy Transitions and the Politics of Infrastructure Regimes
2.3 The Mundane Life of Energy Infrastructures
2.4 The Political Ecology of Urban Energy Flows
2.5 Everyday Practices and the Making of Energy Choreographies
2.6 Extraordinary Ordinariness of Urban Infrastructure Landscapes
Chapter 3: Urban Energy Landscapes as Connective Tissue
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Three Theoretical Approaches to Energy Landscapes
3.3 Phenomenological Perspectives on Landscapes and Technology
3.4 Connective Tissue
3.5 Fostering Transitions in Energy Landscapes
Chapter 4: Change and Agency in Landscapes of Dwelling
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Landscapes of Being
4.3 The Worldhood of the World
4.4 Failure and Visibility: Within-the-World Encounters
4.5 Neo-Materialism and the Notion of Agency
4.6 Conclusion
Part II: Heterogeneous Urban Energy Landscapes
Chapter 5: Modernity Promises and the Quest for Autonomy: Urban Energy Landscapes in Maputo, Mozambique
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Coevolution of Energy Services and the Urban Fabric
5.3 Energy Flows and Urban Circulation
5.4 Urban Choreographies of Energy Use
5.5 Governing Energy
5.6 The Cycle of Charcoal
5.7 Transition Trajectories
Chapter 6: Contiguous Heterogeneity and Private Strategies for Energy Provision: Urban Energy Landscapes in Bangalore, India
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Coevolution of Energy Services and the Urban Fabric
6.3 Energy Flows and Urban Circulation
6.4 Urban Choreographies of Energy Use
6.5 Governing Energy
6.6 Engineering and the Making of Electric Modernities
6.7 Scarcity in the Electric City
6.8 Transition Trajectories
Chapter 7: When Equal Access to Energy Causes Injustice: Urban Energy Landscapes in Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Coevolution of Energy Services and the Urban Fabric
7.3 Energy Flows and Urban Circulation
7.4 Urban Choreographies of Energy Use
7.5 Experiences of Energy Poverty in a Densely Built Environment
7.6 Governing Energy
7.7 Reliability as Electricity Politics
7.8 The Politics of Lighting Transitions
7.9 Transition Trajectories
Chapter 8: Industrial Legacy and Governance through Activism: Urban Energy Landscapes in Concepción, Chile
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Coevolution of Energy Services and the Urban Fabric
8.3 Energy Flows and Urban Circulation
8.4 Urban Choreographies of Energy Use
8.5 Governing Energy
8.6 Environmental Planning as Energy Governance
8.7 Local Practices as Spaces of Possibility
8.8 Transition Trajectories
Part III: Change and Transformation in Urban Energy Landscapes
Chapter 9: Exploring Connective Tissues through Walking Different Urban Energy Landscapes
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Walking Urban Energy Landscapes
9.2.1 Urban Boundaries in Maputo
9.2.2 Bangalore’s Infrastructure Histories
9.2.3 Hong Kong Housing Estates
9.2.4 Concepción’s Large Infrastructures
9.3 Reassembling Urban Infrastructure Landscapes
9.4 Extraordinary Ordinariness
Chapter 10: Imagining Urban Energy Futures
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Beyond Homogeneous Models of Service Delivery
10.3 The Existential Challenge as Being-With Energy
10.4 Investigating Being-With through the Lives of Artifacts
10.5 Intra-Actions in Urban Energy Landscapes
References
Index

Citation preview

URBAN ENERGY LANDSCAPES

The urban energy transition represents a transformation of such magnitude that it will require a re-examination of the fundamental relationship between societies and energy resources. The potential for cities to deliver sustainable energy for their citizens requires context-specific action. One-size-fits-all approaches – which assume homogeneity across cities and economies of scale in the extension of electricity networks – have largely failed to deliver sustainable energy for all. This challenge is existential, questioning the fundamental ways in which contemporary life is organized around energy. This innovative volume argues that the urban energy transition depends on specific urban trajectories and heterogeneous urban energy landscapes, reflecting both strategic projects of urbanization and people’s dwelling practices. Looking at in-depth case studies of urban energy landscapes in four major cities, it calls for citizens’ active engagement with experimentation in everyday life. The book will have wide interdisciplinary appeal to researchers in energy, urban, and environmental studies. vanesa casta´ n broto is an interdisciplinary researcher studying climate change governance and urban transitions. In 2016, she was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize for contributions to geography. In 2013, her project on Participatory Planning for Climate Change in Mozambique was recognized as a “Lighthouse Activity for the Urban Poor” by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Castán Broto’s recent books include An Urban Politics of Climate Change (with G. Edwards and H. Bulkeley, 2014) and Urban Sustainability Transitions (with N. Frantzeskaki, L. Coenen and D. Loorbach, 2017). She was a lead chapter author for UN-Habitat’s World Cities Report 2016.

“In this remarkable book of conceptual rigor, empirical breadth and methodological creativity, Castán Broto brings to life the situated practices and contextualized histories which – she convincingly argues – are so critical to understanding how urban energy transitions really happen.” – Timothy Moss, Humboldt University of Berlin “Urban Energy Landscapes provides a compelling framework and set of cases through which to encounter the global heterogeneity of infrastructures. Ranging from household interviews to contextualization of governance within long histories of colonization, Castán Broto expresses energy infrastructures as lively ‘connective tissues’, as symbols of modernity, and as emblematic of the aspirations of cityhood itself. The cases evidence multiple entry points through which to imagine energy transitions as well as the difficulty of theorizing across global urban experiences, defying any possibility for a unified theory or global political plan of action. Castán Broto’s apprehensiveness at the scale of change required is alternated with auspicious gestures at sites where, sometimes, change is already deeply underway. Whether one reads this text cynically as a glimpse at the limitations of global action or hopefully as a glance at emergent alternatives, Urban Energy Landscapes provides a crucial intervention for its attention to the plurality of global urban infrastructures.” – Mary Lawhon, The University of Oklahoma “From charcoal fires in Maputo to Hong Kong’s riot of neon light, Urban Energy Landscapes provides a conceptually sophisticated and empirically grounded street level view of the possibilities for radical transformation in urban energy landscapes. Through the lens of urban infrastructure and the looming realities of climate change, Castán Broto sheds new light on our understanding of what cities are and how they work in the daily lives of urban citizens.” – Caroline Knowles, Goldsmiths, University of London

URBAN ENERGY LANDSCAPES VANESA CASTÁN BROTO University of Sheffield

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108419420 DOI: 10.1017/9781108297868 © Vanesa Castán Broto 2019 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2019 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-108-41942-0 Hardback Additional resources for this publication at www.cambridge.org/urbanenergy. Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To Marina and her son

Contents

Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Three Propositions about Urban Energy Landscapes 1.2 Heterogeneous Urban Energy Landscapes 1.3 Structure of the Argument Part I:

Understanding Urban Energy Landscapes

page x 1 3 7 10 13

Chapter 2: Energy Transitions and Urban Infrastructure 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Urban Energy Transitions and the Politics of Infrastructure Regimes 2.3 The Mundane Life of Energy Infrastructures 2.4 The Political Ecology of Urban Energy Flows 2.5 Everyday Practices and the Making of Energy Choreographies 2.6 Extraordinary Ordinariness of Urban Infrastructure Landscapes

15 15

Chapter 3: Urban Energy Landscapes as Connective Tissue 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Three Theoretical Approaches to Energy Landscapes 3.3 Phenomenological Perspectives on Landscapes and Technology 3.4 Connective Tissue 3.5 Fostering Transitions in Energy Landscapes

39 39 41

Chapter 4: Change and Agency in Landscapes of Dwelling 4.1 Introduction

54 54

18 22 25 31 36

45 49 52

vii

viii

Contents

4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

Landscapes of Being The Worldhood of the World Failure and Visibility: Within-the-World Encounters Neo-Materialism and the Notion of Agency Conclusion

Part II: Heterogeneous Urban Energy Landscapes

56 60 62 64 69 73

Chapter 5: Modernity Promises and the Quest for Autonomy: Urban Energy Landscapes in Maputo, Mozambique 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Coevolution of Energy Services and the Urban Fabric 5.3 Energy Flows and Urban Circulation 5.4 Urban Choreographies of Energy Use 5.5 Governing Energy 5.6 The Cycle of Charcoal 5.7 Transition Trajectories

75 75 78 81 85 89 92 95

Chapter 6: Contiguous Heterogeneity and Private Strategies for Energy Provision: Urban Energy Landscapes in Bangalore, India 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Coevolution of Energy Services and the Urban Fabric 6.3 Energy Flows and Urban Circulation 6.4 Urban Choreographies of Energy Use 6.5 Governing Energy 6.6 Engineering and the Making of Electric Modernities 6.7 Scarcity in the Electric City 6.8 Transition Trajectories

97 97 99 104 106 111 114 116 120

Chapter 7: When Equal Access to Energy Causes Injustice: Urban Energy Landscapes in Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Coevolution of Energy Services and the Urban Fabric 7.3 Energy Flows and Urban Circulation 7.4 Urban Choreographies of Energy Use 7.5 Experiences of Energy Poverty in a Densely Built Environment 7.6 Governing Energy 7.7 Reliability as Electricity Politics 7.8 The Politics of Lighting Transitions 7.9 Transition Trajectories

122 122 125 128 131 138 141 142 145 148

Contents

Chapter 8: Industrial Legacy and Governance through Activism: Urban Energy Landscapes in Concepción, Chile 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Coevolution of Energy Services and the Urban Fabric 8.3 Energy Flows and Urban Circulation 8.4 Urban Choreographies of Energy Use 8.5 Governing Energy 8.6 Environmental Planning as Energy Governance 8.7 Local Practices as Spaces of Possibility 8.8 Transition Trajectories Part III:

Change and Transformation in Urban Energy Landscapes

Chapter 9: Exploring Connective Tissues through Walking Different Urban Energy Landscapes 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Walking Urban Energy Landscapes 9.2.1 Urban Boundaries in Maputo 9.2.2 Bangalore’s Infrastructure Histories 9.2.3 Hong Kong Housing Estates 9.2.4 Concepción’s Large Infrastructures 9.3 Reassembling Urban Infrastructure Landscapes 9.4 Extraordinary Ordinariness

ix

150 150 152 154 155 160 162 165 167 169

171 171 173 173 179 184 188 192 195

Chapter 10: Imagining Urban Energy Futures 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Beyond Homogeneous Models of Service Delivery 10.3 The Existential Challenge as Being-With Energy 10.4 Investigating Being-With through the Lives of Artifacts 10.5 Intra-Actions in Urban Energy Landscapes

198 198 200 201 204 207

References Index

212 237

Acknowledgments

The research presented in this book was funded by a Future Research Leaders grant from the Economic and Social Research Council from 2012 till 2016. The title of the grant was Mapping Urban Energy Landscapes (ES/K001361/1). As outstanding mentors, Yvonne Rydin and Muki Haklay supported me during the development of this research and beyond. In the last year, Simon Marvin and John Flint have given me the encouragement needed to finish the book. The project supported two visits to the research group of Karen Seto in New Haven in 2013 and 2014. Karen helped me to map my contribution to debates on urban energy. In Maputo my work was supported by two long-term collaborators Domingos Augusto Macucule and Felisbela Materula. Diana Salazar and Kevin Adams were wonderful fieldwork companions. I could not have completed the work in Bangalore without the invaluable support of H. S. Sudhira. Our collaboration was supported by a generous grant from the Institution of Civil Engineers. I also benefitted from collaborations with Jayaray Sundaresan, Isaac Arul Selva, Harini Nagendra and Hita Unnikrishnan. In Hong Kong I received enormous support from Juan Du, Daphne Mah, and Kevin Lo. Ping Huang and Linda Westman have always been fantastic research companions. Martin Sanzana Calvet worked for me in Concepción, and provided fascinating insights on the political economy of energy in Chile. Ewa Iwaszuk helped me to organize all the data in a consistent form. Thanks to Timothy J. Reynolds for the cover design and Bower Serfontein for the drawings of ‘connective tissue.’ All my research relies on people who voluntarily give their time for meetings and interviews. I am incredibly thankful to everyone who participated in the research, whether it was in a casual encounter or a long, structured interview. The generous award of the 2016 Philip Leverhulme Prize made it possible for me to dedicate myself more intensely to finish the manuscript. Since September 2017, a professorial fellowship at the Faculty of Social Sciences in the University of Sheffield has made it possible for me to prioritize the book over everything else. x

Acknowledgments

xi

I need to thank specially Harriet Bulkeley, Julian Agyeman, Anna Davies, Sue Parnell, and Craig Watkins. At Sheffield I would like to thank my colleagues at the Urban Institute, especially Maliq Simone, Aidan While, Beth Perry, Jon Silver, and Michele Lancione who have discussed with me the themes of the manuscript. At the Development Planning Unit in University College London, I would like to thank all my colleagues, especially Caren Levy, Colin Marx, Cassidy Johnson, Liza Griffin, Rebeca Dios, Louise Guibrunet, and Modesta Alozie who patiently listened to endless monologues about the book. Chapters 1 to 3 of the book were first presented as three lectures that I delivered in 2017 at the University of York (lecture 1), the University of East Anglia (lecture 2) and the University of Manchester (lecture 3). This was possible thanks to Josh Kirshner, Hellen Pallet, Gareth Edwards, and Dana Abi-Ghanem. During these lectures I received a lot of feedback and I remember fondly the remarks from Karen Parkhill, Mathew Cotton, Tom Heargraves, Jason Chilvers, Tim Moss, and Matthew Patterson. Chapter 4 was first presented at a workshop in the University of Cambridge organized by Matthew Gandy in March 2017 who was very supportive of my work. The final version of Chapter 4 was presented in a lecture in the Department of Geography in the University of Sheffield, where I received thought-provoking comments from Charis Enns, Ruth Little, Peter Jackson, Miguel Kanai, and Jessica Dubow. Helena Leino and her ‘Dwellers in Agile City’ team in the University of Tampere generously listened to a run of the whole book. I have also received generous comments from many friends who took the time to listen to my ideas, specially Jochen Monstadt, Chris Harker, Sonya Sharma, Marina Frolova, Stefan Bouzarovski, Saska Petrova, Anne Rademacher, Yasmina Beebeejaum, Gordon Walker, Amiera Sawas, Olivier Laboussier, Alain Nadaï, Lucy Baker, Idalina Baptista, Long Seng To, Yacob Muguleta, Susann Strizke, Chiara Tornaghi, Paul Tabbush, Ralitsa Hiteva, Ilknur Kursulnugir, Diego Garcia Mejuto, Philip Späth, Charlotte Johnson, Nela Milic, Colin Macfarlane and Laurent Dissard. I feel it is impossible to make justice in this section to all the generosity I have encountered over the years. Finally, I have to thank the most important people in my life, my lifetime partner Bas, my daughter Julia, my parents, my dear brother, Naomi, all the family members of the two clans that raised me back in the Spanish Pyrenees (the ‘Castáns’ and the ‘Brotos’) and all the friends that have always been there. You are all part of my landscape and I am incredibly thankful for that. This book is dedicated to Marina Bandrés Lopez-Belío, an artist and film maker from Jaca, the town where I was born. Since our childhood Marina taught me to seek authenticity and I always loved her dearly. Marina and her son passed away tragically on March 24th, 2015, while I was doing fieldwork in Hong Kong.

1 Introduction

Eating noodles in Melbourne is common. A large, international city with nearly 5 million inhabitants, Melbourne has over 220 restaurants of Chinese or Asiatic inspiration, most of which will cook noodle-based recipes. For the great poet Boey Kim Cheng, however, eating noodles in Melbourne is no less remarkable. In his poem “La Mian in Melbourne,” he sits in a restaurant in Little Bourke Street in Melbourne’s Chinatown and observes the cook doing “noodle magic,” slapping and pummeling the dough in the traditional La Mian style. Cheng looks, smells, tastes, and remembers his own travels across multiple cities. The landscapes of Melbourne intersect with those of his home town of Singapore, and the La Mian maker reminds him of his grandmother. In this poem, the noodles become a symbol of the unconscious memory awakened by the senses, similarly to how the “petit madeleine” with tea revealed the childhood memories of Marcel Proust in the novel À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Cheng’s and Proust’s experience-memories happened in different times and places. The first part of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, which contains the episode of the madeleine, was published in 1913. Cheng’s poem was published almost a hundred years later in 2012. The comparison between the noodles and the madeleine, between 1913 and 2012, is revealing. The noodles belong to an urbanized world, one in which most of the inhabitants of the world live in highly dense urban areas, in which capital and job opportunities accumulate. The madeleine belongs to the countryside of Proust’s childhood and his imagined village, Combray. Nevertheless, both authors evoke the tight node between food, taste, smell, ambience, family, and feeling at home. They both describe the landscapes that surround them as part of their biography and memory, on the one hand, and as part of the material world they inhabit, on the other hand. Both Melbourne and Combray are landscapes of dwelling in which Cheng and Proust experience, remember, and live. There is another difference. Proust’s madeleine opens up a pastoral landscape of gardens, flowers, pavilions, little houses, paths, and churches. Cheng’s experience 1

2

Introduction

is, however, flanked by blocks, music, and the passage of bodies and cars in a hectic landscape of city life. Cheng’s poems bring together the public and the private, the past and the future in a single moment to realize the affective sensations that underlie routines. He makes extraordinary an ordinary moment waiting for the La Mian noodles to be ready, because Cheng’s experience-memory landscapes are full of energy; he looks at the “neon calligraphy, its quavering script mirrored on the warm sheen of the Noodle King” and listens to “the murmur of traffic.” When he reclines over the noodle bowl, he finds himself “enveloped in steam.” Energy thus becomes part of Cheng’s experience-memories because they incorporate lighting, thermal comfort, cooking, mobility, and even the possibility to take a selfie to send to grandma in place of any noodle rituals already lost. Cheng portrays an urban energy landscape. In an urban energy landscape different forms of energy (light, heat, mobility, and communications) envelop city life. Those urban energy landscapes reflect the infrastructure legacies of urban history as markers of collective memories, as Gandy (2011) explained. Simultaneously, those urban energy landscapes also reflect the material dynamics that shape those experience-memories. In line with Bennet’s (2010) argument about vibrant matter, urban infrastructure landscapes are shaped by multiple forms of distributive agency whereby vibrant materialities can also bring about change. Energy-related artifacts (the cookstove, the electricity cable and the meter, the solar panel, and the TV) are indispensable parts of the urban energy landscape to the point that such a landscape cannot be understood without them. Noodles cannot be enjoyed without appreciating the complex infrastructures that make a restaurant possible, from the neon light to the boiling water. The specific objects that integrate the urban energy landscape might be different in Melbourne and Singapore. Each city might have integrated energy infrastructures differently, depending upon its history. Nevertheless, global visions of cities are haunted by images full of energy because we struggle to conceive of cities without lights, without kitchens, without mobile phones, without elevators, without various forms of electronic metering and calculating, or without mobile vehicles. Although energy has become part of the city life, our dependence upon energy systems threatens humanity and the world. The last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2014 concluded that humans are influencing and altering the climate system, and that higher levels of disruption increase the risk of severe, pervasive, and irreversible effects, including droughts and heatwaves, hurricanes, changes in precipitation patterns including extreme events and flooding, sea-level rise, decline of agricultural yields, mass migration, and the disappearance of forests, corals, and wildlife. This portrayal is of a world unlike the one we live in. The distribution of effects is also unequal. The worst effects will affect those who are most vulnerable (Hallegatte, Bangalore et al. 2015). Concerns with

1.1 Three Propositions about Urban Energy Landscapes

3

social justice, responsibility and equity are central to radical demands for lowcarbon transformations. Climate change is a manifestation of humanity’s existential crisis. Head (2016) speaks of an impending sense of catastrophe that requires examining both the foundations of humans’ capacity to influence the surroundings and how that capacity is embedded within material relationships. The sort of cosmic terror that climate change generates can be addressed directly, starting with our turning attention to the instability of the world as constitutive of the material relationships we inhabit (Last 2013). Confronting the global existential crisis requires using the horror underneath the threat of extinction to mount a re-examination of the meaning and purpose of human life and the changes that will make the future possible (Kallis and March 2015). The transformation called for is of such magnitude that it requires a fundamental examination of the infrastructures of life, the material objects that sustain us. Instead of “the environment,” the Dutch speak of “de leefomgeving,” the environment in which life happens. Making sense of existence requires situating it somewhere, Being-in-the-World, as Heidegger’s core concept is expressed in the English-speaking world. My proposal in this book is to examine the possibility for radical transformations that emerge within urban energy landscapes. This intent implies recognizing first how energy-related infrastructures shape everyday life in specific locations. In particular, I am interested in how energy-related infrastructures are integrated in diverse and heterogeneous modes of being urban in urban energy landscapes. From this perspective, fundamental transformations of socio-material relationships begin with an assessment of how experience-memory events, such as eating noodles in Little Bourke Street, shape multiple possibilities to deliver urban futures. 1.1 Three Propositions about Urban Energy Landscapes This book belongs within a growing body of literature that understands energy challenges as indissolubly linked to their geography and spatial dynamics (Calvert 2016, Bouzarovski, Pasqualetti et al. 2017, Bridge, Barr et al. 2018, Solomon and Calvert 2018). Urbanization, in particular, is closely interrelated with systems that produce energy and with how it is used and consumed, as is recognized in policy debates (Johansson, Patwardhan et al. 2012). Scholars of climate change governance have drawn attention to the city as a central site in which carbon is governed (Bulkeley 2013, Hughes, Chu et al. 2017). The accumulation of empirical evidence of action on the ground and new institutional models of change have shifted perceptions toward an increasing optimism in terms of transforming unsustainable energy configurations through progressive urban interventions (Hoffmann 2011,

4

Introduction

Roorda, Wittmayer et al. 2014, Frantzeskaki, Castán Broto et al. 2017, Frantzeskaki, Hölscher et al. 2018). Recently, scholars have started talking about “the second generation” of studies of urban low-carbon transitions, acknowledging the rapid growth of the field (Luque-Ayala, Marvin et al. 2018). I engaged with the notion of urban energy landscape, seeking a means to shift my own attention from salient innovations to the actual forms of urban change occurring around energy systems in different cities. My initial concern was to examine urban change because of situated practices of city making. The idea of energy landscapes started from an engagement with urban political ecology perspectives on energy that emphasize, in particular, how specific ecologies and technologies are implicated in the urban politics of energy (Heynen 2014, Lawhon, Ernstson et al. 2014, Rice 2014, Holifield and Schuelke 2015, Silver 2015). Therefore, my inquiry into urban energy landscapes started from three propositions: First Proposition: Urban Energy Must Be Understood from Within a Postcolonial Perspective The idea of deploying a postcolonial understanding of the urban landscape might be uncontroversial in urban studies, but it is not widely recognized in energy studies (but see recent examples: Baptista 2018, Bridge 2018, de Souza, Bosco et al. 2018). Many of the concerns articulated in postcolonial readings of the urban landscape resonate with long-standing concerns within social studies of energy and energy technology. Such a perspective emphasizes that urbanization and infrastructure development processes take place within conflicting historical conditions (Bishop, Phillips et al. 2013). In recognizing such patterns of historicity, the challenge is not to understand the mechanics of transitions from colonial to postcolonial rule but rather to understand the conditions of possibility that emerge within a global history of colonialism away from singular models of capitalism development (Ong 2011). One key aspect, for example, is to recognize how technologies and knowledge are tied to such colonial history in terms of their relationships to particular technocratic enterprises (Bishop, Phillips et al. 2013). Decolonizing the knowledge that underpins energy policy and implementation is one of the key areas in which social scientists can make a difference to energy studies (Bridge 2018). Like other postcolonial scholars (Bishop, Phillips et al. 2013), I have found the work of Martin Heidegger useful in exploring forms of urbanism that emerge from situated urban histories. Urban energy landscapes reveal the centrality of energy relationships to those urban histories. The implications of the postcolonial perspective relate to the specific treatment of infrastructure politics and how everyday struggles appear intertwined with particular technological projects of urban control. Urban infrastructure studies have been dominated by theory that responds to the empirical observations and needs of cities in the West. Hughes’ (1993) classic work studying the history of

1.1 Three Propositions about Urban Energy Landscapes

5

electrification in Chicago, London, and Berlin is one superb example. However, global assessments of urbanization patterns increasingly suggest that our understandings generated in the global north could be irrelevant at best and damaging at worst in urban contexts in the global south, which are distinctly different (Nagendra, Bai et al. 2018). Uneven patterns of access to energy are constituted at the intersection between global and situated energy politics (Luque-Ayala and Silver 2016). In a postcolonial context, universalist models of infrastructure provision become exposed as fragmented, incomplete fantasies (Coutard 2008). If we decentralize the object of knowledge and focus on unfamiliar cities – that is, cities that have rarely been considered in infrastructure studies – new understandings of energy infrastructures emerge. For example, a number of studies on urban infrastructure in African cities have revealed the coexistence of diverse and heterogeneous models of energy delivery (Jaglin 2014, Baptista 2015, Monstadt and Schramm 2017). Decolonizing aspirations must be matched with feasible alternatives. In urban energy landscapes, the emphasis is on energy politics as they emerge within complex urban histories. In this context, progressive social and material transformations for a lowcarbon transition require engaging with multiple processes and visions that coexist without establishing the dominance of one of those visions, the type of disposition that Pieterse (2008) labeled “radical incrementalism.” Seeking a radical transition through incrementalism might appear paradoxical but might be the only alternative in the context of heterogeneous and diverse urban energy landscapes. Second Proposition: The Politics of Urban Energy Are Constituted in Relational Spaces Studying the spatial aspects of the politics of energy first requires examining the concept of space. Following the implications from the first proposition, the recognition of heterogeneous, coexisting configurations of urban energy links to a strong sense of space as actively produced through multiple processes of connectivity, proximity, and differentiation. This observation resonates with geographical critiques of the classical notion of Euclidean space as a fixed, pre-existing category. Instead, space is thought of as a dynamic process constituted through social dynamics (e.g., Massey 1994, Harvey 1996, Thrift 1996, Crang and Thrift 2000, Amin 2002, Massey 2005). In a recent special issue, I have argued for the need to place notions of relational space at the center of energy studies (Castán Broto and Baker 2018). Doreen Massey explained that the notion of relational space implies, first, that space is constituted through interactions; second, that space constitutes a sphere of possibilities in which multiple historical trajectories are deployed simultaneously; and third, that space is continually being made, and therefore, always unfinished (Massey 2005). These three assertions apply particularly to urban energy landscapes.

6

Introduction

Relational approaches to space have implications for rethinking energy politics (Bridge, Bouzarovski et al. 2013, Calvert 2016). However, there is considerable ambiguity about the meaning embedded in relational conceptualizations of energy geographies. In urban areas, relational approaches have often been linked to conceptualizations of cities as inserted in global multi-dimensional flows (Sigler 2013). Clearly, urban energy landscapes can be shaped by multiple flows of resources and technologies, but flows alone do not constitute the energy spaces that generate the experience-memories that characterize our social landscape. These flows do not only relate to intercity or interregional connections, but also to the maintenance of flows in unstable configurations that depend upon a number of day-to-day interactions and situated practices of infrastructure use (Rutherford 2011, Rutherford and Coutard 2014). In energy studies, relational approaches have examined how inequality and vulnerability are generated through the integration of energy flows within specific household practices (Buzar 2007, Harrison and Popke 2011, Bouzarovski and Petrova 2015). The notion of landscape engages with the configurations of urban energy that emerge from the active maintenance of urban flows alongside situated practices of energy use, which we can understand in the urban case as energy choreographies. Landscape is a deeply textured assemblage of human activity and objects, “not the surface on which dwelling takes place, but dwelling itself” (Knowles 2012, p. 512). The notion of urban energy landscapes recognizes that in such landscapes, energy infrastructures are indispensable to sustain urban life. Third Proposition: Urban Energy Landscapes Reveal the Situated Nature of Low-carbon Transitions The engagement with urban energy landscapes matters, because they direct attention to alternative notions of urban transformations and the types of agency that can foster them. Social science analyses of transition have shown the importance of examining the complex dynamics of change in low-carbon transitions. One implication has been the questioning of a linear conceptualization of change. An alternative perspective conceives of socio-technical systems as organized in regimes that might undergo reconfiguration following the occasional irruption of disruptive innovations (e.g., Geels 2002, Geels and Schot 2007, Verbong and Geels 2007, Verbong and Geels 2010). Moreover, low-carbon transitions need to be examined from the perspective of power and governance, because claims to make a transition must be actively assembled through purposive acts of governing and the constitution of appropriate means of calculation (Bulkeley, Castán Broto et al. 2014). Overall, there are multiple pathways whereby transitions can occur (Rydin, Turcu et al. 2013). However, these analyses pose a strategic intent at the core of energy and low-carbon transitions. Plan, control, manage, deliver, implement, and accomplish are the verbs that animate the empirical cases studied in most

1.2 Heterogeneous Urban Energy Landscapes

7

scholarship examining low-carbon transitions (and some more recent critiques are included in Luque-Ayala, Marvin et al. 2018) Postcolonial approaches to infrastructure challenge the nature of strategic urbandevelopment projects. Clearly, urban life is threatened by efforts to subsume everyday activities and materialities under one single narrative of capitalist development (Ruddick 2015). Equally, there is a need to be suspicious of efforts to establish the parameters for a low-carbon transition that simply responds to those narratives. Moreover, urban areas are already changing. Despite the overwhelming effects of forms of capitalist urbanization, urban areas over the global north and south are replete with examples that demonstrate the “inexplicable capacity of the most resource-challenged areas to hang together” (Simone and Pieterse 2017, p. 185). External projects of radical change may change cities, but only alongside existing dynamics of urbanization. Urban energy landscapes belong to unbounded cities in which life is constantly being created. Hence, sustainability transformations in urban energy landscapes are transformations of diverse and situated modes of being. It is imperative to think about low-carbon transitions as radical transformations that will change the fundamental nature of being. Because of the embeddedness of energy infrastructure in urban life, such existential change depends upon understanding the metaphysics of infrastructure. That is, we need to understand how socio-material relationships around infrastructure shape the nature of being. In practice, this understanding requires engaging with change as it occurs. However, change is occurring all the time, in the daily tasks that configure urban energy landscapes. The idea of urban energy landscapes is a conceptual device to engage with the already-occurring urban transitions whose protagonists inhabit cities-in-the-making. 1.2 Heterogeneous Urban Energy Landscapes Urban energy landscapes display the spatial patterns of urban energy systems that are visible in the built environment. Traditionally, landscape has been thought of as the territorial expression of socio-ecological relationships – in this case, how urban dwellers manage and use energy and how energy uses relate to resource and ecosystem exploitation. Urban energy landscapes relate to the spatial organization of multiple energy services depending upon how people use energy (e.g., for lighting, thermal comfort, communications, and cooking1) and how energy services are provided (whether for the generation of electricity, gas provision or the direct use of fuels for heat or mechanical power). Even when using similar technologies, the experience will be completely different in each city, from Melbourne to Singapore. Urban energy landscapes reflect the specificity of urban energy systems and the heterogeneous spatial arrangements that emerge within particular places.

8

Introduction

In relation to energy, landscape has been described as a conceptual means to emphasize the co-constructed nature of socio-technical systems (Bridge et al. 2013). The notion of energy landscape invokes cultural aspects of energy, for example, by pointing at the different meanings and ideas that influence how energy is thought of and used, and at the different material arrangements that make such use possible. Many of the factors that shape current energy systems, from electricity networks to the type of houses in which people live, have emerged over time as part of a historical process through which different features of energy systems become embedded in our societies and economies. Energy landscapes, resulting from the interaction between humans and nature in a particular location over a specific period, have a central historical dimension. One of the objectives of this book is showcasing both differences and how they become visible in the built environment. The most obvious implication of this argument is that there is no one single model for delivering urban energy. The diversification of infrastructure configurations is one of the central transformations visible in contemporary infrastructures (Coutard and Rutherford 2015). Infrastructures can be thought of as assembled in heterogeneous configurations (Lawhon, Nilsson et al. 2018) within radical contingent contexts (Graham and McFarlane 2014, Silver 2014). Nevertheless, people make sense of the infrastructure landscapes they inhabit and navigate different intersections between infrastructure and social life (Simone 2010, Simone 2013). We may think that contemporary urban life requires inventiveness and improvisation, but most times we just get on with it and constitute the spaces that we inhabit. The assumption that the urban energy landscapes that people inhabit correspond to specific models of urban infrastructure development overestimates the extent to which the city can be strategically planned (cf. Watson 2013). Instead, there is an enormous sense of reassurance in the idea that whatever strategic project of modernization is imposed in a city, its inhabitants will find the means to appropriate and transform urban space by inhabiting and navigating urban landscapes (Nair 2005, Knowles and Harper 2009, Simone 2010). Therefore, the focus of the empirical analysis in this book relates to the need to represent a diversity of urban energy landscapes, on the one hand, and the need to situate visual observations of those landscapes within a historical and spatial moment, on the other hand. The focus on cities does not pretend to reify them as bounded, single, homogeneous entities (for a critique, see: Angelo and Wachsmuth 2015) but rather as a figure of the collective imagination that enables the development of an urban project over time. The cities studied are Maputo (Mozambique), Bangalore (also known as Bengaluru) (India), Hong Kong (PRC), and Concepción (Chile) (Figure 1.1). Each city was selected because it represents a radically different energy landscape.

1.2 Heterogeneous Urban Energy Landscapes

9

Figure 1.1 Case study cities. Elaborated by Hita Unnikrishnan.

Regarding the systems of energy provision, Hong Kong is a city with a completely networked energy system, in terms of both the provision of electricity and fuels. Concepción represents a city that depends upon a national system of networked provision of electricity, but traditional fuels (particularly fuelwood) constitute an important part of the energy landscape. Bangalore represents the type of city in which networked models of energy provision have always been incomplete, in terms of both the provision of electricity and fuels. Maputo, having the lowest rates of energy access, represents a city in which until very recently only a partial electricity network operated. The majority of the households in Maputo depend upon charcoal to satisfy the bulk of their energy demand. The cities also have very different energy requirements. In Bangalore and Concepción, the industrial sectors drive energy demand. In Bangalore, key dynamics include the growing energy needs of the ICT and offshoring industry alongside the lifestyle demands of new professionals working in those industries. In Concepción, heavy industries drive energy demand and environmental justice conflicts. In Hong Kong, demand is driven by disincentives to improve efficiency in the built environment. In Maputo, any concerns about the low-carbon transition require confronting the enormous energy access challenge; being “under the

10

Introduction

umbrella” of the network is not a guarantee of energy access. People are still dependent on charcoal for the bulk of their energy needs. Each case has been situated within a particular energy history, reflecting upon the coevolution of resource flows, technologies, and choreographies of urban life. The storylines developed for each case study build upon individual accounts of the urban energy systems, trying to map the different strategic projects that shape urban energy landscapes.2 In addition, each case study uses the walking of transects as a means to engage with inhabited energy landscapes. Here, I draw inspiration from the work of Caroline Knowles, whose account of the urban landscapes of Hong Kong (Knowles and Harper 2009) initially inspired me to seek an alternative approach to study urban infrastructure. Knowles has shown the potential of methods based on the idea of walking-with as a means to discover the urban landscapes of urban dwellers, particularly those thought of as migrants, whose comings and goings shape those landscapes (Knowles 2011). More recently, Knowles has also shown the potential of walking as a method of independent research to characterize the city “from the ground” and “while in motion” (Knowles 2017). In my case, faced with the impossibility of truly inhabiting any of those four urban energy landscapes, walking is a means to engage with what is, for me, a routine task and thus engage directly with the urban landscape without reifying the city as a measurable entity. Walking and using hand-drawn maps of the city, I have sought to develop a portrait of urban energy landscapes as a bundle of relationships, that is, as connective tissue sustaining energy-dependent urban life. 1.3 Structure of the Argument The argument is developed in three parts. Part I is called “Understanding Urban Energy Landscapes” because it focuses on the development of the concept through an engagement with the three propositions explained above. By engaging with the first proposition, Chapter 2 situates the idea of urban energy landscapes within current debates on the politics of urban infrastructure and, specifically, the type of politics that shapes energy transitions. Chapter 2 reveals some of the assumptions that permeate the thinking of the book. First, urban energy landscapes redirect attention away from the search for disruptive innovations, situating radical change instead within mundane practices of infrastructure-making. Second, the chapter introduces the ideas of energy flows, energy choreographies, and energy governance that constitute the analytical framework for the empirical analysis of case studies. Chapter 3 advances a relational perspective on urban energy landscapes and expands the concerns of the second proposition presented above. In doing so, Chapter 3 proposes a definition of urban energy landscapes as “connective tissue.”

1.3 Structure of the Argument

11

This definition shifts focus away from analyzing the elements that compose the urban landscape by, instead, examining that landscape as a continuum of supportive structures that enable urban life. Chapter 4 extends this vision to examine the question of agency in urban energy landscapes. The central focus of the chapter is Heidegger’s ideas of being-in-theworld, seeking to engage with the existential question that lies at the bottom of current debates on sustainability transitions. The chapter advances different positions about the location of agency within urban energy landscapes because they are inhabited. Building upon the field of feminist neo-materialism, Chapter 4 concludes that although agency can never be fully owned by any single actor, the formation of new material and social relationships generates multiple forms of agency that ultimately shape the urban energy landscape. Part II, called “Heterogeneous Urban Energy Landscapes,” presents four case studies of urban energy landscapes in Maputo, Bangalore, Hong Kong, and Concepción. Following the framework defined in Chapter 2, each empirical chapter in Part II provides an overview of the city’s urban energy landscapes as a product of the coevolution between energy flows and situated choreographies of energy use. Each chapter concludes with an analysis of the dynamics that shape energy governance. Chapter 5, about Maputo, explains how dreams of modernization shape aspirations for energy futures by both the companies that deliver energy services and Maputo’s citizens. Such dreams persist despite the manifest inability of current governance arrangements to implement them. Chapter 6, about Bangalore, offers a contrasting example in which narratives of modernity coexist with an implicit acceptance of intermittency of service provision and the continuous presence of multiple sources of energy. Fragmentation is, however, associated with diversity and innovation. In this landscape, inequality of energy access is not only accepted, but also reproduced through existing practices of energy governance. Chapter 7 focuses on Hong Kong as an example of a homogeneous energy landscape in which inequality in energy access is strikingly visible. The example shows how energy vulnerability exists through the constitution of energy services within the home (a finding which resonates with Bouzarovski and Petrova 2015). Finally, Chapter 8 examines the urban energy landscape of Concepción and demonstrates how infrastructures of energy production can be imposed on the urban fabric, and co-opt the landscape for a single utilitarian purpose (a concern that runs through Heidegger’s reflections on landscapes). Together, the four chapters showcase the heterogeneity of urban energy landscapes, their radical contingency and historical dependence, and the multiple dynamics that shape urban energy futures. Part III turns toward the normative concerns of the book, examining “Change and Transformation in Urban Energy Landscapes.” Chapter 9 examines the notion

12

Introduction

of connective tissue empirically. Inspired by the growing body of literature on walking the city (particularly the work of Caroline Knowles), the chapter uses walking as a means to develop an understanding of the experience-memory nexus in each landscape. As a method, the transect enables a spatial reading of how energy is integrated in urban life. Urban energy landscapes manifest in spatial patterns that reflect both existing imaginations about energy and how energy is experienced. The analysis highlights the “extraordinary ordinariness” of energy infrastructures in terms of reflecting upon the enchantment that emerges from observing how the everyday dynamics of energy use relate to the history of the city. Chapter 10 proposes the recognition of the multiple agencies that shape urban energy landscapes. Engaging with urban life requires moving away from strategic attempts to change the city to fit a given vision, particularly when such visions have been constructed far away from the cities in which they are implemented. Instead, urban energy landscapes demand an understanding of the processes of transformation that emerge from dwelling practices. Extraordinary changes occur within the realm of ordinary lives. Writers such as Proust and Cheng have long exposed how to apprehend the forms of “extraordinary ordinariness” that emerge through the encounter of memory and experience. Urban energy landscapes open up the city as a socio-material collective in which both experience and memory intersect urban space.

Part I Understanding Urban Energy Landscapes

2 Energy Transitions and Urban Infrastructure

2.1 Introduction In a recent article in Forbes, Wal van Lierop, a venture capitalist, ponders the increasing urgency with which the energy transition is approached. He writes: Politicians and energy executives seem to agree that we are in a transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Yet, we hear the same old trope: “It won’t happen overnight.” If that is the case, then when will it happen? Next year, in five years or in 50? (van Lierop 2018)

He then goes on to outline the incredible advances of the last four years: the dramatic fall in the cost of renewables and the normalization of advanced technologies such as low-cost batteries, electric vehicles, and new technologies for longdistance electricity transmission. After some reflection, he ponders the statement that energy transitions “. . . won’t happen overnight.” He states, “The flaw in this phrase is that most of us think about change linearly,” and he moves on to describe the dramatic bifurcations that characterize socio-technical transitions using an example that will resonate with every member of his audience – the Blackberry. This example shows two things. First, it shows that the discourse of “transition” has become mainstream to the point of being commonly used beyond academia in both finance and policy-making circles – so much so, that in 2018 one country, Spain, appointed the first Minister for Ecological Transition, namely Teresa Ribera Rodríguez. The assumption that protecting human life requires a profound transformation of contemporary ways of life is increasingly common, not only in cities, but also in national and international policy forums. Van Lierop’s quote above is also important because it reflects the increasing complexification of the discourse of transitions and the efforts to shake away ideas of linear transition that have permeated economics-dominated ideas of societal change. The idea of transition as a form of radical change involving a large-scale reconfiguration of socio-economic and material infrastructures with uncertain consequences (Monstadt 2009) has become a staple of mainstream discourses of 15

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Energy Transitions and Urban Infrastructure

environmental change. The enormous reach of these ideas can be credited to an academic community loosely organized around the Sustainability Transitions Research Network.1 The chief achievement of this community has been the development of clear frameworks synthesizing decades of social research about societal transformation in analytical tools that travel well to other fields such as economics and engineering, and that constitute persuasive narratives for policy makers (Markard, Raven et al. 2012). This book adopts this vision of sustainability transitions as multi-dimensional coevolutionary processes that involve multiple actors and contested perspectives (Köhler, Geels et al. 2017). This book also constitutes an attempt to go beyond existing theory by engaging simultaneously with three aspects of transitions that remain relatively invisible within the broader agenda of this community (cf. Köhler, Geels et al. 2017), but that become prominent when observing transitions unfold within specific urban settings (Frantzeskaki, Castán Broto et al. 2017, Moore, Horne et al. 2018). The first aspect relates to the messy politics of urban transitions, particularly when they result from confusing and overlapping processes of change “in-the-making” (Moloney, Bosomworth et al. 2018). Although the politics of transitions have raised in the agenda of transitions research, much of this work remains interested in tracking well-delimited mechanisms of power and influence (Avelino, Grin et al. 2016). In urban contexts, however, such power mechanisms can be difficult to disentangle from micro-processes of change that involve multiple and contingent urban configurations (Rutherford and Coutard 2014, Silver and Marvin 2017). This difficulty leads the analysis of urban energy landscapes toward an engagement with ideas of the city as a process intersected by multiple flows – material and resource flows but also flows of information, people, and meanings. The second aspect relates to the conceptualization of transitions in everyday life. Again, this topic has received increasing consideration within transition scholarship through an engagement with theories of consumption and practice theory. Like practice theory, this book starts from a concern with the array of situated actions that conform practices, a conceptualization that highlights the fundamental embeddedness of all human activity in social and material contexts (Hui, Schatzki et al. 2016). Building upon this principle, the notion of urban energy landscapes situates practices within specific urban histories. The idea of practices unfolding within material configurations of the built environment suggests an understanding of energy choreographies in which human activities are structured around particular modes of housing, service delivery, and work. The third aspect moves toward a deeper conceptualization of transitions as provoking fundamental changes beyond those that are in vogue in current policy and financial debates. What is at stake in the global energy transition? The transition does not only imply a transformation of our way of life or of our

2.1 Introduction

17

lifestyles. Somehow, the assumption is that patterns of resource organization (energy flows) and situated human activities (energy choreographies) are add-ons that can be shifted without fundamentally challenging who we are and how we understand ourselves. Technologies and lifestyles can be changed without fundamentally altering our forms of being but nonetheless remain unsustainable. In this book, I seek to engage with the idea of transition as a fundamental change in our manner of being as a civilization. In 2014, global designer and revolutionary Dame Vivienne Westwood started a campaign to address climate change within the global fashion industry. If only people would buy well-sourced expensive dresses instead of T-shirts, she argued, we could all reduce our carbon emissions (Thorpe 2014). She encouraged everyone to “do their bit.” With her campaign, Westwood gained converts for climate change that would otherwise have safely ignored this issue. However, in doing so, she reduced the climate change debate to a question of choice. Addressing climate change could be as easy as buying the right dress, she argued. With that, she deleted in a sentence all of the complexities involved in the fashion industry, from the opacity of global commodity chains to the fashion possibilities available to lowincome people – as though fashion had never been about politics or economic inequality. Westwood’s error, however, is not unique. We hear repeatedly that cities only must become smart, compact, and transit oriented, shift to renewables, and improve efficiency (Global Commission on the Economy and Climate 2014). If only we were able to change how we dress our cities, they would become magically sustainable. Sustainability transition studies often struggle to move beyond recommendations for more democratic forms of governance, better engagement with industrial policies, or greater attention to processes of innovation disruption. In the end, the rush for solutions obscures the depth of the radical change we need. Although we know that small shifts can bring about radical changes (Bulkeley, Castán Broto et al. 2014), the emphasis on solutionism seems to be promoting a certain form of “changeless change” (cf. Phelps and Fuller 2016), with little potential to bring about the radical transformation we need. The sustainability transition requires much more than changing the clothes that our modern societies are wearing. This discussion is about provoking a fundamental change in who we are and what matters to us as human beings. The structures of knowledge production are fundamental to that change. Therefore, as a transition scholar, a fundamental task is to lead one’s thought toward the boundaries of what change is possible. In this book, the approach to pushing these boundaries relies on a return to the roots of the ideas of change and everyday life embodied in the work of Martin Heidegger, recognizing its influence on contemporary thought about transitions (Hui, Schatzki et al. 2016). The notion of the landscape of dwelling is a starting point for an exploration of the idea of an urban

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Energy Transitions and Urban Infrastructure

energy transition as a fundamental change in how we are human. By situating the notion of urban energy landscapes in relation to the study of transitions, this chapter develops an empirical frame for analysis and establishes an observation point from which a theory of landscapes of being can be developed. 2.2 Urban Energy Transitions and the Politics of Infrastructure Regimes The field of sustainability transitions is generally structured into three areas of research. First, those researching the field from the perspective of technological innovation system(s) (TIS) view innovation as a collective activity that depends upon complex governance mechanisms and the emergence of radical innovations (Carlsson and Stankiewicz 1991, Hekkert, Suurs et al. 2007, Bergek, Jacobsson et al. 2008). Second, the multi-level perspective (MLP) characterizes transitions as developing historically over long periods as the result of interactions among the dynamics of three hierarchical levels of structuration of socio-technical systems: landscapes, regimes, and niches (Geels 2002, Geels and Schot 2007, Verbong and Geels 2007, Geels 2010, Verbong and Geels 2010). Third, there is another school of thought that focuses on catalyzing policy-oriented processes of change through a direct activation of forms of experimental governance called transitions management (TM) (Roorda, Wittmayer et al. 2014, Loorbach, Frantzeskaki et al. 2015, Frantzeskaki, Castán Broto et al. 2017, Frantzeskaki, Hölscher et al. 2018). The three areas of this field offer alternatives to the approaches to innovation from evolutionary economics that dominated the 1980s and 1990s, but they vary slightly in terms of methodologies and levels of engagement with the transition process. Broadly speaking, we could align TIS approaches with a strong interest in the multi-layered process of industrial innovation, MLP incorporates a holistic interest in the transitions within long-term processes of societal change, and TM involves commitment to radically inspired multi-actor transformations. However, the three perspectives have been characterized by a limited engagement with the spatial aspects of transitions, and, by extension, the consideration of the urban as a key condition for transitions has been missing until recently (but see: Bulkeley, Castán Broto et al. 2010, Frantzeskaki, Castán Broto et al. 2017, Moore, Horne et al. 2018). Many have argued for the need to consider explicitly the role of space in sustainability transitions (Berkhout, Angel et al. 2009, Coenen, Benneworth et al. 2012, Truffer and Coenen 2012, Bridge, Bouzarovski et al. 2013, Bergek, Hekkert et al. 2015, Hansen and Coenen 2015). These concerns emerge from practical considerations about the implication of conventional analyses of transition. For example, a TIS functional analysis can be useful to demonstrate the development of energy transitions within national innovation plans but might

2.2 Urban Energy Transitions and Infrastructure

19

miss completely the complexities that emerge during the practical implementation of such policies (for an example, see van Alphen, Noothout et al. 2010). Truffer and Coenen (2012) have argued that the lack of interest in space within the field relates to the prioritization of processes of temporal change over spatial change, already embedded in the intellectual roots of the discipline. A strong interest in the history of technology and sector formation processes has supported a focus on the sociotechnical characteristics of technology development without explicit consideration of the dynamic spatial contexts within which transitions occur (Coenen, Benneworth et al. 2012, Hansen and Coenen 2015, Truffer and Coenen 2012). For example, an analysis of the history of the British coal industry using the MLP framework showed the linkages between the privatization of the electricity supply and the transformation of the British coal industry (Turnheim, Berkhout et al. 2015). However, the analysis glosses over a key episode of the political history of the United Kingdom, including the coal strikes that changed the face of the country. Overall, such frameworks focus on when over where innovation occurs. We have not waited long for responses that have called for a spatial turn in sustainability transition research (Raven, Schot et al. 2012, Wieczorek, Raven et al. 2015). Efforts to add spatial sensitivity to existing frameworks have developed rapidly (Binz, Truffer et al. 2012, De Laurentis 2015, Gosens, Lu et al. 2015). However, distinct approaches to the spatial aspects of transition remain emergent. Bridge, Bouzarovski et al. (2013) have provided a geographical alternative to the primary temporal concerns in conventional transitions theory. They have argued, “Energy transition is fundamentally a geographical process that involves reconfiguring current spatial patterns of economic and social activity” (Bridge, Bouzarovski et al. 2013, p. 331). In their view, the strong connection between energy systems and pre-existing geographical configurations, energy accessibility, and the transformation of spatial arrangements of the built environment demonstrates that their understanding of transitions requires situating them in spatial contexts. The foregrounding of ideas of space in transition studies requires engaging with contemporary debates on relational space that challenge traditional Euclidean notions of three-dimensional space (e.g., Thrift 2003). Ideas of relational space have emerged in transition research, leading to discussions about how to define the distance between actors and how to consider different relationships of separation and proximity that shape transition processes (Coenen, Benneworth et al. 2012). Truffer and Coenen (2012) propose an understanding of transition spaces that examines both the actual local contexts of innovation and the different relationships that shape the innovation landscape. I have engaged with this problem in a recent edited collection seeking to understand the influence of conceptualizations of relational space in contemporary studies of energy (Castán Broto and Baker

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Energy Transitions and Urban Infrastructure

2018). Building upon Doreen Massey’s ideas of space as constituted “through the social,” my co-author Lucy Baker and I concluded, “Space is actively produced through processes of connectivity, proximity, and differentiation (see also Chapter 1). Thinking of space as relational helps to recognize multiple coexisting configurations and future possibilities” (Castán Broto and Baker 2018, p. 2). Relational ideas of space are already starting to shape the field of transitions, particularly as the urban dimensions of socio-technical transitions take a central position within the field (Hodson, Burrai et al. 2016, Hodson, Geels et al. 2017, Huang and Castán Broto 2018, Huang, Castán Broto et al. 2018). Nevertheless, as explained above, the integration of ideas of relational space within transition frameworks is not straightforward, as a number of recent critiques sensitive to urban perspectives have demonstrated (e.g., Coenen and Truffer 2012, McCormick, Anderberg et al. 2013, Rutherford and Coutard 2014, Rutherford and Jaglin 2015, Truffer, Murphy et al. 2015). Studies of urban energy transitions have examined urban processes and practices as both constituents and consequences of energy system change (Hodson and Marvin 2010, Nevens, Frantzeskaki et al. 2013, Rohracher and Späth 2013, Hodson, Burrai et al. 2016). Rutherford and Coutard (2014) highlight three crucial areas of work that require attention when energy transitions are situated in an urban setting: (1) The materiality of energy flows and, in particular, their integration in infrastructure systems. (2) The location of the urban in broader institutional and economic networks, linking near and far places. (3) The inherently political processes of contestation that shape urban transitions, not as an additional aspect of transitions but as a constituent one. These critiques of transition studies highlight politics as a constituent element of transitions (Rutherford and Coutard 2014, Jaglin 2014, Verdeil 2014). Local discourses and interests shape the trajectories of urban energy transitions (McFarlane and Rutherford 2008, Späth and Rohracher 2012, Hodson and Marvin 2012, Castán Broto and Bulkeley 2013, Moss 2013). Moss (2013), for example, explains the changing discourses of energy security under different political regimes in Berlin. From the 1920s to the West Berlin blockade of 1948/49 and until today, multiple discourses of energy security (generating capacity, self-sufficiency, and vulnerability to external attacks) have influenced local politics’ moving from the establishment of new resource flows to access energy resources to changes in the practices of energy. Jaglin (2014) contrasted the responses to electricity blackouts in Cape Town from the local government (which focused on demand-side measures) and from the national government (which focused on energy generation),

2.2 Urban Energy Transitions and Infrastructure

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demonstrating how predetermined interests shaped a conflict around energy transitions expressed at the urban scale. This work is a call for the recognition of the multi-actor processes that shape the governance of urban energy transition (Hodson and Marvin 2010, Rutherford and Jaglin 2015), but it also calls for a recognition of the processes of incremental change and readjustment that occur in the processes of technological change and that often do not match policies formulated beyond the urban level (Monstadt and Wolff 2015). Overall, it highlights that governing urban energy transitions also requires understanding the specific material processes through which urban transformations are accomplished (Bulkeley 2015, Moss et al. 2016). The concept of regime is central to all of the frameworks in sustainability transitions. Within transitions theory, the regime refers to the set of relatively stable institutional arrangements that structure the organization of a system of provision including technologies, resource flows, organizations, and practices. From a multilevel perspective, the regime is presented in contrast to the landscape, which reflects a broader set of socio-cultural and economic trends over which the actors have little influence; and the socio-technical niches, or protected spaces over which actors have a greater degree of agency and in which disruptive innovations can emerge. (For one of the most detailed elaborations of the framework, see Geels 2005.) The key aspect of the regime is its relative stability and how it integrates incremental change. Scholars of urban infrastructure have defined urban infrastructure regimes as stable socio-technical configurations of an urban infrastructure system, which includes institutions, techniques, and artifacts (Monstadt 2009). This notion captures both the spatial factors that shape and are shaped by space-specific sociotechnical innovation activities (socio-technical niches) and the structure of sociotechnical regimes, both of which are embedded in urban infrastructure regimes. Urban infrastructure regimes foreground the means whereby urban politics are central to the ordering of life alongside systems of provision (Monstadt 2009). However, alongside urban infrastructure regimes – the institutions that govern urban energy transitions (cf. Rutherford and Jaglin 2015) – patterns of urban habitation also exist in which practices of provision become enmeshed with the urban fabric. Gandy (2011; see also Gandy 2004) has spoken of urban infrastructure landscapes as a manifestation of collective memories interspersed in socio-material constructs. Thus, whereas regimes direct analytical attention to the ordering of urban life, infrastructure landscapes relate to the experience of the urban fabric and how it supports multiple, non-strategic daily tasks. Change in urban infrastructure landscapes emerges as a multi-dimensional process whereby multiple agents shift the urban fabric until it becomes unrecognizable, in contrast to understandings of urban transitions as a process of reconfiguration of different

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Energy Transitions and Urban Infrastructure

components of the infrastructure regime (Monstadt 2009). Regimes and landscapes are complementary perspectives on energy transitions in which we move from understanding how transitions are governed to how transitions are lived. In line with Monstadt’s line of thought, this movement requires engaging with the fundamental political character of urban energy transitions but situated in relation to the mundane character of urban infrastructures, as elaborated in the following section. 2.3 The Mundane Life of Energy Infrastructures In her pioneering work studying infrastructures as an ethnographic object, Star (1999) advocated the study of “boring things,” that is, the things that make up our mundane worlds of social interaction – the cables that mediate lighting and data transmission, the pipes that carry water and feces, the streets we walk in mindlessly. She advocated examining all those things that without an explicit political intent or social function are co-constitutive of social life. Star’s essay anticipated a fixation on infrastructure as an expression of the politics of everyday experience. When focusing on infrastructures, urbanism emerges as a complex and dynamic socio-technical process whose politics operate at multiple scales (Graham and Marvin 2001). For some, infrastructures are the basis of a matrix that enables the materialization of multiple forms of power (Easterling 2014). For others, infrastructure reveals the creative approaches by which people find the means to provide for essential services, even in circumstances of extreme deprivation (Simone 2004). In urban areas, infrastructure is an indissoluble part of urban experience. Infrastructures involve multi-layered processes of matter-ordering that are dirty, dangerous, and shape control (Graham and McFarlane 2014). Infrastructure has an active capacity to influence human affairs, a latent vitality that enables its active intervention in political life (Bennet 2010). In urban settings, infrastructures shape urban future visions, citizens’ expectations, and political choices. Star argued that once you strip infrastructures from the human understandings that make them useful, there remains something other than a meaningless collection of objects. Infrastructures, she says, are a relational property with very specific characteristics (Table 2.1). In her vision, infrastructures are also socially constituted and infused with a complex set of political relationships. She links infrastructure to the distributional effects of material politics. This vision requires an “infrastructure inversion” to foreground the backstage elements of work practices (Bowker 1994). Infrastructures are also part of daily quotidian lives. They might become invisible when in use, but for most of us, maintaining transparency is part of our daily lives. Communities of practice extend beyond the organization to the street, the neighborhood, and the city connecting households with public spaces.

2.3 The Mundane Life of Energy Infrastructures

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Table 2.1: Infrastructure properties (adapted from Star 1999) PROPERTY

IMPLICATIONS

Embeddedness

Infrastructure is sunk into other infrastructures, materials, ecologies, social arrangements, and technologies Infrastructure need not be assembled for each task It acquires invisibility through use Reaches beyond one site or event Infrastructure relates to a “community of practice” with shared practices of belonging Infrastructure both changes and is changed by the activities of a community of practice Standard arrangements are needed to plug and develop new infrastructures Historically constituted Build upon the inertia of existing systems Rupture and emergency systems increase its visibility Large, layered, complex structure Distributed governance (never from above) Change requires negotiation and time

Transparency Reach or scope Learned as part of membership Links with conventions of practice Embodiment of standards Built on an installed base Becomes visible upon breakdown Fixed in modular increments

These infrastructures are as exciting as they are mundane. Infrastructures have a dual character. On the one hand, they are a vital part of every strategic project shaping urban environments. On the other hand, they play a role in sustaining activities that add up to everyday life. A focus on the political intent of infrastructures frames them as exciting, active players in social life, but it overlooks those aspects of infrastructure that Star called “singularly unexciting.” The singularly unexciting aspects of urban life shape the possibility to achieve a transition to sustainability. As explained above, transitions depend upon the possibilities to rearrange a whole suite of elements within an overall socio-technical process. Such an arrangement is not about challenging specific instances of political power. Rather, it requires rearranging the mundane environments that confer stability on a specific arrangement of resources, technologies, institutions, and social practices. For example, in Indonesia 50 million households switched from kerosene to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from 2007 to 2011 (Budya and Yasir Arofat 2011). This transition was the result of multiple, simultaneous processes including the availability of a cheaper fuel, the realization of the political significance of kerosene subsidies, the development of a distribution infrastructure, negotiations with

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industry actors, changes in household practices, and industrial production of new appliances. The transition depended upon the progressive alignment of the daily tasks of many actors, including families, small providers, small industries, government institutions, and Pertamina, the national oil company. The transition, however, can hardly be described as a strategic project. As it unfolded, it did not entirely match the vision of any single actor. For example, the Indonesian government’s priority was to alleviate energy poverty among deprived families. However, the evidence suggests that the transition occurred among medium and higher income households in suburban areas (Andadari, Mulder et al. 2014). A transition is thus made possible by the rearrangement of daily tasks around infrastructure changes. Such changes can be radical in their nature, but they must be integrated seamlessly in people’s lives – in their households but also in industries, in the transport sector, and within government regulations. Such a process of integration is composed of what Star characterized as the dull, routine, commonplace humdrum of everyday life around infrastructures. It is no less political, but the politics link to the processes of maintenance and integration rather than to their strategic intent. Such an ordinary character of infrastructures is captured in urban infrastructure landscapes. They comprise the daily tasks of multiple actors who maintain and operate the urban environment, whether they are in a domestic, work, or public space; whether they are underground or aboveground; whether they perform active processes of zoning urban areas, or neglect interstitial spaces in which nonsanctioned processes of urban life occur. Urban energy landscapes sustain urban life: they reproduce it; they support the performance of normality. Eventually, they constitute a form of “connective tissue” that enables continuity in a constantly changing urban environment. If we examine energy, how are energy infrastructures integrated in the city? A particular angle into the concept of energy landscapes emerges from the consideration of the relationship between energy provision and use and urban form, a question that has long obsessed environmental planners and geographers (Owens 1986, Hawkes, Owers et al. 1987). Owens (1986) conceptualized the relationship between energy systems and spatial structure in three links: development of spatial structure in relation to the nature, location, and availability of energy sources; the structuration of energy requirements in relation to the spatial structure; and the constraints that energy sources, spatial structure, and energy requirements pose on the development of energy innovations and alternative energy systems. Since then, there has been a steady body of scholarship studying how urban morphology (the granular structure of urban areas in blocks or groups of buildings) and urban form (its distribution in zones) affect the embodied and operational energy of the built environment, from influencing heat demands to shaping users’ behaviors (recent

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examples include: Salat 2009, Wong, Jusuf et al. 2011, Howard, Parshall et al. 2012, Rode, Keim et al. 2013, Zanon and Verones 2013, Zhou, Lin et al. 2013). This literature has challenged, in particular, a planning emphasis on singular models of urban development, such as the compact city, which are often applied without reflecting upon the variety and specificity of human settlements (for a seminal critique, see Jenks, Burton et al. 1996). Instead, this body of research shows that sustainable urban forms can be achieved via multiple means (Williams, Jenks et al. 2000). Owens was interested in energy planning as a means to find different styles of urban form for increasing energy efficiency. However, she found that the relationship between energy and space was reciprocal: urban form shaped the possibilities for energy provision and use, but the operation of energy-related processes was also a means to shape and transform urban spaces and cities’ futures (Owens 1990). The focus on spatial planning narrowed the terms of the debate. In some ways, the work of infrastructure scholars and their fixation on the politics of urban energy and its manifestation in a seamless web (Hughes 1993) has constituted an antidote to a focus on planning and urban form. An engagement with relational theories of space (Calvert 2016, Castán Broto and Baker 2018, Solomon and Calvert 2018) might enable a reappraisal of this literature, particularly concerning Owen’s understanding of energy systems in relation to the linkages to resources that support the city and the means to deliver them (flows) and the appraisal of energy requirements and practices in relation to the built environment infrastructure (choreographies). These last two both appear deeply connected to the possibilities for energy innovation and future transitions. 2.4 The Political Ecology of Urban Energy Flows The first element of Owen’s framework engages with provision of energy in relation to natural resources. This aspect is key to the production of urban socionatures alongside patterns of urban inequality and brings the argument to its starting point about the material politics of urban energy transitions. Urban political ecology is a body of theory that understands that the production of urban inequality is intrinsically linked to the exploitation of resources. A central aspect of urban political ecology is the conceptualization of the urban as expressing landscapes of power, that is, as a reflection of strategic projects that attempt to dominate people and their environments (Zimmer, Cornea et al. 2018). As an analytic approach, urban political ecology is an integrated and relational approach, and its objects of study are the interconnected economic, political, social, and ecological processes that form highly uneven urban landscapes (Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003). Hence, urban political ecology can provide an answer to the unresolved questions

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emerging from the political and spatial dynamics of socio-technical transitions (Lawhon and Murphy 2012). As urban political ecology is increasingly adopted to understand the urban dynamics of energy (Silver 2015) and climate change (Rice 2014), it has a great potential to support the development of a perspective on energy transitions that places at its core the uneven production of urban socionatures (see also Silver and Marvin 2017). Urban political ecology (UPE) speaks directly to the idea of urban energy landscapes because of its explicitly Marxist conceptualization of the constitution of urban areas – the production of urban socionatures – as the spatial manifestation of material exchange and accumulation (Heynen, Kaika et al. 2006, Cook and Swyngedouw 2012). The tropes of metabolism and circulation have been crucial to explain not only how resources sustain the city economy, but also how they are implicated in the production of a particular type of nature politics (Heynen, Kaika et al. 2006). Flows reflect the context of capital accumulation – and circulation – derived from material circulation and how control over these flows expresses and constitutes political power (Keil 2005). One reason to examine metabolic flows when studying the city is that the production of social and environmental inequalities is inextricably linked to the distribution of urban resources (Castán Broto, Allen et al. 2012, Cook and Swyngedouw 2012). Overall, UPE emphasizes the material conditions that constitute urban environments, how they are manipulated into particular systems of flows, and how they serve the interests of elites at the expense of disadvantaged or marginalized populations (Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003, p. 902). UPE helps to recognize that landscapes are constituted within a particular space of flows in which capitalist relationships are materialized. What diagnostic mechanisms are available to understand those urban flows? A central concern of UPE is making legible the uneven patterns of urban socionatures and their effect on different groups of people by engaging with the constitution of nature within the city (Heynen 2014). Historical approaches to understanding how socionatures emerge from within given trajectories have been a key tool to identify urban political ecologies of infrastructure (see particularly: Gandy 2003, Gandy 2005, Kaika 2006). However, historical analysis only goes so far in engaging with the materiality of such flows. Scholars of UPE have also tried to engage directly with the characteristics of those material flows in an attempt to read spatial patterns of uneven urban development alongside dominant political projects of nature and human domination. A group of scholars, for example, has sought to engage with conventional research methods within engineering and planning to visualize the material basis of inequality and socionatural domination in a strategic approach which they called politico-industrial ecology (Newell and Cousins 2015). Industrial ecology approaches to urban metabolism quantify environmental flows through the urban

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system to manage the city’s overall consumption and waste (see for instance: Wolman 1965, Barles 2009, Kennedy, Cuddihy et al. 2007). For example, material flow analysis measures the input and output of materials being consumed and disposed of by an administrative region (Brunner and Rechberger 2016), whereas life cycle assessment tracks materials through their industrial life cycle (Goldstein, Birkved et al. 2013). These methods have been used to quantify urban material flows (Kennedy et al. 2011, Alfonso Piña and Pardo Martínez 2014, Rosado, Niza et al. 2014), their climate effects (Delgado et al. 2012), the resource cycle (Forkes 2007, Villarroel Walker and Beck 2012), and the relationship between a city and its hinterland (Barles 2009). However, material flow analysis focuses primarily on the analysis of the environmental impacts of material flows, as though they were not embedded in specific conditions within the environment, society, the economy, and governance. Urban sustainability is generally understood as the efficient management of the environment and natural resources, brought about through optimization of the urban resource cycle. In this sense, sustainability is measured at the city scale as the successful transition from linear – and highly entropic – metabolisms to circular ones (Girardet 2004). The link of urban metabolism with policy interventions means a constant search for the drivers of flows and an increasing sensitivity to the social and political factors that shape those flows: From the research on Los Angeles (as with many other cities), it is evident that flows into cities and out of cities affect populations differently, and are accessed differently, depending upon income, employment, geographical location, and a suite of other factors. By coupling the flows with such aspects as pricing, researchers can show how, as in the case of Los Angeles, lower-income residents have the highest water elasticity due to price sensitivity, and that if the policy goal is water-use reduction, programs must target water use by the more affluent. This targeting, of course, ultimately becomes an issue of political decision making – as are many fundamental aspects of the structure of urban systems and their metabolism. They are matters of power and influence. (Pincetl, Chester et al. 2014)

As Keil (2005) explains, despite the inherent potential of this work, the conception of nature in industrial ecology remains relatively static, and there are few attempts within industrial ecology to capitalize on the analysis to develop a full-fledged critique of the economic and political systems that sustain those flows. In response, scholars of politico-industrial ecology have sought to mobilize industrial ecology research strategies for the identification and quantification of material flows to reveal patterns of urban inequality, in a subversive use of conventional methods. Often, what we encounter is an attempt to overlay metabolism assessments with political economy analyses of ongoing processes in the production of socionatures. However, methods such as material flow analysis take for granted existing capacities to characterize flows objectively and reproduce the pitfalls of technocratic approaches to understanding urban nature that make key

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aspects of environmental management in cities invisible, such as the important role played in waste management by waste pickers in cities such as Mexico DF (Castán Broto and Guibrunet 2019). Three lessons can be brought forward from these debates. First, infrastructures emerge as complex socio-technical mediators of the resource flows that generate uneven patterns of development in the city. Second, infrastructures are embedded in the urban landscape through a complex historical process of coevolution. Third, in line with politico-industrial ecology, some of these flows can be defined precisely to connect their materiality with the political economy of the city, leaving aside more-technocratic efforts to map and quantify those flows. One important critique has emerged in terms of the conceptual imaginations that have dominated UPE analyses. Reimagining the political ecology of infrastructure beyond the city emerges in the first place as a challenge to rural-urban binaries that simplify the politico-material relationships within the city (Angelo and Wachsmuth 2015). However, scholars of UPE have not always been sufficiently careful to explain how the analysis moves beyond the confines of the city, a limitation visible in my own work in Maputo, for example (Castán Broto et al. 2015). Given its strong foundations in the political economy of urban socionatures, UPE has the potential to analyze wider processes of global circulation that shape urban political ecologies (Rademacher 2015). Castell’s definition of the city as a process (Castell 2010) exceeds the idea of the city as defined by administrative or functional boundaries or the idea of the city as an imagined unit. As a process, cities connect diverse servicebased activities with a global network, simultaneously downplaying the linkages with other cities and contiguous regions. The space of flows emerges from the circulation of ideas, knowledge, regulatory frameworks or technologies across global networks. Appadurai’s notion of technoscapes highlights movement as the active force beyond technological change in a milieu in which “technology, both high and low, both mechanical and informational, now moves at high speeds across various types of previously impervious boundaries” (Appadurai 1996, p. 34). In this view, global circulations separate the modern from the non-modern and configure new styles and places. In cities, there is a cosmopolitan class of experts, or traveling technocrats, whose mobility configures their capacity to dominate not only the spread of knowledge, but also how such knowledge is implemented in specific locales (Larner and Laurie 2010, McCann and Ward 2012, Prince 2012). For example, there is a growing interest among international architectural, engineering, and property development companies in developing urban Africa. These international consultants develop master plans which depict modern visions of the city, but such visions amount only to urban fantasies (Watson 2013). On the one hand, they bear little resemblance to the actual conditions of living in cities such as Kigali or Lagos; on the other hand,

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they serve as the means to displace poorer citizens and informal economies in the name of real-estate interests. The international circulation of technologies and models of urbanism is central to the configuration of these urban projects. However, there is a disconnection between the ambitions of these plans and the actual processes of urbanization that occur in the city (Bhan 2013). An emphasis on processes of global circulation might distract attention from the place-based constitution of urban energy landscapes, a concern that has haunted landscape scholars for some time (Olwig 2007). The idea of the city and landscape as processes resonates with the phenomenological perspective on landscapes (Tilley 1994) that constitutes the basis for thinking about urban energy landscapes. As processes, urban landscapes become dynamic, constituted of practices that are always in-the-making and incomplete. The circulation of technologies and models of urbanism occur alongside simultaneous processes of circulation and fixation. Circulation is an active process whereby landscapes are constantly redefined, but the extent to which this circulation reaches a reified global sphere beyond the city is only relevant within an analytical frame that prioritizes the global as a sphere of analyses. Sheller and Urry (2006, p. 9) argue, “Contemporary landscapes are shot through with technological elements which enroll people, space, and the elements connecting people and spaces into socio-technical assemblages.” The key process toward materialization occurs in certain locations “via the affordances of the spaces, infrastructures and technologies in and through which they move, pause, dwell and encounter one another” (Ibid.). Barry, for example, has argued that technoscapes interact with other variables, configuring the deployment of technologies in particular locales (Barry 2001). He argues that although forms of global circulation shape the processes of technology development, knowledge and technological changes occur with reference to specific locales within certain “technological zones” (Barry 2006). It follows that different spatial manifestations of the energy landscape – from wind turbines and oil pipes to the distribution of lamps on the street – signify strategic projects whose purpose is to fixate, organize, and calculate how energy is managed and used. Such features can become embedded in wider circulations of meaning, some of which might reach a global scale, but this embedding is not the only reason that they are relevant to understanding energy transitions. Taking Foucault as an inspiration, Barry defines technological zones in relation to the sharing of certain standards. Infrastructural zones are defined in relation to sharing connectivity standards. Barry’s analysis connects with ideas about the need for an “analysis of the historical construction of particular political and economic spaces, and the specificities of the materials, practices and locations which they transform, connect, exclude and silence” (Barry 2006, p. 250). He points toward technological zones as separating global or Western political and economic forms

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and non-Western others. This, however, prioritizes a dual conception of the processes of innovation in the world, when the evidence is one of diverse, of traditionally modern, ideals struggling with specific resistances in each locale, creating highly unstable conditions for such zones (Ong and Collier 2005). Global flows of technology are inscribed in patterns of inequality and difference, and the lives of the urban poor remain dependent upon the technoscapes imagined by knowledge elites. Innovation emerges in seemly static and non-circulatory settings. However, where is the city itself, the assemblage that emerges from the daily performance of routine tasks by people living in the city? This assemblage becomes visible in urban infrastructure landscapes. UPE analysis explains how nature imaginaries are incorporated in hegemonic narratives of urban domination via strategic projects that clash with local interests and negatively affect disadvantaged urban populations (Véron 2006, Ioris 2012). However, the compendium of mundane strategic projects shaping the lives of local communities is less visible in urban political ecology approaches. Feminist and postcolonial scholars have noted that a political ecology of the city must also engage with the multiple histories that connect urban space and its landscapes. Noting the material and social resources that make up the lives of those who are most disadvantaged within the city (Moffat and Finnis 2005) is a means to expose the everyday politics – to examine the average “everydayness” of urban infrastructure (Truelove 2011, Heynen 2016, Doshi 2017). In line with Star’s concerns, an engagement with the routine aspects of infrastructure delivery and use reveals situated material politics involved in “the production of, and inter-connections between, scales of analysis, specifically revealing how everyday practice is tied to the construction of scales such as the body, household, and city at large” (Truelove 2011). Following the themes of this book, UPE studies not only landscapes of power, but also landscapes of dwelling. UPE can only be a political ecology of urban multiplicity (cf. Rocheleau, Thomas-Slayter et al. 2013). From a postcolonial perspective, the experience of cities in the global south makes manifest that power is ultimately fragmented; thus, UPE must engage with the material politics that emerge from within particular places without subsuming all analysis under a political economy analysis of global capitalism (Lawhon, Ernstson et al. 2014). An emphasis on capitalist forms of production and consumption means that the process of living through the city, the everyday life, can be reduced to a process of disciplining and the making of worthy neoliberal subjects of capitalism (for an example, see Gabriel 2014). Postcolonial thinking disrupts epistemic assumptions about not only environmental management and urban development, but also the primacy of a capitalist order of things in both our values and our tools for critical analysis (Ranganathan and Balazs 2015).

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UPE must be open to alternative politics that emerge from making the everyday city. Holifield (2009) has proposed to maintain UPE alongside complementary approaches such as the actor-network theory (see Chapter 4), which also view urban technologies and infrastructures as relational but simultaneously recognize the multiple agencies that shape urban energy landscapes and how they are deployed through material interaction. I follow Holifield and Schuelke’s (2015) call for abandoning the idea of identifying a search for the “properly political,” seeking to locate the political instead in ordinary contexts of action, in relation to the living course of urban infrastructure, and away from an anthropocentric conception of a politics of emancipation as defined exclusively by human actors. Engaging with the ordinary political thus requires a reconfiguration of agency within urban infrastructure landscapes because they are historically constituted through a myriad of actions, and they are repositories of strategic projects of control and domination without being entirely shaped by them. Urban energy landscapes are not only landscapes of power, but also landscapes that can be reimagined and remade through routine interventions and whose progressive potential lies in the possibility to prefigure alternative futures and spaces of possibility (see also: Loftus 2012, Heynen 2014). 2.5 Everyday Practices and the Making of Energy Choreographies There is always peril in investigating everyday life, for what is everyday life if not everything (Loftus 2012)? Within the social sciences, there has been an attempt to systematize the study of everyday life through the notion of practice and the analysis of how patterns of stability and change become inserted in social life. Despite the potential for dialogue with transition studies, attention has been scant (Köhler, Geels et al. 2017). Although social and material life depend upon daily activities, activities alone do not explain social life; instead, there are patterns of action that can be examined as the units for sociological inquiry (Shove, Pantzar et al. 2012). From this point of view, the relationship between energy and society can be described as bundles of social practice that relate to particular arrangements of resources and artifacts (Shove and Walker 2014). In relation to Owens (1986), social practices relate to the structuration of energy requirements via the evolution of the built environment, and the possibilities for innovation open up within those structuring dynamics. Anthony Giddens’ ideas of structuration have been one of the most defining influences in how the theory of practice is used as a lens to examine energy and climate change (Shove, Pantzar et al. 2012). Overall, the conclusion is that if societal structures and human agencies are recursively related, this relationship can be examined through an analysis of bundles of action, material, and social understandings understood as social practices (Shove 2010, Shove, Pantzar et al. 2012).

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We can take forward insights from the theory of practice in the examination of urban energy landscapes. First, there is a need to differentiate the performance of practices in particular locations and moments (contingent actions) from emergent, recognizable units of practice that can be systematically examined from a social sciences perspective (Shove 2010, Shove, Pantzar et al. 2012). Practices become emergent entities – objects that deserve individual examination. In urban energy landscapes, dwellers go about their business with a series of embodied patterns already shaping the possibilities and intentions for action. Reducing these patterns to individual or contingent action means limiting the recognition of the patterns of action that occur there. The point is not that the repeated use of a charcoal cookstove in Maputo or the neon lighting in Hong Kong produces particular practices of cooking or lighting. Rather, the cookstove is used within a particular configuration of material and spatial objects and within a particular approach to understanding how cooking occurs. The neon light becomes significant within a particular business context in which lighting is a marker of prosperity that becomes entrenched through use. Urban energy landscapes reflect practices of energy use and how they are organized in relation to the built environment. The idea of choreography enables a visualization of the constitution of practices within the built environment. If we take a Goffman-inspired metaphor of social life as performance (Goffman 1990 [1959]), we can extend such a metaphor to thinking of the relationship between practice and the surrounding environment. Choreography can be thought of as a sequence of acts that lead to a particular effect. A difference exists between an imagined choreographic sequence and how it actually occurs in each performance. Returning to the above examples, there is a sequence of acts in the preparation of a meal in a charcoal cookstove. In my interviews and collective discussions with citizens in Maputo who use charcoal as part of their daily life, I found it difficult to reconstruct an account of those choreographies – that is, the sequence of actions that make it possible to cook with charcoal, from the purchase of charcoal to the careful preparation in the cookstove and the synchronization of the multiple tasks involved in cooking. However, observing cooking revealed how such choreographies are displayed in relation to the particular home-setting in which cooking occurs. The move from practice to energy choreographies is a means to make explicit the role of the built environment in urban energy landscapes and the urban history that scholars of UPE are concerned with. There is a point of encounter between feminist UPE and the theory of practice in their common response to ideas of sustainability transitions described above. Rather than searching for coordinated processes of change or disruptive innovations that can reconfigure the regime, change is something that occurs within the domain of everyday life, as a process of continuous

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readjustment. Ideas of coevolution and urban trajectories can be useful to conceptualize the process of change in urban areas resulting from the recurrent interaction between bundles of practice that structure everyday life and broader political projects of strategic control that produce uneven urban environments. Coevolution refers to processes of interaction between evolving human and biophysical systems that account for the changes in both systems (Norgaard and Kallis 2011). Coevolution occurs when change over time in seemingly separated systems leads to a mutual response (Weisz 2011). In an urban setting, coevolution refers to the coupling of social systems with particular configurations of the built environment that enable resource transformation. Coevolution challenges traditional understandings of energy because it breaks assumptions about the causal mechanisms that mediate ecologies, technology, and society. For example, many studies in urban morphology research accept Owens’ two-directional assumptions about the influence of the availability of energy resources on spatial structure, and about the influence of spatial structure on energy requirements (Owens 1986). However, a coevolutionary perspective suspends assumptions about the causal directionality between two systems, i.e., one causing the other. Instead, coevolution presupposes mutual influence between social practices, technology, and the built environment, and the ecosystems that sustain them (Brand 2005). Co-evolution emphasizes systemic change that emerges from the variation between individuals within the system, but there is no assumption of progress in that change (Fracchia and Lewontin 1999, Weisz 2011). Thus, coevolution does not imply any teleological explanation about the organization of social, technological, and ecological systems. Instead, coevolutionary analyses examine the interconnected string of historical factors and events that explains the contemporary situation. The sequence of states, which over time leads to the current state of urban energy systems, can be thought of as an urban trajectory. In terms of how people use energy, for example, this trajectory can be thought of as a “chain of experiential needs” through which multiple elements of the urban energy system become interconnected (Brand 2008). In Maputo, for example, the development of the energy system has been closely tied to the regulatory mechanisms and local beliefs that prevent low-income households living in reed houses from connecting to the electricity network. As people meet their energy needs using solid fuels, these fuels become embedded in relation to both local livelihoods and cooking practices that are choreographed within a given architecture (e.g., cooking occurs in the courtyard to prevent indoor air pollution). The states that constitute a given trajectory are embedded in broader contexts, or pathways, that help articulate future visions. In environmental planning, pathways refer to a wide diversity of imagined urban futures that emerge from critical junctures – or path bifurcations – and that are likely to shape the direction of travel and close off alternative destinations (Rydin,

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Turcu et al. 2013, Hodson, Burrai et al. 2016). Pathways emphasize future possibilities and alternative courses of action (e.g., Rydin, Turcu et al. 2012, Marletto 2014, Turnheim, Berkhout et al. 2015, O’Neill, Kriegler et al. 2017). Pathways are thus linked to multiple and competing values that shape change trajectories (Leach, Scoones et al. 2010). Trajectories emphasize the course or direction of change; they explicitly refer to the process of walking a single path. Path dependence occurs when contingent historical events trigger a sequence of events following a relatively deterministic pattern or momentum; that is, the present conjuncture depends upon decisions taken in the past (Mahoney 2000). When socio-ecological and socio-technical systems follow a coevolutionary trajectory, they can trigger a self-reinforcing sequence of events that might condition future change opportunities. For example, the discovery of large fossil fuel reserves might lead to the development of institutions, economic interests, lifestyles, and technological developments that curtail the possibilities to develop renewable technologies and, over decades, render any development alternative unthinkable (for examples, see: Castán Broto 2013, Corvellec, Zapata Campos et al. 2013). With the development of infrastructures, institutions, and social habits, moving away from fossil fuels might prove to be an impossible enterprise, a situation that is described as carbon lock-in (Unruh 2000). In urban areas, carbon lock-in is a key aspect of the obduracy, that is, resistance to change, which is experienced as an obstacle for the planners and city managers who see themselves as bringing spatial transformations (Hodson 2008). Urban obduracy follows the construction of built environment structures that become fixed and immobile (Hommels 2000). Obduracy can be explained as a relational property that develops as different elements become intertwined through coevolution (Hommels 2005a, Hommels 2005b, Beauregard 2015). Thinking of urban obduracy is akin to thinking about what is possible, recognizing how future opportunities are constrained by a specific urban change trajectory of urban change (Kirkman 2009). Thus, coevolution highlights the mutual reinforcement between human and biophysical systems in urban areas. However, obduracy is not a constant in urban areas. Urban change refers to the processes whereby the recognizable social and spatial structures of urban areas become different and, in some instances, radically transformed. Urban change can be gradual and incremental or radical and transformative (a transition), depending upon the speed at which change occurs. There is a consensus now that moving toward a sustainable society is akin to delivering a radical transformation of human–ecological relationships, certainly beyond incremental, efficiency-related gains (Haberl, Fischer-Kowalski et al. 2011, Markard, Raven et al. 2012). In urban areas, this transformation entails a substantial modification of the relationship between urban societies, the resource systems that sustain them, and the

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technologies/structures that mediate resource transformations. This modification differentiates between quotidian forms of urban change, whereby city inhabitants shift different aspects of the urban landscape until it becomes unrecognizable, and what is effectively a rapid reconfiguration of urban infrastructure landscapes in a transformative process (Monstadt 2009). The analysis of urban change trajectories in this project helps in understanding the potential for systemic urban change. In an urban setting, coevolution refers specifically to the coupling of social systems with particular configurations of the built environment that enable resource transformation. Urban institutions, social practices, and cultural norms change in response to the existing technologies and built environment structures. As new structures are built to meet societal demands, these demands adapt to the existing systems of provision (Brand 2005). In other words, there is a “two-way nature” of the relationship between technologies/infrastructures, on the one hand, and human behavior, on the other hand. Perhaps the most prominent metaphor for this view is Hughes’ term of a “seamless web” with society and technology constantly interacting and shaping each other (Brand 2005). Moreover, urban societies must be understood in relation to the resource systems that support them. Here, coevolution is thought of as the interaction between different evolving systems, which act as essential boundary conditions for each other (Weisz 2011). Changing those over time leads to a mutual response (Weisz 2011). For example, in a city such as Gothenburg, Sweden, a coevolutionary response to carbon lock-in would entail examining the web of cultural, material, institutional, and technological factors that influence the constitution and operation of an infrastructure such as a waste incinerator (Corvellec, Zapata Campos et al. 2013). What, then, is really coevolving in the production of an urban energy landscape? If we limit coevolution to being a process of interaction between social and technological systems or between social and ecological systems, we risk reifying those categories and reproducing the binary thinking that limits our understanding of sustainability transitions. For two elements to coevolve, they must initially be defined independently. Thus, those conceptions of coevolution assume the existence of a societal system that is independent from the technological system and from the ecological resource base, within which we can identify multiple, recurrent interactions. Brand’s understanding of the coevolution of the built environment and behavior, although pioneering, reproduces this binary. Instead, following feminist UPE perspectives and practice theory, I understand that urban energy landscapes emerge from the coevolution of flows and choreographies. Energy flows and the infrastructures that mediate them sustain the energy system and depend upon the political economy of the city. They are coupled with the spatial choreographies that emerge from everyday practices of energy use. The urban fabric emerges from a history of

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coevolution between flows and choreographies, becoming a reflection of the conflict between strategic projects of urban domination and the practices of dwelling whereby citizens conform to or resist the given order of things. 2.6 Extraordinary Ordinariness of Urban Infrastructure Landscapes This chapter situates the concept of urban energy landscapes within a generalized notion of urban infrastructure landscapes that emerges from the dialogue between feminist UPE and practice theory. This framework enables the characterization of urban energy landscapes as the result of the coevolution of flows and choreographies (Figure 2.1). The amalgamation of flows directs and results from the production of urban socionatures. The choreographies of practice are emergent properties that result from both repeated actions and the structuration of some of those patterns into normalized ideas about how social life occurs in a particular setting. Both concepts – flows and choreographies – move away from binary understandings of the city as a sum of separate social, ecological, and technological systems, simultaneously supporting an analytical approach to the study of urban energy landscapes (simplified in Figure 2.2). On the one hand, flows can be studied through particular attention to those flows and their historical configuration in relation to urban politics. On the other hand, choreographies of practice can be understood through situated choreographies and innovative methods such as the participatory mapping of infrastructures. Participatory mapping of infrastructure, for example, consists simply of collective walking transects alongside the quotidian spaces of infrastructure use, in which the proximity of material elements of infrastructure and the rhythms of practice generate debate about how those infrastructures are used and developed in everyday life. Both elements must be situated within a context of governance in which there is a clear analysis of the political imaginaries that control flows and shape choreographies. This framework has been applied to the case studies of Hong Kong, Maputo, Concepción and Bangalore in Chapters 5 to 8 of this book. In each case, the application of the framework enables a detailed characterization of the heterogeneous forms of organization that shape flows and choreographies in each city, leading to the constitution of significantly different urban energy landscapes. Each case demonstrates the tension between strategic projects of landscape domination and the routine encounters through which dwellers ultimately shape the urban landscape. In doing so, each case provides a crucial insight about the situated politics of energy transitions and the possibilities for alternative energy futures in each city. In the course of this project, I developed the framework above and set out to develop the case studies as planned. However, in the course of my fieldwork, I found myself dissatisfied with how I was responding to the questions that emerged

2.6 Extraordinary Ordinariness

Figure 2.1 A diagram representing urban infrastructure landscapes as made of flows and choreographies. Credit: Louise Harvey.

Energy Transitions Governance

Energy Flows

Energy Choreographies

Figure 2.2 Scheme of the framework applied to analyze the case studies.

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from an empirical engagement with urban energy landscapes. The first contradiction was in terms of my own experiences of the urban energy landscape. Defining the landscape in terms of politics and governance distracted the argument away from the materialization of uneven patterns of urban life, whereas the idea of choreographies appeared limited to documenting vicarious experiences of the landscape. This approach limited my engagement with the idea of landscape as an embodied practice and as one that pertains to the fundamental aspects of “Being” in contemporary urban environments. The first thing I craved was a foregrounding of the material landscape as an ecological unit. Focusing on the nature of landscape and landscape experiences, I sought to “reconceptualize” the study of landscapes in relation to my own walking experiences in each of the case study cities. This realization triggered a theoretical exploration of the notion of urban energy landscapes as a connective tissue developed in Chapter 3. Heidegger’s notion of landscape as a place of dwelling, the relationship with landscape artifacts, and the concerns about utilitarian notions of technology are integrated in the idea of landscapes as connective tissue via an engagement with phenomenological ideas of landscape and, in particular, the work of Barbara Bender and Tim Ingold. The idea of urban energy landscapes as connective tissue triggered a new form of empirical investigation through reflective walking transects which is presented in the last empirical chapter, Chapter 9. Then again, rediscovering these four cities – Maputo, Concepción, Hong Kong, and Bangalore – through walking helped me to reimagine the idea of change away from the idea of transition and regime reconfiguration. Instead, landscapes appeared as ever changing, consisting of a multitude of tasks in which strategic projects of transformation are appropriated and imagined in everyday life. The last question that remained unanswered was how these multitudes of uncoordinated, non-strategic tasks could lead to a transformation of humans’ relationship with technologies and the environment, to the point that a transition to sustainability represents a fundamental transformation of Being. The focus on the reinterpretation of the Heideggerian lexicon in light of different approaches to the study of landscapes meant that the central question of Being became secondary. Chapter 4 returns to Heidegger’s original analysis of Being-in-the-World, with a particular interest in the question of change, how change becomes possible and the types of agency that facilitate it. Developing the notion of urban infrastructure landscapes with reference to the mundane politics of urban infrastructure and the possibilities for dramatic, existential change is a means to engage with Star’s “boring” infrastructures and celebrate infrastructure life in its extraordinary ordinariness.

3 Urban Energy Landscapes as Connective Tissue

3.1 Introduction Studies of energy landscapes explain how energy provision infrastructures and energy uses are embedded within specific material and sociological histories and, thus, promise new avenues for the study of the relationship between energy and society. In this chapter, I assess critically the notion of energy landscapes, first, by examining different underlying conceptualizations of landscape and, second, by adopting a phenomenological perspective as a means to develop alternative readings of transitions and technological changes. Thus, I propose a conceptualization of the energy landscape as the “connective tissue” that foregrounds particular energy artifacts and points toward the possibility of change embedded in the routine performance of daily tasks. Spatial and geographical questions have progressively become more prominent in debates about whether a low-carbon energy transition is possible and how it could be catalyzed (Haberl, Fischer-Kowalski et al. 2011, Bridge, Bouzarovski et al. 2013, Hansen and Coenen 2014, Rutherford and Coutard 2014, Späth and Rohracher 2014, Truffer, Murphy et al. 2015). Bridge et al. (2013) have argued that an energy transition is an inherently geographical process because it requires the reconfiguration of existing patterns of social and economic activity spread across diverse locations. From the rich conceptual vocabulary that geographers use to explain the geographical dimensions of energy transitions, the notion of “energy landscapes” has been deployed to reference a connected arrangement of sociotechnical objects, activities, and meanings that make different modes of energy production, distribution, and use necessary and possible (Bridge, Bouzarovski et al. 2013). The landscape element also refers to the complex activities of maintenance implicated in the production and use of energy (Haarstad and Wanvik 2016). A brief introduction to the literature on energy landscapes follows. Studies of energy landscapes emphasize the co-productive relationship between energy and society and the varied acts of “place-making” that develop and 39

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reproduce high-carbon energy systems (Calvert 2016). Thus, energy landscapes describe the co-constructed nature of socio-technical change required in transitions to sustainability (Nadaï and van der Horst 2010). As pervasive as it can be (cf. Huber 2013), energy is not an end in itself; rather, energy relates to multiple activities in everyday life shaped through social interactions with bundles of artifacts (Shove and Walker 2014). Many of the factors that shape current energy systems, from electricity networks to the type of houses in which people live, have emerged over time as part of a historical process through which different features of energy systems become embedded in our societies and economies (Möller 2010, Blaschke, Biberacher et al. 2013). Energy landscapes emphasize the embeddedness of energy artifacts in contemporary life, with the “landscapes” component pointing toward the material cultures that enable or prevent transitions, giving them historical depth (cf. Brace and Geoghegan 2011). Resulting from the interaction between humans and nature in a particular location over time, energy landscapes have a central historical dimension that can lead to explanatory observations about current energy systems. They also represent spatial patterns resulting from the management and use of energy resources. Energy landscapes direct attention to temporal and spatial processes of differentiation in energy provision and use, ones that depend upon cultural changes, access inequalities, and resource distribution (Bouzarovski 2009, Jiusto 2009). Alongside insights about place-specific cultures of energy, studies of energy landscapes have also shown how energy is intimately related to the constitution of collective identities and the development of social practices of energy in given spaces (Cowell 2010, Pasqualetti 2011). These insights have supported studies on planning conflicts that follow from the siting of energy projects (Pasqualetti 2000, Pasqualetti 2001, Cowell 2010, van der Horst and Evans 2010, Cowell, Bristow et al. 2011, Pasqualetti 2011). Energy landscapes also engage with a variety of networked materialities and socio-economic relationships that relate energy demand to unresolved political struggles around infrastructures and the home (e.g., Cupples 2011, Harrison and Popke 2011). In policy arenas, a geographical perspective has situated energy debates in relation to changing societal values (Owens and Driffill 2008, Lovell, Bulkeley et al. 2009). For example, debates around energy access and energy poverty are entangled with changing notions of society’s good life (Bickerstaff, Walker et al. 2013). New theoretical challenges arise because geographical analyses of energy provision and use have described them emerging within the contingent adoption of energy technologies and their inscription in a given energy landscape (e.g., Howell 2011). Understanding energy landscapes is a means to apprehend how change occurs and whether it can be accelerated. However, all these engagements with the notion of energy landscapes put a stronger emphasis on explaining what energy means for landscapes than on

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explaining what landscapes mean for energy. Moreover, the emphasis on landscape perceptions and the effects of land transformations has arguably moved attention away from addressing the role that landscape plays in people’s lives, how people maintain it over time, and its many implications for the sustainable management of energy systems. In this context, then, the motivation for this chapter is to critique the theoretical underpinnings of the energy landscape, as far as these can be ascertained, and to propose a new way of envisaging energy landscapes that might better resonate with the real challenges faced in the advancement of meaningful energy transitions. This chapter has five sections. Section 2 discusses different theoretical approaches to landscapes and how these approaches can enhance current understandings of energy landscapes. The aim is not to provide a comprehensive review of a subject that requires a book-length treatment, but rather to highlight key conceptualizations of landscapes that might be relevant to understanding energy landscapes more specifically. Section 3 presents a phenomenologically oriented reading of energy landscapes, arguing for the uniqueness of the landscape perspective in the conceptualization of the relationship between landscape and observer, and exploring how knowledge about landscapes is produced. Section 4 adopts such a phenomenological reading to conceptualize energy landscapes as “connective tissue.” As connective tissue, energy landscapes constitute a matrix that enables a myriad of daily activities or tasks using specific energy artifacts. Different artifacts exist within that landscape matrix but become foregrounded at specific moments, always in relation to multiple practices of energy production and consumption. Section 5 concludes by considering the implications of such a perspective on energy landscapes for the study of energy transitions. 3.2 Three Theoretical Approaches to Energy Landscapes Energy landscapes continue to generate engaged scholarship that, at every stage, questions dominant representations of energy systems as exclusively an engineering or economic preserve. The idea of landscape appears to hold social and ecological elements together (Kirsch 2015), and in energy studies, ideas of landscape have generated diverse ways of thinking about socio-ecological relationships and how they shape contemporary practices of energy production and use. To engage with the “landscape” in energy landscapes requires revisiting the multiple avenues of landscape theory, attending in particular to how landscape theory has shaped thinking about energy. Analytically, we can differentiate three interrelated theoretical perspectives that have influenced studies of energy landscapes. One perspective entails studies of energy landscapes that characterize energy landscapes as sites of physical transformations that affect people’s perceptions of

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their landscapes (e.g., Thayer and Freeman 1987). Another group of studies has examined energy landscapes as sites of political struggle that reveal uneven socioeconomic patterns of energy production and use, for example, linking the production of landscapes with capitalist spaces of production (e.g., Mitchell 2003b). In relation to energy transitions, both approaches foreground the place-based effects of land transformations, thus challenging the dominant motivations of strategic energy development projects. Finally, a relatively less developed perspective engages with energy landscapes as manifested in lived experiences with energy-related artifacts (e.g., Nadaï and Labussière 2010). In relation to energy transitions, such a perspective evokes transformation in the fundamental parameters of society’s relationship with energy; it evokes not only the means of energy production and its effects, but also the significance of energy services in everyday life and the spatiality of practices of energy use. Studies adopting such a perspective remain few and far between, and they have yet to develop practical insights into how to make energy transitions. Interest in energy landscapes initially emerged as a response to the realization that there is a complex entanglement between patterns in the spatial organization underlying modes of both energy production and energy use (e.g., Owens 1986, Jaarsma and Vanlier 1993, Alberti 1999). This realization followed earlier laments about the subordination of spatial aspects of energy developments to compelling economic and political reasons (Hoare 1979). Early on, geographers reflected upon the creation of new landscape features through extractive activities, town gas manufacturing, and hydropower sites (Chapman 1961, Wilson 1967). The interest in delivering a low-carbon society also turned attention to the placebased implications of such transformations (Hoare 1979, Simmons 1980). Generally, the articulation of a spatial-energy link was translated into landscape analyses that approached it as an object but recognized its multi-functionality and diversity (e.g., Calzonetti and Solomon 1985, Burger 2000). The interest in land transformations and place-based effects associated with energy projects fostered interdisciplinary research on public perceptions of energy landscapes. An early model example of this type of work is Thayer and Freeman (1987) in their study of the Altamont Pass Wind Energy Development in California, which presented a survey with 600 respondents to evaluate the visual and sensorial perceptions of turbines. Their approach continues to generate research on landscape transformations in relation to the siting of wind turbines and other infrastructures (Park, Jorgensen et al. 2008, Rogge, Dessein et al. 2011, de Vries, de Groot et al. 2012, Jepson, Brannstrom et al. 2012). The notion of landscape at play here also enables the linking of wider economic changes in energy production to changes in public perceptions, such as occurred around the coal industry in the United Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s (Spooner 1999).

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In these accounts, landscape is a resource that suffers effects from development, adversely affecting landscape perceptions and functions (Chias and Abad 2013). Most often, these studies adopt an unexamined conception of landscape as representing the imprint of human activities on the Earth’s surface, effectively updating Sauer’s concept of the cultural landscape for the field of energy and infrastructures (Blaschke, Biberacher et al. 2013). Landscape is here viewed as a resource, but one which responds to multiple functions and can be represented using complex surveying methods (de Groot 2006). During the last two decades, we have also seen a shift from surveys to geographic information system [GIS]-based assessments as the dominant means to evaluate landscape transformations (Chias and Abad 2013). Some of this work may deploy an unsophisticated concept of landscape. However, the influence of analyses of physical transformations has also supported productive debates on environmental justice. For example, in terms of landscape governance, this research has been tied to a concern about the public acceptability of renewable energy, particularly wind energy, and the extent to which wind energy projects have been developed without appropriate processes of consultation (Pasqualetti and Butler 1987, Walker 1995, Devine-Wright 2005, Firestone and Kempton 2007). More recently, this research has given support to new conceptualizations of energy justice (Walker 2012, Bickerstaff, Walker et al. 2013) and has directed attention to the extent to which local voices are represented or silenced in planning and decision-making processes (Cowell 2010, Pasqualetti 2011). However, the landscape is not only an object that is perceived by different publics; it also represents, in itself, social relationships (Mitchell 2008). Perspectives that approach the landscape as representation engage with a powerful tradition of landscape theory that describes landscape “as a way of seeing” (Cosgrove 1984). They have fostered an understanding of the physical landscape as reflecting a landscape of political relationships or “body politic” (Olwig 2002). The very questioning of landscape as representation has led to work on political landscapes that addresses how dominant representations of landscapes and their imposition potentially result in the alienation of people from their own lived experiences of land (Olwig 2005). This focus has been effective, for example, in demonstrating the political purchase of energy-oriented projects and how particular landscape representations, for example, around nuclear explosions, sustain political configurations of knowledge and technology (Kirsch 1997, Kirsch 2000, Davis 2005). Landscape here emerges as some type of invisible, naturalized power (Mitchell, W. T. 2002), and it becomes power in two different ways (Mitchell, D. [et seq.] 2008). First, landscape represents a physical, morphological concretization of existing power relationships in space. Second, it poses limitations and constraints on action. Historical analysis, in particular, reveals how power is embedded in landscapes. Moreover, how landscapes

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are configured historically shapes the possibilities of ever transitioning toward more just, considerate landscapes (Mitchell 2003b). In this reading, landscapes do not so much represent the imprint of human activities on the Earth’s surface as reflect struggles (Mitchell 1994). Reflecting upon the historical configuration of our capitalist moment, Don Mitchell has described landscapes as “dead labor,” that is, as a means to reproduce fixed relationships of labor for the extraction of surplus value (Mitchell 2003b). In relation to transitions to sustainability, where energy landscapes are thought of as representations, they point toward an ideological conflation of how we see and how we understand what we see (Kirsch 1997), thus shaping not only processes of knowledge production, but also beliefs about the viability of different futures. Research bringing justice perspectives to energy landscapes has specifically examined how power is exerted over particular communities, often denying their own perceptions of landscapes and creating forms of place-based stigma that can determine their future for generations (Castán Broto, Tabbush et al. 2007, Stanley 2008, Castán Broto, Burningham et al. 2010, Frolova 2010, Castán Broto 2013, Mason and Milbourne 2014, Parkhill, Butler et al. 2014, Fast and Mabee 2015). Concerns with power and environmental justice have also generated a broad interest in the politics of ecological transformation that are visible in energy landscapes (Nadaï and van der Horst 2010, van der Horst and Evans 2010). Both perspectives reveal the political work of landscapes, whether by emphasizing place-based effects of landscape transformations in the first cut or the politics embedded in landscape representations in the second. In doing so, landscapes result from the unfolding of strategic landscape-making projects alongside material and symbolic contestations that question either the viability or the legitimacy of such strategic projects. However, not all of the interactions that shape energy landscapes can be characterized through encounters with strategic projects of symbolic or material domination. Quotidian acts of energy provision and use also play a key role in reproducing energy landscapes through interactions with a wide range of energy artifacts. Recent materialist-oriented studies of landscapes, in particular, reflect a movement away from studies of landscape as an object or as a representation toward what might be cast as a metaphysics of the object that, instead of representing landscape as a visual scene, emphasize landscape as an assemblage or arrangement of objects (Kirsch 2015, Haarstad and Wanvik 2016). This move is not to deny the diverse ways whereby landscape materiality has been approached in previous research but to suggest that a deliberate engagement with mundane materialities can turn attention to the political implications of quotidian processes of landscape constitution. For example, Nadaï and Labussière (2010) provide an alternative view of how the energy landscape is constituted in relation to birds and bird movements. They

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study an energy planning conflict and focus on how different actors engage with birds, and different “bird modes,” in the production of spaces with birds. This engagement leads to context-specific responses in relation to the siting of wind turbines that can hardly be explained without the bird and the role of birds in the conflict. These authors draw upon the work of scholars addressing perceptions of energy landscapes, and they usually study similar problems. However, in doing so, they also emphasize the contingencies and micro-politics of decision-making, the generation of material controversies, and the extent to which different actors can indeed “play” with different forms of material multiplicity (Jolivet and Heiskanen 2010, Nadaï and Labussière 2013, Labussière and Nadaï 2014, Nadaï and Labussière 2015). These perspectives open up new questions about the role that specific non-human components play in defining the energy landscape and how such landscapes are constituted through mundane interactions and experiences. The morphological aspects of energy landscapes and their contested histories are crucial to understanding why they matter to people, but their constitution, and the possibilities for change that emerge in specific, contingent, landscapes, invites openness to more experiential and affective means of landscape analysis – that which is not immediately evident in standard expert assessments or planning debates. Such a perspective can be further developed theoretically with reference to a wider body of phenomenological body of research that has already had a longlasting influence on studies of landscapes. This chapter now turns to such a possibility. 3.3 Phenomenological Perspectives on Landscapes and Technology Phenomenological perspectives emphasize lived experiences of landscapes. Because of the emphasis on experience, phenomenological perspectives are often presented in relation to the critique of Cosgrove’s (1984) insight about landscapes “as a way of seeing” – as a representation of dominant power relationships and as an ideology (Wylie 2013). For phenomenologists, thinking of landscape as ideology turns attention too far away from the landscape itself as an object of study (in DeLue and Elkins 2007). Thus, phenomenology alternatively emphasizes experiencing not only the landscape but also with the landscape (Torma in DeLue and Elkins 2007). Such a perspective is particularly opposed to a common assumption that landscapes are external to the observer and that they should be thus observed in a somewhat detached and objective way (Relph 1976). Instead, in this visioning, landscapes emerge within historically contingent experiences (Heller 1984). Elkins has compared landscapes with the body, in the sense that we (humans) inhabit landscapes without being different from them; we are in landscapes at the same time as we are landscapes (in DeLue and Elkins 2007).

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Wylie (2009) has emphasized that both the landscape and the self are enacted simultaneously, emphasizing the centrality of experiences for understanding landscapes. Human geographers have thus researched landscape experiences as active acts of landscape-making, in which a variety of activities previously thought as detached from landscape production actually become the principal means of “landscaping” (Lorimer 2005, Wylie 2007). Overall, this conception points toward a tendency to blur the boundaries between experiencing the landscape and making it. The notion of dwelling emphasizes the close relationship between living and making the landscape (Ingold 1993, Ingold 2005, Ingold 2011). Dwelling “conveys a sense of a continuous being which unites human subjects with their environment” (Thomas 1993, p. 28). Dwelling also implies a dynamic sense of the world around us, for example, in relation to temporal and spatial horizons that emerge with changing positions through ambulatory encounters in the landscape (Ingold 2005). Landscapes are highly responsive to these dynamics because “as people go about their business, things unfold along the way, come in and out of focus, change shape and take on new meanings” (Bender 1993, p. 5). In his essay “Building, dwelling, thinking”, Heidegger posits dwelling in relation to an active engagement with the world, particularly through building and making things: “We attain to dwelling, so it seems, only by means of building. The latter, building, has the former, dwelling, as its goal” (Heidegger 2009, p. 243). The engagement with landscape predicated in the notion of dwelling is one that not only presupposes a lack of distance between people and things (Thomas 1993), but also emphasizes the active and even transformative character of everyday works of life. This idea constitutes a challenge to the notion of landscapes as being constructed through a continuous process of contestation and resignification, as explained in the section above, turning attention instead to the everyday encounters that enable landscaping (cf. Lorimer 2005). For Ingold, a landscape of dwelling can also be read as a “taskscape,” one in which errands, chores and other daily undertakings take prominence (Ingold 1993). Technologies are artifacts that mediate both energy practices (Shove and Walker 2014) and landscape-making. The nearness between the practices of living, the artifact and landscape transformation emphasizes the experience of actually doing something that constitutes the technological landscape. If dwelling practices emerge within situated patterns of living, the technological landscape relates to the use and deployment of different tools and artifacts. From a perspective inspired by Sauer’s view on landscape, cultural landscapes have been described as a “vast disorderly collection of human artifacts” (Lewis 1993, p. 115). Similarly, in phenomenological thought, landscapes are thought of as assemblages of materials that are experienced as human-induced alterations of the face of the earth, occurring as the humans go about in their daily lives and with their tasks. This perspective takes its cue from Heidegger’s understanding of technology as mediating

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a specific type of “being human” related to everything that is active and transformative. Technology intervenes in the making of reality because what can be done with things determines how things relate to human existence (Verbeek 2005). Energy systems, for example, emerge in relation to how people use different elements of the electricity system – from the switch in a room to the wind turbine – but also in relation to their social construction through the implementation of beliefs about how such systems “should be” and through their calculation in particular networks. In both cases, a dwelling perspective emphasizes that the landscape is built through a surging and sprawling current of life activities (Ingold 2011). For Heidegger, artifacts constitute an essential part of the process of landscapemaking. In “Building, dwelling, thinking,” he uses the example of a bridge that, by joining two banks, precisely constitutes them as banks; that is, the bridge brings into being a new signification and material ordering of the landscape. The bridge makes another appearance in his essay “The question concerning technology.” This example compares it with a hydroelectric plant: The hydroelectric plant is set into the current of the Rhine. It sets the Rhine to supplying its hydraulic pressure, which then sets the turbines turning. This turning sets those machines in motion whose thrust sets going the electric current for which the long-distance power station and its networks of cables are set up to dispatch electricity. In the context of the interlocking processes pertaining to the orderly disposition of electrical energy, even the Rhine itself appears as something at our command. The hydroelectric plant is not built into the Rhine River, as was the old wooden bridge that joined bank with bank for hundreds of years. Rather the river is dammed up into the power plant. What the river is now, namely, a water power supplier, derives from out of the essence of the power station. (Heidegger 2009, p. 224)

In Heidegger’s reading, the river is dammed after the construction of a hydraulic plant and, in this way, it is captured by a utilitarian impulse. The notion of artifact, starting with its etymology, has strong utilitarian connotations. However, artifacts can only be understood in relation to the context in which they emerge, at a given contingent moment, as historical events (Prown 1993). Heidegger’s objection to technology is not against the hydraulic artifacts themselves or the event of humans transforming the environment – e.g., he did not object to an ancient bridge having been built – but rather to the utilitarian appropriation of the landscape for narrow uses. As in the case of wind turbines, technologies enable specific projects to dominate the landscape. In these landscapes, the varied taskscapes of everyday vanish, interrupted by the fixation on a single purpose. Time, though, can redefine the taskscape. For example, in many mountainous areas, old turbines have now become part of the landscape and offer no greater menace to people dwelling in such a landscape than the old wooden bridge offered before. As paths are redrawn

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around turbines and their components reimagined – e.g., the abandoned village half covered by the dam becomes a holiday resort – a new taskscape emerges. This argument is not about the capacity or potential for restoring landscapes (the normative character of the landscape and the nostalgia for old landscapes is to be interpreted by those who dwell in them, for good or ill) but rather a recognition of how technologies are displayed in landscapes through their uses and, following Verbeek (2005), how reality emerges out of our interactions with such artifacts. In energy landscapes, artifacts are something more than mere metaphorical expressions of culture (cf. Prown 1993, Tilley 1999). Prown, for example, uses the example of two card tables at the Yale University Art Gallery to consider what an artifact reveals of the political relationships at the time in which it was in use, by comparing a rococo card table, whose irregular shape and accessory created a sense of intimacy, with a classical revival table, characterized by a geometric, clear design. He argues that the tables represent the profound ideological change that occurred among the accommodated classes at the turn of the eighteenth century in post-Revolution United States. Prown also points toward material culture as a means to reveal what was taken for granted by the people who use and value certain artifacts, not only by comparing how they change through time. For example, Prown notes that the design of the classical revival card table, one that has supporting legs in the center on two sides, might have been a means to organize gender relationships, because only men wearing trousers could sit on those sides. In this type of analysis, however attuned to historical contexts, the artifact is examined in isolation, emphasizing how people make sense of the world through physical objects (see also Attfield 2000) and how material culture organizes social life through mundane interactions (Prown 1993). The tradition of material culture has long taken objects as primary data under the belief that such objects define the beliefs of the society to which they belong (Prown 1982). Equally, energy landscapes are defined by specific artifacts that mediate cultural understandings of landscapes and their use. However, energy landscapes are not only collections of such artifacts; instead, a landscape perspective highlights the matrix that makes all those objects possible. I find this idea represented in Rachel Whiterehead’s conceptual art work “Untitled (nine tables)” (1998), which consists of a cast of the space between the four legs of nine tables, providing a symbolic antidote to the reduction of material artifacts to the social interactions that they embody. For Whiterehead, Untitled (nine tables) relates to “exchanging one’s personal space with that of the table, the physicality of how you sit when you have a table in front of you, how your legs behave” (Tate Modern, undated). The act of sitting at the table cannot be explained through a utilitarian reading of a table, because sitting at the table is itself something that we can do without an explicit purpose attached to it in relation to a set of practices

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acquired through years of dwelling and interacting with different tables in contingent settings. Equally, a landscape could be represented through a cast of those spaces that make daily tasks possible. The analysis above suggests three key insights for the study of energy landscapes that make it a distinct perspective. First, examining energy landscapes is akin to studying how energy systems emerge through multiple acts of landscaping rather than through specific utilitarian projects of landscape domination; a landscape perspective emphasizes the lack of distance between the observer and the observed. Second, energy landscapes are not given structures; rather, they emerge as the result of diverse energy-related tasks. The latter can be extractive operations or large-scale generation facilities as much as they can be distributed acts of energy production and use that pass unnoticed within certain social contexts. Such tasks are manifest in spatial choreographies that relate to the spatial dimensions of energy transitions. Third, energy artifacts constitute a key point of entry for the study of energy landscapes because ready-to-hand energy artifacts are central to landscape building tasks. However, they must be understood within the matrix that makes those artifacts – and the role that they play in landscape-making – possible. Energy landscapes are not simply collections of artifacts, but rather, they constitute the connective tissue that at specific times foregrounds them. 3.4 Connective Tissue Biological metaphors have inspired different ways of thinking about the relationship between society and nature, most notably in the example of urban metabolism (e.g., Gandy 2004, Heynen, Kaika et al. 2006). In this book, the metaphor of “connective tissue” recasts landscapes as they emerge from quotidian encounters in the constant re-enactment of daily tasks. In biological sciences, tissues are groups of defined units and amorphous substances that, collectively, appear as being structurally and functionally similar. The idea of tissue enables a perspective focused on a user-delimited window (e.g., the fragment of tissue visible through a microscope), a vignette defined by the observer’s interaction with the landscape in a particular encounter. Following on from phenomenological studies of landscape, the metaphor of “tissue” thereby represents the continuity of landscape rather than its differentiation as a complete and bounded unit that can be defined in isolation from its surroundings. This move also means that the observer plays a key role in defining the landscape by defining the observation window. As “tissue,” landscapes are thus not defined by strictly defined boundaries but by the observer’s definition of the specific relationships between contingent structures and tasks. Consider, for example, the energy landscapes in Maputo, capital city of Mozambique, which Chapter 5 will explore in detail. Maputo is divided into seven

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administrative units. The first unit, called KaMpfumo, includes neighborhoods (bairros) constructed during Portuguese colonial rule, in which modern infrastructures were completed early in the history of the city and have been generally maintained since independence. The rest of the districts include neighborhoods originally constructed as a labor reservoir for the old colonial center, with much less developed systems of service provision. In KaMpfumo, the energy landscape is sustained by an electricity network and modern energy appliances used in either colonial or Western-style residences. In all of the other districts, electricity takes a secondary role, and cooking fuels, particularly charcoal, burn in iron cookstoves in yards or on patios, dominating the energy landscape. Although access to the electricity network and modern fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) has notably increased during the last decade, their use remains marginal compared with the dominance of charcoal. One could imagine a boundary line between the two landscapes, but such a boundary must be actively constructed through a process of representing apparently different energy landscapes. Hence, consider the metaphor of connective tissue as opposed to dermic tissue, the latter of which actively constitutes barriers and transition points. Similarly, liminal landscapes constitute inbetween spaces of transition, not yet assimilated in the space of quotidian familiarity (cf. Andrews and Roberts 2012). Doing fieldwork in Maputo, I walked this imaginary boundary line, following administrative divisions. Although it is possible to identify and describe two radically different energy landscapes from within them, the boundaries between these two landscapes are not immediately apparent. The “two Maputos” are actively produced through a series of everyday practices of landscape-making that occur across landscapes and that require the observer to play an active role in producing boundaries. For example, the area around the Mercado do Peixe (the Fish Market), in which communities in sub-serviced neighborhoods are being transformed into modern compounds with the consequent displacement of poorer communities, emerges as a liminal landscape that represents the extensive drive of the modern city and local effects of urban expansion along the coast. This liminal, or dermic, landscape is connected with strategic projects of transformation, from the rolling out of an electricity network to the territorial fractioning of land with roads, fences and new construction. In concrete places, such as the pathways alongside the main campus of the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, a fence is erected as a linear object that embodies the administrative boundary. However, for the most part, neither administrative boundaries nor physical barriers across districts and energy landscapes are visible for the observer. Instead, a charcoal-based energy landscape is seamlessly transformed into a fully networked system – for example, along the long, congested avenues that cut across the city. The observer thus must perform an active role in boundary-making to define such landscapes. Such boundary landscapes are exceptions in the overall fabric of the city.

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For the most part, we experience and observe energy landscapes that perform their role as connective tissue. This metaphor emphasizes not only the associative character of “tissue,” as explained above, but also its connective function of linking meanings and things. As connective tissue, landscapes make the fabric of everyday life intelligible and stable. This metaphor engages with the connective character of material cultures (Kirsch 2013). As connective tissue, energy landscapes provide cohesion and internal support, facilitating the ongoing delivery of everyday tasks. They are abundant, widespread and varied, and they are built upon a diversity of social and energy relationships. Rather than being characterized by specific strategic projects seeking to transform or to capture the landscape for specific purposes, energy landscapes emphasize the maintenance of appearances – that is, the active constitution of both stable choreographies of energy and ongoing processes of situated innovation directed toward maintaining the plausibility of the taskscape (and here I am inspired by the discussion of the social role of maintenance in Graham and Thrift 2007). Landscapes show the diverse, situated practices of maintenance, and, in doing so, they also reveal the political work of the mundane and exactly how maintenance reproduces the social and material order (Barnes 2017). Defined in moments of encounter, the energy landscape duly emerges as an apparently stable configuration of energy artifacts and practices. These encounters manifest the specific characteristics of distinct energy landscapes and how they are routinely maintained. Such a landscape is visible in relation to ground substances that make the matrix of engagement, the fibrous components that give the landscape structure, alongside a number of functional units (stationary and migrant) foregrounded in mundane tasks. For example, in Chamanculo C, one of Maputo’s neighborhoods, a distinct energy landscape emerges, here related to the dominance of charcoal and the punctuating use of electricity in household and personal appliances. The observer can distinguish between the ground components that gel the landscape (from the air temperature to the cultural aspects that shape the local economy) and the more fibrous, specific, concrete aspects that give it structure (the organization of households in courtyards or the dependence of neighborhoods on transmission stations often in a state of disrepair). Tasks appear related to functional units, often around assemblages of artifacts such as those involved in cooking or running a business, which are then all integrated into the fluid and fibrous elements that constitute the energy landscape. The observer can walk through the city “following the energy,” that is, seeking different engagements with the city that enable coherent interpretations of multiple experiences in encounters with energy landscapes. Functional units also reveal a compendium of socio-energetic relationships that materialize within particular spatial arrangements in different choreographies of energy provision and use. These choreographies represent the taskspace that Ingold described so persuasively.

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Attempts to read energy landscapes materially have traditionally enrolled a commitment to representing alternative energy landscapes other than those that are naturalized in contemporary society. Hence, phenomenology emerges as a deeply “suspicious” approach that struggles to move away from the privileged experience of the observer (who all too often is also male, white and of a certain economic standing). In this sense, the interpretation of the encounters in question might not be sufficient to tie the analysis of energy landscapes to aspirations for socio-technical transitions and wider political change. One strategy to address this limitation is thinking about spatial choreographies as commons, as shared collective performances whose spatial dynamics can be traced through collective discussions and participatory methods (Castán Broto, Salazar et al. 2014). Collective mapping practices can bridge experience and representation, and in the process reveal routine practices of landscaping through the production and use of energy, thus complementing an encounter-based analysis of energy landscapes. 3.5 Fostering Transitions in Energy Landscapes Imaginaries of socio-technical transitions have fostered multiple imaginations about the possibilities for wider social and material changes toward sustainability. A common trend is typically the interest in how change can be started, accelerated, and consolidated. Almost inevitably, transition thinking ties values of social equity and justice to broader processes of land transformation and how they occur (Avelino, Grin et al. 2016). However, most often, there is an assumption that a transition represents a shift from one state of being to another, with the consequent reconfiguration and alignment of diverse social and material elements (Hansen and Coenen 2014). Here, therefore, I advocate bringing the “landscape” explicitly to studies of energy landscapes. Energy landscapes, in my revision, are connective tissue that enables the flows of energy resources and the performance of specific energy choreographies, all in relation to socio-technical artifacts that shape that landscape through multiple practices of energy production and consumption. A landscape perspective on energy transitions diverts attention away from strategic attempts at bringing transitions, directing attention instead to the ordinary as a means for change. As connective tissue, energy landscapes emerge in instances of encounters that reveal specific material and social orderings. Rather than denying the possibility of radical change, such landscape perspectives reveal how radical change relates to a myriad of non-strategic, quotidian tasks. This move also recognizes the political work of maintenance and the difficulties inherent in challenging dominant configurations of infrastructure without understanding how they are embedded in specific locales (Barnes 2017).

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The study of energy landscapes as connective tissue throws light on how energy becomes embedded in ordinary existence to the point that we tend to consider invisible the most visible and tangible artifacts of the quotidian landscape: the light and the fire. Politically, this point relates to insights about energy transitions that can emerge from within contextual settings, valuing the contributions of diverse actors and trying to identify unexpected arenas of action. By emphasizing maintenance as a means to build order, it also reveals potential instances of disruption. Overall, this perspective desists from a detailed visioning of energy futures and a methodical planning of transition steps, seeking to engage instead with the myriad ways in which people change their energy landscapes in unexpected ways as they go about completing their daily tasks. What is missing, however, is a consideration of what kind of agency can change such landscapes of dwelling, a question directly interrogated in the following chapter.

4 Change and Agency in Landscapes of Dwelling

4.1 Introduction The scene is Naples, Italy, end of the 1950s. Lenù, a student in her late teens, is struggling at school and takes daily refuge in the flat of her childhood friend Lila. The flat is new and modern. Lenù marvels: Every space, every thing was new and clean, but especially the bathroom, which had a sink, a bidet, a bathtub. One afternoon I felt particularly lazy. I asked Lila if I could have a bath, I who still washed under the tap or in a copper tub. She said I could do what I wanted and went on to bring me towels. The water came out hot from the tap and I let it run. I undressed, I sank in up to my neck. That warmth was an unexpected pleasure. (. . .) Oh how many wonderful things Lila possessed. It was no longer a matter of a clean body, it was play, it was abandon. (. . .) Maybe the wealth we wanted as children is this, I thought: not strongboxes full of diamonds and gold coins but a bathtub, to immerse yourself like this every day . . . (Ferrante 2013, pp. 54–55).

Alongside the bath, Lenù is fascinated by all the new modern comforts available to her friend: the telephone, the television, and the modern kitchen appliances. Lila’s comforts, however, have come at a price; she has married an unattractive man who beats her, and she has lost her independence and interest in books. When Lenù lies in Lila’s bath, her friend’s marital problems appear a small price to pay (commonly accepted at the time) compared with the anxiety she is feeling toward her uncharted future. Her future is entirely dependent upon her intellectual abilities, but she is not confident. Thus describes Elena Ferrante, the coming of age of two women in the transformative environment of post-war Naples in the second part of her Neapolitan Novels, The Story of a New Name. As she submerges herself in the bath, Lenù forgets for a minute the feeling of vertigo that pervades her existence when she contemplates the wide-open opportunities for her future. This vertigo causes her confusion and incapacity to recognize her desires. Lenù’s bath experiences represent an encounter between her sensuality (as mediated by an encounter with modern infrastructure) and her 54

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existential anxieties. The new world created by modern infrastructure moves her to question herself, but also prevents her from confronting those anxieties that ultimately motivate her toward change. Lenù’s personal changes represent collective changes too – changes in architecture and urban visions, changes of social status and life outlooks, changes in expectations and future dreams. Who in this story has the agency to bring about change? In Lenù’s account, Lila is a force of nature, who is constantly shaping the lives of everyone around her and actively takes decisions about her own life (such as marrying) that transform the whole neighborhood. In contrast, Lenù feels that she is unable to control the bridles of her own life, asphyxiated by a world of opportunities. She feels as if she is following the inertia of a predetermined trajectory that somebody has outlined for her. However, by the end of the Neapolitan Novels, their roles will be inverted as Lenù learns, travels, and gains independence, bringing to Naples the experiences of other Italian cities. Lenù’s vertigo is deeply unsettling, the type of restlessness that makes the world an unfamiliar, terrifying place. Reading the passage of the bath, I could not help but think of the revelatory character of the state of anxiety in which Lenù finds herself, as she immerses herself (metaphorically but also literally) in the surrounding world of her concern. Is she connecting with the ontological character of being, in the sense that Heidegger suggests with the concept of “besorgen” or “being concernedwith” (Heidegger 2008 [1962])? This anxiety moves Lenù to an active engagement with her own life and her city. In her attempts to shape her future, Lenù also changes the future of her city. Changes that start within the personal extend to every social and institutional relationship in Lenù’s life, from inspiring her mentors, challenging her sexual partners, raising her daughter, or navigating the complex forms of social regulation of the local mafia. She experiences these changes within a sense of being “thrown” into the neighborhood; the bath is all the more marvelous in contrast to the copper tub she is familiar with. Her experience is one of contrasts between clean and dirty, light and dark, abundance and scarcity– the coming of modernity. The novels present a portrait of a transformation of the lives of Lenù and Lila, but it is also a portrait of the transformation of their city, Naples. Heidegger’s notion of time relates to a three-fold structure of life, constituted by past, present, and future not as a succession of events but as a simultaneous occurrence in a given moment (Heidegger 2004). In a given moment, we are “thrown” into an existing configuration (past), but equally, we are not slaves of the situation because we can actualize different possibilities (future). Lenù and Lila live their present from within a common experience of urban poverty but with entirely different possibilities for their futures. Their landscape is made present through their experiences. The landscape is the matrix that makes their experiences

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possible and, at the same time, it vanishes into the background as soon as an experience is realized. Through connections with tools and artifacts – through building and dwelling – different landscape possibilities are foregrounded in a given moment (present). The landscape is actualized through embedded, lived experiences. Both Lenù and Lila are active agents of change in their own lives, their neighborhood, and their city. Not only are their lives marked by the changing city, but also the city changes with them. If we return to the question of activating transformations of urban infrastructure – an urban transition – then we must focus on who are those agents of change and how they change the city; and how is it that telephones, televisions, appliances, and baths become necessary elements of urban life. Change is found in the present, in dwelling practices whereby the urban environment becomes different. This chapter proposes exploring the concept of the landscape through an engagement with Heidegger’s understanding of landscapes and dwelling practices in relation to his notion of “Being-in-the-World.” The chapter performs this exploration in two parts. The first requires examining the “in-the-world” part (section 2) and then examining the autonomy of the world – what he calls “the worldhood of the World” (section 3). Rather than attempting to deliver a definitive account of a highly contested theory, my objective is to explain how these ideas have inspired me to think differently about infrastructure. In the context of the overall book, these ideas become a means to articulate an alternative notion of change from those commonly held in studies of transitions. This notion of change focuses not on the changes themselves but on who can influence the situation. Thus, section 4 of this chapter relates the concepts inspired by Heidegger’s universe to neo-material notions of agency in an attempt to identify how processes of change unfold in urban energy landscapes. 4.2 Landscapes of Being Anthropological readings explain the cultural landscape as a collection of artifacts that influence and bear the imprint of human life (Bender 1993, Ingold 2000). The previous chapter defines urban infrastructure landscapes as “connective tissue,” but in doing so, it dilutes the object of analysis. If landscapes are connective tissue, sustaining both the resource flows and the social practices that constitute urban life, then the object of analysis is indeterminate. The engagement with artifacts enables focusing on a slice of that urban infrastructure landscape, that is, the connective tissue that sustains a particular object. Back to the Neapolitan example: what connections enable an encounter with the bath? The answer could include a piped water network, water-heating devices, changing living lifestyles,

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and family relationships, a reformed construction industry and the industrialization of household appliances, and transformations of neighborhood-based economies of exchange into capitalist economies – in summary, a profound social and cultural transformation visible in new urban materialities. In some ways, this transformation could account for adopting the perspective of “the bath,” as has been suggested for example in the actor-network theory (ANT) and from similar perspectives (Latour 2005). However, the perspective of the bath alone does not reflect the infrastructure landscape of Naples in the 1950s unless we situate the significance of such an artifact in a larger context. Focusing on urban energy landscapes, is it possible to identify the artifact or artifacts that characterize the energy landscape in a manner such that understanding the urban infrastructure landscapes around the artifacts enables a characterization, even when partial, of the landscape as a whole? In many cities of Southeast Asia, such as Hong Kong, for example, the airconditioning unit has come to signify the complex interactions between fossil fuel supplies, lifestyles, and construction practices. In urban areas with low levels of access to energy, such as cities in Southern and Central Africa, such as Maputo, the dependence upon charcoal means that the cookstove is the key energy-related artifact that structures the overall flows of fuels and practices. These objects offer an anchoring point and focus. Moreover, they reveal a certain politics of the landscape that has emerged from within the engagement with those landscape objects. This revealing opens up a perspective on change in urban energy landscapes that requires further understanding of the encounters between humans and artifacts. The global energy challenge emerges as an existential challenge, because it appears to call for a change of such magnitude that it refers to the fundamental components of our lives. One way to understand Heidegger’s problem of being is to think of his inquiry as a search for the a-priori conditions that make daily life possible (Heidegger 2008 [1962]). Underlying perceptible beings is an ontological Being, with a capital B, that enables existence. Being-there (Dasein) is a particular entity that has the potential to encounter Being, to become aware of its ontological condition. That awareness, perhaps, is something that only humans can achieve. Dasein is, in other words, “having to be” because of the fundamental conditions of Being that support mundane (ontic) ways of being. The existential characteristic of being, Heidegger argues, is not essence or a set of properties that you can turn on and off. Existence is also not something easily intelligible that we can represent in our mind in a narrative or image. Simultaneously, Dasein belongs to itself; in each case, Dasein is its possibilities within the given “there” in which Dasein finds itself. On the one hand, Dasein is characterized by an average everydayness; it is always there. On the other hand, this average everydayness is what makes Dasein opaque to human understanding.

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Heidegger objects to both a materialistic view of the person as an object and a representational view in which a person exists only through experiences and narratives. Both are caricatures of Being. Equally, Heidegger expresses dissatisfaction with a naturalistic approach in which the nature of being is thought to be selfevident, apprehended through systematic observation and experience. Rather, apprehending Being requires a particular mood that is not necessarily amenable to methodical analysis and description. The metaphysical question of Being can be approached systematically through reflection on a series of principles. One such principle is central to understanding urban energy landscapes – Being is grounded. Dasein is “being-there.” Following the argument above, Dasein is grounded a priori in the state of Being that we have called “Being-in-the-World.” How Being-in-the-World is written emphasizes this state as a unitary phenomenon. Heidegger starts by stating that the state of Being-in-the-World can only be apprehended by examining the “world” itself. This statement means not examining the structure of the world but rather examining how the world itself becomes a constitutive feature of Dasein. What is being-in? Heidegger warns against thinking of the “in” as indicating the relative positions of two entities already located in space. If a light bulb is in a house, the “in” relationship indicates a relationship between two entities already contained in the world. This succession of containers of containers does not explain anything concrete about Being as such. Instead, Being-in-the-World precedes the notion of the World as a container. Being-in is not a property that Dasein chooses to have or not have; Being-in is always there already because humans are always already adopting a disposition toward the World. Within a landscape, Being-in-the-World refers to a relationship of dwelling that has several features that explain, precisely, the opaqueness of Being in everyday life. First, dwelling requires familiarity. We dwell (Being-in-the-World) without necessarily encountering the World anew every time. The World can be constantly transforming, but it remains familiar. We dwell whether or not we reflect on the nature of that dwelling. Second, the in-habiting component relates to the relationship between acts of living and how they are integrated in a particular surrounding (the landscape). In other words, we “dwell alongside” because dwelling always occurs in relation to something and with some orientation toward something. Humans relate to other entities within the world in two fundamental ways. When we bring entities into view within a congruent, conscious narrative of what those entities are and what purpose they serve, those entities become “present-at-hand” for us. Present-at-hand entities become objects of knowledge. However, in the average everydayness in which Being occurs, entities are “ready-to-hand.” They are integrated into a world of tasks (or as we discussed in the previous chapter, a taskscape). Ready-to-hand entities are the tools that make dwelling possible. The word tool might be slightly misleading here because it emphasizes some style of conscious

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functionality in dwelling practices. However, we should not assume that dwelling practices depend upon conscious representations of purpose or that ready-to-hand entities are necessarily functional. The multiple living and non-living entities we dwell alongside make dwelling possible in the sense that they constitute our familiar surroundings. As I walk from the train station to my house, the whole landscape of buildings, fields, and roads constitutes ready-to-hand entities that sustain my Being without necessarily serving any function or purpose. A paradox is that over the last two centuries, different forms of energy – particularly light and heat, and more recently, mobility – have graduated from consumption items to integral parts of our dwelling landscape. As I walk from the train station to my house during a blackout, something about my own identity becomes questioned and the World becomes new; the street I walk every day is suddenly unfamiliar, and I have a sense of being removed from the landscape that often surrounds me. We encounter the World every day, but we never do so completely. When we touch, when we look, when we hear, when we smell, we are constantly reducing the world into schematic outlines that become present-at-hand. It is not that the landscapes we inhabit are unknowable; rather, they are not fully encounterable. Our knowledge mechanisms will enable an analysis of the compendium of qualities and characteristics of entities making them present-at-hand (what in my translation of Being and Time is referred to as “factuality”). However, those analyses will remain removed from an understanding of the structure of Being (its “facticity”). In our efforts to know a world present-at-hand, we forget that Being-in-the-World already means to have concern (besorgen) for something in the world because Dasein is always occupied: “having to do with something, producing something, attending to something and looking after it, making use of something, giving something up and letting it go, undertaking, accomplishing, evincing, interrogating, considering, discussing, determining . . . ” (Heidegger 2008 [1962], p. 83). Being-in-theWorld is made visible through “care” – the sudden concern that assaults me during the blackout, walking from the train station to my home. There is a problem with identifying Being-in-the-World as what is now because, on the one hand, it is always already there and can be interpreted through our consciousness. On the other hand, it can only be viewed in a particular way, through a certain concern or anxiety that enables understanding the world as it is inhabited. Although Dasein has experience of Being-in-the-World, the nature of “Being” becomes invisible if one interprets it in a particular way that makes it present-athand, such as through container perspectives. Heidegger distinguishes four ways in which we can approach the meaning of World: (1) The world as Entity: the World as “ontical concept” “signifies the totality of those entities that can be present-at-hand in the world” (p. 93). For example,

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this concept could be the idea of the systems in the energy landscape – the network, the households, the appliances, the fossil fuel reserves. (2) The World as Dasein encounters it: the World as an “ontological concept” that refers to the Being of those ontical entities; for example, how infrastructure networks are fundamentally implicated in the production of inequality through flows. (3) The World as Being-alongside: the world is the “wherein” in which Dasein dwells, the ready-to-hand world we encounter in everyday life. (4) World in its worldhood: the actual Being of the World, that is, the a-priori characteristics of the world that enable Dasein. Heidegger concludes that Being-in-the-World requires an understanding of the being of the world itself, that is, “the worldhood of the world.” An insight from Heidegger’s analysis is that the worldhood of the world is determined by its a-priori character. That is, there is a pre-existing nature of the world that enables being; simultaneously, worldhood of the world becomes possible only through its relationship to being. Far from supporting a view of the World as immutable, Heidegger’s worldhood analysis opens up the door to rethinking the notion of agency. 4.3 The Worldhood of the World Heidegger starts from the question, “How can we describe the world as a phenomenon?” This question requires moving away from an “ontic” vision of factuality (the world’s qualities and characteristics) to one that relates to the facticity of it. An enumeration of the things that are “in” the world, for example, is taking an ontic approach. In some sense, one could think about the extent to which certain approaches to examining urban energy indeed are merely ontic visions, in which there is a statement about the objects themselves (resources, networks, households, appliances, or industries) and the relationships between objects. An urban metabolic vision that focuses on describing the flows of resources across the city, for example, delivers an ontic vision, as shown in the empirical case studies in Bangalore, Hong Kong, Maputo, and Concepción in the next four chapters. Analyzing urban energy landscapes requires narrating multiple interconnected elements in a manner such that they become present-at-hand. Imagine that a conversation with a renewable energy investor or energy planning engineer, for example, could go along these lines: “A mini-grid can deliver energy access to families in remote rural areas. We only must understand how to foster sufficient demand so that our investment is profitable,” says the energy expert. “Do we understand how this mini-grid fits the actual needs of these families?” I would immediately ask.

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The energy expert might find this puzzling because the needs for energy access might be obvious – and those needs are at the general aggregate level at which we have defined international development objectives such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, it would not be difficult to eventually persuade this expert that in order to succeed with the introduction of energy infrastructures, they must understand how those infrastructures fit existing patterns of living. The eventual response would be to draw from surveys or other social science methods to characterize such demand. However, the more fundamental question is never asked: “What if those technologies, those energy services are simply not part of the landscape of dwelling that those families you are trying to reach inhabit?” Such questions would never be thought of as relevant in the context in which this type of conversation occurs. Interrogating the worldhood of the World requires moving away from interpretations that make objects present-at-hand, moving instead toward encounters with care, related to an openness to the world. This openness, Heidegger argues, is needed to understand the worldhood of the World within-the-world. Therefore, he starts with one strategy of proximity: “should we then first attach ourselves to those entities with which Dasein proximally and for the most part dwells – Things ‘invested with value’?” (Heidegger 2008 [1962], p. 92). This strategy resonates again with the anthropological view on landscapes of artifacts, which inspired me to think of urban energy landscapes as characterized by specific objects. Engaging with the worldhood of the world brings those artifacts into perspective as immersed in encounters of unremarkable nature because, again, they become obscured by the average everydayness of Being. Star called for an enchantment with infrastructure in everyday life (Star 1999). Is that a way to know the World? According to Heidegger, all entities can show themselves in our concern for the environment. Such entities are not objects that theoretically discover the world for us by making themselves present. They are simply the things in relation to which we live. They become accessible when we concern ourselves with the world in some way. The use of the latch on the door, he argues, does not even require that I think about the latch in my conscious mind. Note that an engagement with the world is an engagement with the non-human, an approach in which it suits us to speak of urban energy landscapes but that does not explain the operation of socio-ecological landscapes as a whole. The compendium of things in the world that we concern ourselves with – the things we are oriented toward – is what Heidegger calls “equipment.” Equipment is the assemblage of things in which dwelling occurs. As energy becomes integral to our existence, we build our equipment of socio-technical artifacts that become an unconscious part of life, from turning on a faucet to donning a jumper because temperatures have dropped. Heidegger experiments with different approaches to

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understanding equipment. Equipment resonates, but it is not exactly a group of things needed for a purpose (gear, kit) or simply a collection of stuff that surrounds (such as paraphernalia). Equipment has certain characteristics. First, equipment does not refer to an object. Equipment is not just a single light bulb. Rather, equipment is the whole assemblage of walls, air, objects, chair, network, and light that make me comfortable within a room. Equipment is visible concerning a given totality. Second, equipment relates to a certain orientation, a world orientation that enables a situation “in-orderto” constitute equipment. This orientation is not the same as having a purpose. The equipment is still there when I absent-mindedly contemplate the ceiling. When I do so, I need light but not for a purpose – only simply because it is part of my sense of dwelling. Inhabitation does not occur because of a function or purpose. However, it always has an orientation. Thus, the notion of equipment enriches the notion mentioned above of “readiness-to-hand” [Zuhandenheit] within a given totality and with an a-priori orientation in which engaging with the equipment does not require a theoretical understanding of the meaning or characteristics of such equipment. The examination of surroundings with a certain orientation does not require systematic knowledge; rather, it requires circumspection. Even through circumspection, direct access to the world is not possible because “ . . . the Nature which ‘stirs and strives,’ which assails us and enthralls us as landscape, remains hidden” (Heidegger 2008 [1962], p. 100). Consider that what is in-the-world is automatically simplified within a context of a worldhood. It is precisely through an orientation toward that equipment that it is repeatedly extracted and reinserted in the world, creating different forms of consciousness about what supports our dwelling practices and transforms the world – if not its fundamental Being or worldhoodness. Worldhood is always presupposed because every entity is already in the world. Our orientations toward equipment mean that the world can be rearranged, not through complicated plans based on a ready-tohand understanding of different entities, but rather through dwelling practices that emerge from certain orientations within a given totality. 4.4 Failure and Visibility: Within-the-World Encounters Overall, engaging with urban energy landscapes as landscapes of dwelling requires recognizing that the worldhoodness of the world precedes experience; hence, Being-in-the-World cannot be defined by experience alone. Heidegger, however, explains that there are certain experiences of equipment that make the worldhoodness of the world suddenly visible: To the everydayness of being-in-the-world, there belong certain modes of concern. These permit the entities with which we concern ourselves to be encountered in such a way that the worldly character of what is within-the-world comes to the fore. When we concern

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ourselves with something, the entities which are most closely ready-to-hand may be met as something unusable, not properly adapted for the use we have decided upon (Heidegger 2008 [1962], p. 102).

Unusability makes equipment visible. Heidegger makes a catalog of different manners in which equipment is “encountered,” no longer embedded as ready-tohand artifacts that are approached through circumspection. He provides three examples of such encounters: (1) Conspicuousness: When equipment is unusable in a given context, it becomes conspicuous. Unready-to-hand equipment reveals structures that make it visible. (2) Obtrusiveness: When equipment is not available, it can become obtrusive. (3) Obstinacy: Objects which are not serviceable; they are present-at-hand and no more – something that “stands in the way”, they do not meet orientations appropriately. These examples of encounters immediately bring into question some of the debates around the invisibility of infrastructure. As infrastructure becomes part of everyday life, it appears to become invisible. Infrastructure planners can make further plans to make infrastructures disappear. Still infrastructure is always there. Cables can be buried or hidden, but the infrastructure equipment will always be partially or entirely visible. However, infrastructures are rarely present-at-hand; they are ready-to-hand, often only accessible through certain orientations. When equipment disrupts us, it becomes visible; present-to-hand narratives are needed to explain the disruption. Disruption requires a thematic examination that diverts us from the circumspective absorption in which we dwell. Finally, equipment also exists within a system of references and signs that announce disruption and structure processes of circumspective absorption. Among signs there are symptoms, warning signals, signs of things that have occurred already, signs to mark something, signs by which things are recognized, these have different ways of indicating regardless of what might be serving as such a sign. From such “signs”, we must distinguish traces, residues, commemorative monuments, documents, testimony, symbols, expressions, appearances, significations . . . . (Heidegger 2008 [1962], p. 108)

In other words, we encounter objects in-the-World in a manner, and with indications, that enable their circumspection without necessarily making those objects present-at-hand; turning the lights on, for example, might not require conscious thought. The circumspection survey does not grasp the ready-to-hand as a new form of knowledge; instead, it helps us to have an orientation within our environment. Signs make references possible. Those signs indicate serviceability, but they also indicate the totality of equipment. Both equipment and signs are ontically ready-to-hand; they belong to the world, and they are in the world already when we encounter them.

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The type of circumspective abstraction whereby we dwell in the world consists of encounters between humans and objects such that there is an involvement (e.g., involvement between an artifact and an orientation). This involvement could be thought of as the inherent connection between materiality and practice. Circumspection is a means to encounter an entity ready-to-hand, but readiness-tohand is an inherent characteristic of such an entity and the world it inhabits. Involvement is continuous, even when it is falsely experienced. Familiarity enables Dasein to encounter equipment entities in a world with involvement. Walking is a means to move away from a present-at-hand understanding of the energy landscape, trying to bring partially a concern with the surroundings that enables an encounter with equipment and its involvement. The case studies in Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 provide an experimental ground to think of walking as a means to create the particular mood in which the structure of Being could be apprehended. Such enterprise cannot entirely be successful (because a storyline will always imply making it present-at-hand) but starts to question taken-for-granted assumptions about familiarity and surroundedness. The case studies also reveal relationships of proximity and objects invested with value within a given landscape totality. Finally, the walks make it possible to engage with relationships of visibility. Chapter 9 provides an overview of walking experiences in each case-study city following the insights from a close reading of Being and Time. However, before moving on to the empirical material, the notion of agency must be situated within Heidegger’s broader theory of tools and the world, as explained in the following section. 4.5 Neo-Materialism and the Notion of Agency The possibility of change and influence are not new problems in social science. The challenge of relating theories of action (prescriptions) to institutional transformation (transition) results in bimodal views between micro and macro explanations for social processes (as explained, for example, in Giddens 1979). The objective here is not to reflect upon the inadequacies and developments of one of the most debated dichotomies in social science, but rather to focus on the question of influence in relation to the possibility of creating the type of change that transforms our existence, that is, responds to global energy challenges at an existential level. This focus requires examining agency beyond fixed prescriptions for policy, planning, innovation, disruptions, or lifestyle changes. There are multiple propositions about how to achieve more-sustainable societies, but they all have something in common – they all require a coherent, present-at-hand engagement with the world’s equipment. None of those activities can create fundamental existential changes of the type that can be required to confront humanity’s current existential crises related to ecological destruction, the world’s habitability, social

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inequality, and the underlying persistence of capitalism. Envisaging a course of action becomes almost impossible, and motivated agents of change settle for partial responses and experimental action. Something remains amiss. My intellectual project shifted after reading Bennet’s vitalist perspective on the political ecology of things, which, she argues, recognizes multiple forms of distributive agency whereby vibrant materialities bring about change (Bennet 2010). However, what does it mean to think of the agency of the non-human? Much of this debate has formed around the field of actor-network theory (ANT) and its exhortation to follow the “principle of generalized-symmetry” without imposing the primacy of the human before the analysis begins (Latour 1993, Burgess, Clark et al. 2000, Murdoch 2001). ANT has developed a set of complex terminologies to make such agencies visible. The idea of actor-worlds as composed of both human and non-human elements with an assigned role and a context for action (Callon 1986), in which roles are assigned via translations, resonates with our analysis of the engagement with the world through circumspection. Harman’s (2010) fascination with both Heidegger and Latour causes him to examine the worldhood of the world in terms of “objects.” An object, he argues, is anything that appears with an identity unity. It can be large or small, real or intentional, and simple or complex. In a city such as Maputo, for example, the cookstove is an object, but so is the lady that cooks, the household, the street, the chicken, the rain, and the foreign lady who happens to be examining all of that with an inquisitive eye. Harman (2002, 2005, 2011) declares a world of objects to retain the conceptual foundations of Heidegger’s universe without accepting the primacy of the human over the nonhuman, a corollary of the understanding of Dasein. Examining ANT as controversial, Sayes (2013) asks what it means to think of non-human agency and finds plausible explanations about what agency means. At a more fundamental level, non-humans are needed for society’s existence. They are part of the world’s equipment. However, their agency is also active as mediators. For example, in the case of infrastructure, non-humans are central to the processes of actively maintaining (or impeding!) resource circulations that make the city economy possible. He advocates for considering the insertion of the nonhuman in moral and political associations, very much in the sense that traditional infrastructure theory has examined the embedded politics of artifacts, from the nuclear plant to the Brooklyn bridges (cf. Winner 1980). Finally, Sayes explains how non-humans gather together actors across different spatialities and temporalities, in specific encounters. All of this discussion resonates with the contingent encounters that shape our Being-in-the-World except that the focus remains on how non-human agencies shape the social world, rather than interrogating worldhood. From an environmental perspective, recognizing the autonomy of the nonhuman is a corrective to human arrogance (Cronon 1995). The concern with the

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environmental crisis means that humans acknowledge themselves as having certain responsibility. Heidegger invites Dasein to take that responsibility as a concern for the world, without necessarily rushing into using it to inspire strategic projects of world making. Non-humans could have such concerns too because: are they not also desiring, suffering, enduring, maintaining and, all in all, are things, not only Beings, regardless of whether they are present-at-hand in human experience? (Barad 2007). The question of non-human agency becomes one of influence. Can the non-human make a difference to the course of action of other human or nonhuman entities (Latour 2005)? The notion of agency, as an influence, is central to an understanding of change and transformation in urban energy landscapes. Neo-material perspectives include a group of relational theories that focus on a world of objects and develop propositions about material agency that open up avenues for an understanding of urban infrastructure landscapes and change. What distinguishes these notions of agency are their obstinacy in engaging with the worldhood of the world as an element generative of morality and politics; that is, they contemplate material politics as embedded in our average everydayness. The increased interest within the social sciences on the agency of the material stems precisely from a restlessness about the current understanding of humanity’s patterns of habitation in the world. Neo-materialist perspectives emphasize relationality as a means of engaging with the world out there. According to Harman (2010), we should be cautious of reducing everything to a world of relationships, but this primacy of a relational perspective is what makes neo-material views compelling. Relationality precedes the object; thus, it belongs to the world’s worldhood in Heidegger’s sense. Some of these views build upon a wide range of philosophical legacies and emerge with radically different assumptions about the nature of agency. For analyzing the urban energy landscape, I propose a brief excursion into three radically different conceptions of agency in neo-material approaches: the distributed/attributed forms of agency that emerge within ANT; the emergent forms of agency that constitute the backbone of assemblage theory; and the notion of intra-agency that builds on the legacy of the feminist critique of science politics. From an ANT perspective, the urban energy landscape can be portrayed as a site in which multiple strategic projects compete initially for attention and then for the right to define the whole as a totality (Latour 2005). Infrastructure histories provide rich examples of such struggles. Thinking about urban energy, the struggle between the models of alternating and direct current of transmission (represented in the rivalry between the engineering entrepreneurs Westinghouse and Edison) is not only an example of contingent technological politics and the interplay of business interests, but also an example of the definition of the model of electricity distribution that became normalized in the twentieth century (Jonnes 2004). In one of the

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latest appraisals of ANT, Michael (2017) explains two complementary notions of agency: a notion of agency as distributed, in which agency circulates through the process of making actor worlds; and a notion of agency as attributed, that is, as being held by certain actors who can claim a particular definition of the totality. The implication is that agency is linked to betterment projects directed by acting entities. In the field of planning, for example, ANT has supported analyses that show how certain actors can channel power through mundane routines of expertise and decision-making (Rydin and Tate 2016), possibly through an enrolment of multiple interests and influence capacities but also through decisions with the potential to create bifurcations in decision-making that take advantage of the unexpected. Situating this notion of agency in relation to Being-in-the-World, the strategic character of decision-making diverts attention away from the idea of dwelling. Activating agencies requires enrolling present-at-hand entities, for example, through the production of planning artifacts such as regulations and plans as a mechanism to channel power (cf. Rydin and Tate 2016). An alternative but closely connected perspective on material or non-human agency emerges from assemblage theory. Ideas of the city as an assemblage are closely related to a Heidegger-inspired idea of dwelling in the city, pointing toward how dwelling occurs within everyday materialities and in relation to mobilities that challenge grounded, container-inspired understandings of space (McFarlane 2011). In urban studies, assemblage theory is best characterized by its eclecticism (Brenner, Madden et al. 2011). However, there have been systematic efforts to develop a coherent assemblage theory, particularly in the work of DeLanda (2016). DeLanda’s vision explains assemblages as a collection of multiple sets of internal and external relationships with some simultaneous micro and macro expressions. One clear notion of agency in DeLanda’s assemblage theory builds upon a concept of change that he calls the double articulation of variation and consolidation. One memorable example is that of the formation of sedimentary layers in a geological stratum. He sees a layer as emerging from a double articulation of variation (through the breakage and mobility of rocks and sediments, for example, in a river) and consolidation (through processes of agglutination). This double articulation permeates not only geology but also social life because he describes the double articulation in patterns of habitation. Although human and non-human actors can have agency in this double articulation, those agencies vary. The possibilities for assemblages are diagrammed in a manner that prefigures relations. In some respects, assemblage theory reflects, via the notion of the diagram, upon the worldhood of the world, so that every contingency is somewhat shaped by the inescapable underlying nature of Being-in-the-World. However, isolating the diagram also means that there is an immutable aspect of change that cannot be transformed, because agency is limited to the double articulation that shapes assemblages in-the-World.

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The third neo-material perspective that inspires an alternative conception of agency emerges from a feminist current that in Science and Technology Studies found its clearer expression in Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (1991) and her concept of situated knowledges (1988). In the city, situated knowledges call for decision-making from a given location and are thus embedded with a particular politics of the understanding of the self and the surroundings (Hanson and Pratt 2003). Moreover, Haraway’s claim for situated embodied forms of knowledge (and against “unlocatable” forms of universalizing knowledge) also supports an openness toward the vibrancy of the material (Bergmann 2016). The challenge here, looking back to the reflections above on Being-in-the-World, is that of the ambiguous encounter between the embodied, inescapable nature of dwelling with the synthesis of dwelling in communicable experiences – present-at-hand – whereby dwelling per se is already simplified. Agency cannot be simply claimed within situated knowledge. Building on the feminist tradition, Barad proposes an hopeful view on the possibilities to exert fundamental changes in our ways of being through her notion of “agential realism” (Barad 2007). The phenomena that constitute the world do not precede the world but emerge from a series of interactions. She rejects causality as a linear relationship that goes from one object to another. Her concept of intraaction refers to the recognition that the actual result emerges from entanglements, and it is non-directional. She argues, “[c]rucially, agency is a matter of intra-acting; it is an enactment, not something that someone or something has” (Ibid., p. 178). Thus, in agential realism, agency is neither distributed nor attributed as it appears in ANT (Michael 2017). Instead, agency becomes the result of the dynamics of intraactivity, that is, multiple interactions that continuously reconfigure not only observable phenomena, but also the worldhood of the world itself. It follows that if we accept Being-in-the-World as pertaining to inseparable human and non-human entities beyond the exceptionality of Dasein, then Barad is pointing toward the potential to challenge the more fundamental constituents of dwelling – its relationship of proximity, its orientation, the possibilities for circumspection, and the ready-to-handness of equipment. Change as reconfiguration of space, time and matter becomes possible because, Barad argues, Iterative intra-actions are the dynamics through which temporality and spatiality are produced and iteratively reconfigured in the materialization of phenomena and the (re)making of material boundaries and their constitutive exclusions (Barad 2007, p. 179).

Using an alternative lexicon, Braidotti proposes agency as being “in-between.” This proposal is not agency occurring between entities, as though two entities could sustain such agency together. Rather, agency “in-between” is better understood as a sort of tele-agency because no entity has complete control over it. Again, by

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retracting attribution of agency, Braidotti opens up a hopeful neo-material account of change in which experimentation is a means to give and generate temporary, inbetween agencies. The articulation of these three bodies of theory is not conclusive; rather, it points toward the need to explore these spaces of agency in a larger research program on infrastructure transformations beyond the constitution of urban energy landscapes. However, to examine the alternative constitution of urban energy transitions, this comparative exploration brings forward three different understandings of neo-materialist agency: (1) Agency as held in a distributed or attributed manner (2) Agency as pre-oriented by assemblage diagrams (3) Agency as emerging “in-between,” as a matter of iterative intra-acting and experimentation that could truly challenge space, time and matter The three types of agency shape the urban energy landscape, but they do so differently. Strategic projects such as those in urban and energy planning emerge from multiple – occasionally mundane or unusual – forms of distributed and attributed agency. Barry’s (2011) discussion of the role of legal documents in the constitution of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline provides a fascinating evocation of the formation of energy landscapes. Some of the objects intervening in those energy landscapes gain their power in the formation of assemblages from their effect within a given diagram, as seen, for example, in the active constitution of the landscape by discursive rhetoric enacted in plans and documents. However, if we take Barad’s assertion seriously about the configuration of the world entities through intra-action, then none of these points should be taken for granted, and any type of change becomes possible. In the urban energy landscapes explored in this book – initially through accounts of dwelling practices and then through an account of walking experiences through the landscape – agential realism shifts the attention away from strategic, disruptive attempts to create change and focus instead on the change that already occurs through a process of iterative materialization. In other words, agential realism recognizes how different human and nonhuman entities have made a unique landscape and, through that making, changed the nature of Being-in-the-World. 4.6 Conclusion A recent assessment of the ecological legacy of Heidegger claims that his call for a rediscovery with the “poetic” side of dwelling is not akin to the suggestion of quietism in the face of the ecological crisis (McWhorter and Stenstad 2009). Instead, Heidegger’s stance against management, control, and calculation can be

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thought of as revolutionary. “Heidegger calls us to give thought to (. . .) the strangeness of our technological being within the world” (Ibid., p. 6). Only from a sensuous realization of strangeness – such as that experienced by Lenù in her bath – do we start examining the human drive for control, the vocation for change that is part of the problem itself. The authors argue, “His call places in question the bimodal logic of activity and passivity; it notes the paradoxical nature for action” (Ibid., p. 8). In an urban energy landscape, change is part of the practices of dwelling but hardly recognized in the deliberate efforts to deliver a transformation that constitutes strategic projects of change. Like Lenù and Lila, the former seeks to live an authentic life, whereas the latter focuses on taking control of her life and those around her. Lenù, the narrator, is consumed by feelings of existential anxiety, every time encountering the strangeness of the world. However, over the course of the story, Lenù has a more significant effect on Naples’ infrastructure landscapes. They both experience the collapse of time in the present moment, but only Lenù translates her existential anxieties into life practices. If Heidegger poetics are a call for action, then this action is not the type that can be easily translated into a master plan. Instead, this type of enchantment engages with the strangeness of the quotidian. Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels constitute a masterpiece not only because of their portrayal of the human condition in a particular time, but also because they are able to reflect upon the processes of iterative materialization that result from their working and experimenting with different forms of interaction that involve beaches, money, shoes, books, social conventions, family, representation, sex, selfperception and identity, infrastructure, computers, and love – just to highlight some of the topics of the book. Being-in-the-World translates into dwelling practices and equipment. However, how can we apprehend – and change – the worldhood of the world? Barad’s account is not a promise about the possibility of bringing about change, but rather a recognition of changes that are already occurring. The question is whether such unnoticed changes in our everyday averageness would ever deliver on the goal of surviving a global environmental crisis of our own making. Answering that question from within a dwelling perspective, however, requires a process of signification making world entities “present-at-hand” and annulling our interest in changing how we are in the world and the different forms of concern we show toward the world’s equipment. My initial error was focusing on the question of who has agency to mobilize change, because landscapes are shaped by tasks, intra-actions, which depend on a dynamic assemblage of multiple relations. In the example from the Neapolitan Novels, the question is not who has agency to change the neighborhood (Lenù or Lila), but instead, what change emerges from within the set of relations in which they live their lives.

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Perhaps we cannot know urban energy landscapes, and the mere idea that a book can capture them is in itself a utopia. We can only access the landscape by dwelling in it. How can we dwell in all of the landscapes that require understanding? What kinds of circumspection are possible in different locales? The last time I was presenting this work, I concluded with the impossibility of other entities inhabiting the Being-in-the-World, in line with Harman’s (2011) assessment that knowing an object is necessarily simplifying it. It then occurred to me that it is perhaps akin to the aesthetics of observation, an attempt to be experimental. In many ways, the rise of experimentation approaches to address climate change signifies efforts to continue walking a road without assurances about the destination. I have found inspiration in the notion of urban energy landscapes as an anchoring point to study the politics of our average everydayness. If nothing else, it constitutes an antidote to homogenizing discourses that dominate debates on energy infrastructure. Urban energy landscapes reflect the heterogeneous urban worlds into which we are thrown.

Part II Heterogeneous Urban Energy Landscapes

5 Modernity Promises and the Quest for Autonomy: Urban Energy Landscapes in Maputo, Mozambique

Hoje, a nossa concepção sobre as cidades é outra, porque a nossa perspectiva de desenvolvimento não assenta numa base de exploração do homen pelo homen. Pelo contrario, nós rejeitamos a cidade como centro de bem-estar para uma pequeña minoría, como centro de desemprego, de discriminação racial, como zona de prostituição e banditismo, como centro de prática e difusão dos valores próprios do sistema colonial – capitalista1 (FRELIMO 1979, p. 44).

5.1 Introduction Urban landscapes in Mozambique express the collision between social change aspirations and the realities of urban life. The quote above emerged from a decisive moment in the urban history of Mozambique, the “1ª Reunião Nacional sobre Cidades e Bairros Comunais” in February and March of 1979, which established the principles for urban management in post-colonial Mozambique (Grest 1995). It is an extract from the “Frente de Libertação de Moçambique” (FRELIMO), the party that has ruled Mozambique since the country’s independence in 1975 (first in a one-party state and, since the first multi-party elections in 1994, as the majority party), and was published in the periodical Voz da Revolução. As the quote above shows, FRELIMO rejected the city as the center of the colonial system; they viewed the city as a location of corruption and exploitation. In a time of rapid transition after liberation, there was a struggle between this concept of cities and the need to harness cities’ power for the revolutionary enterprise. Transforming Maputo into a clean, revolutionary city was central to that enterprise. Times and ideologies have changed, particularly since the country embraced the principles of a market economy in the mid-1980s. However, the idea of cities as wild entities that must be controlled remains strong in FRELIMO’s political vision. In a country in which the political party, FRELIMO, and the state apparatus are indistinguishable, 75

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this approach to the city permeates most government institutions and the impulses of the individuals within them, from city planners to aid workers (Castán Broto et al. 2015). Contrast the above state of affairs with an alternative vision of cities in Mozambique as spaces of living in which dwelling practices encounter life memories. In one of the essays collected in the book Pensatempos (Pensativities) about cities and citizenship, the writer Mia Couto discusses the fundamental contradiction of urban life in Mozambique. In David Brookshaw’s translation, Couto writes, “For most citizens, Maputo remains Xilunguini. What does Xilunguini mean? It’s the place where Portuguese is spoken or, in a more generic sense, where people live like whites. When did Maputo turn into a place that is mentally represented as ours, reshaped in accordance with our ways?” Couto then continues to discuss the contradiction between learning the history of the city and appropriating its legacy because, he argues, “we [Mozambicans] cannot love our cities if they are seen as legacies left by outsiders” (Couto 2015a, p. 44). If the city is a contradictory political project in a post-colonial setting, so is the provision of energy at the intersection of the colonial legacy that has shaped the provision of electricity and the extractive cultures developed around energy resources (Castel-Branco 2014, Chivangue 2017, Weimer and Carrilho 2017), and the simple efforts of people, citizens in their own context, to simply survive through practices of energy use that seek autonomy and self-determination (Castán Broto 2017). Maputo’s urban energy landscapes, in particular, show the effect that Mozambicans have on their own landscapes of dwelling, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the lack of connection between the abundant energy resources of the country and the possibilities for people to access them. Originally, I selected Maputo as one of the case studies for this project because I was interested in the urban energy landscapes of cities with extreme low-carbon emissions per capita. The carbon emissions of Mozambique are, according to the World Bank, 0.15 metric tonnes per capita (WB 2018). Emissions per capita are likely to be higher in Maputo because most energy consumers are concentrated in the city. Progress toward energy access in Maputo in the last two decades has been impressive. For example, according to data of Electriçidade de Mocambique (EDM) for the year 2012, Maputo uses four times more energy per capita than the country’s average (EDM 2018). Thus, we can estimate the carbon emissions in Maputo as approximately 0.6 metric tonnes per capita. This figure remains less than the average emissions per capita in sub-Saharan Africa (0.8 metric tonnes per capita) and lightyears away from any measures of emissions in industrialized countries. The case of Maputo demonstrates the encounter between ideals of modernity and orderly growth and the actual city that produces urban energy landscapes and

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resists any attempts to control it. Couto considers the Mozambican city not only a physical space but also a location in which relationships “are welded together” and in which Mozambique’s own identities are forever reinvented (Couto 2015b). He describes how the Portuguese dropped their colonial cities in Mozambique without really integrating them into the Mozambican landscape. FRELIMO’s suspicion of cities further suspended that integration. Nevertheless, Couto argues for remaking Mozambican cities, not anew as if they were built over a blank slate but, rather, from the inside, as citizens dwell and reimagine themselves in the urban landscape (Couto 2015b). The city is, as Couto says, a frame of Mozambican life. The case of Maputo’s urban energy landscapes shows precisely how that frame of life is built from the inside in the conjunction of dwelling practices that rely on different forms of energy. Deliberate attempts to govern the flows of electricity, fuels, and renewable technologies that respond to Western-inspired models of infrastructure development are concentrated in the modern city. This “modern” city appears to be separated from the organic city that emerges around it as citizens build urban landscapes through routine practices of living. Local officials might portray this zoning as the contrast between a governable and an ungovernable city. The making of Maputo into two cities is a strongly fictional narrative; the governable and ungovernable, the formal and the informal, interact with and transgress each other in a million routine ways. However, this symbolic separation of Maputo into two cities endures both within the imagination of Maputo’s citizens and within the discourses that inform prescriptions for urban development. For some actors in the city (FRELIMO politicians, bureaucrats, and representatives of donor organizations), there is a need for better attempts at controlling the production of the urban landscape through planning, real estate development, and infrastructure building. From a landscape perspective, a fundamental difference exists between state-led, donor-backed projects that seek to gain authority over populations and people’s structured attempts to organize their manner of living practically. In this chapter, I explore this contrast between practices of governing and practices of dwelling. This contrast explains the formation of an energy landscape in terms of the evolution of the city in the post-colonial period. This energy landscape is zoned, with physical boundaries between those spaces that are deemed modern and those that are not. The second part of the chapter, in line with the framework of the book, moves on to explore the trajectories of change in the current context of governance. The case of the supply chain of charcoal exemplifies how “ungovernability” is better understood as households’ claims for autonomy and control in accessing services.

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5.2 Coevolution of Energy Services and the Urban Fabric The history of Maputo can only be told with reference to that of Mozambique, because Maputo is one of the key arenas where Mozambique’s history has been defined. For centuries, Maputo and its port in the Bay of Maputo have been part of a trade axis in Southern Africa. Even today, the integration of Maputo in international trade networks is central to discourses of development in the region (Rogerson 2001). The city is a node between sea-based exporting routes and roadbased connections into a resource-rich interior. Its location attracted the Portuguese, who initially built a fort, then a village, and eventually made it the capital of their colony in 1898. They called it Lourenço Marques to honor one of the navigators who started the Portuguese enterprise in the region. The memories of colonial Lourenço Marques as a cosmopolitan melting pot that attracted visitors to its beaches, food, and nightlife stand in stark contrast to the brutality of spatial and economic differentiation during the colonial era. In the period immediately after independence, Ruth First documented both the establishment of Mozambique as a reservoir of labor for export – which supported the mining revolution in South Africa – and the exploitation of Mozambican laborers on large plantations, fazendas (First 1977). She argued for an explicitly Marxist analysis of how the Portuguese government acted as a rentier that extracted surplus value from Mozambican workers. Without downplaying the economic and political reasons described in First’s structural analysis, the colonial economy was only possible because Mozambicans adopted spatial mobility as a key strategy for survival, making possible the export of labor across provinces and countries (da Costa 2002). Maputo played a key role as a location structuring and directing those roles. The Portuguese constituted Maputo as a trading port and a reservoir of labor. They developed Lourenço Marques as the city, separated from the surrounding areas where black laborers lived. This development was reflected in patterns of habitation and in a dual system of administration separating the better-resourced Camara Municipal from the District Administration in the black suburbs. Grest (1995) argues that whereas urban segregation was not legislated, racist colonial practices kept it in place. As explained above, these practices translated into the division of Maputo into “two cities.” “The cement city” (cidade de cimento) included the Portuguese-built central area around the port, with its Art Deco buildings, ample avenues, commercial centers, and green spaces. Along its large beaches and emblematic buildings, postcards of the time picture neon lights as markers of an electricity-fueled leisure economy. “The reed city” (cidade de canico), named to reflect the predominant materials for construction used there, was very different. It was divided into bairros (neighborhoods) where most of Maputo’s citizens still live today (Figure 5.1). Thus, the sub-service suburbs of

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Figure 5.1 A street in one of Maputo’s bairros. Credit: Vanesa Castán Broto.

the “reed city” constituted a reservoir of male labor at the disposal of the “cement city.” The armed conflict between the colonial administration and the FRELIMO guerrillas started in 1964. Simultaneously, a sense of rejection of the government’s colonialist policies grew in Portugal. Eventually, the peaceful 1974 Carnation Revolution overthrew the authoritarian “Estado Novo” that had ruled the country and the colonies since 1932. A ceasefire agreement with FRELIMO rapidly followed (Acordo de Lusaka), and independence was declared in June 1975. FRELIMO became the only political force able to claim authority over the state. However, independence also came at a price. Approximately 250,000 Portuguese abandoned the country in a mass exodus that also deprived the country of vital technical and administrative skills (Grest 1995). Faced with a massive governance challenge, FRELIMO sought to build not only a new country but also a new, deserving Mozambican citizen who could inhabit it. Human settlement policies were at the center of this citizenship project. The first meeting of towns and cities mentioned above, for example, stated that ideals of cities should be accompanied by ideals of a new man. Local groups or Grupos Dinamizadores, were organized to consolidate the presence of FRELIMO in urban neighborhoods, the bairros. However, FRELIMO’s policies and investments

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concentrated on the countryside, and progress in urban areas stalled. The economy collapsed in the late 1970s and early 1980s following the failure of policies for industrialization and centralization, including a program to concentrate the rural population in communal villages (Newitt 1994). In Maputo, unemployment soared, and shops became empty (da Costa 2002). The central district (the cement city, today known as KaMpfumo) was emptied after the Portuguese mass exodus and then occupied by inhabitants from Maputo’s periphery (da Costa 2002). FRELIMO soon became concerned with reducing migration to a failing city. FRELIMO was dominated by urban elites. Many in these elites were assimilados, that is, black Africans who had integrated themselves into Portuguese culture and religion under colonial rule and thus had been able to access some education (Sumich and Honwana 2007). Ideas of re-education were central to the process of becoming an assimilado and traveled seamlessly into FRELIMO’s state-making project. Its policies included the creation of the agency for the Administração da Propriedade Imobiliária do Estado (APIE), which was in charge of evicting those Maputo residents who did not behave in an appropriately civilized way (da Costa 2002). Urban residents also required “citizenship licenses” that demonstrated their citizenship credentials and gave them rights to access urban areas. Operation production (Operação produção) was a program to purge citizens that were deemed “unproductive” from cities and send them to re-education in the Niassa province (Quembo 2012). These policies caused significant hardship and further consolidated urban management as a method for the re-education of new Mozambican citizens. Although these brutal policies caused considerable hardship and fear, they did not reduce migration to Maputo. The war with the rebel Mozambique Resistance Movement, RENAMO (1977–92), worsened the situation. War and famines elsewhere fueled migration to the city. From 1975 to 1990, between 20 and 25 thousand people migrated to Maputo each year, a much lower rate than today (UNDESA 2014). Maputo became a site of refuge, but that only added pressure to families in the periphery who hosted those migrants (da Costa 2002). Land was occupied and public spaces disappeared. Attempts at economic reform started in 1984, and the Structural Adjustment Programme consolidated with the introduction of an IMF/ World Bank-sponsored Economic Reform Programme in 1987. The reforms halted economic crisis but deepened socio-economic differences (Marshall 1990). As markets filled with new goods and colorful vegetables, citizens found themselves without cash in their pockets to buy them (Grest 1995, Sidaway and Power 1995, Jenkins 2000, da Costa 2002). Substantial improvements in people’s quality of life failed to materialize. The end of the war followed the General Peace Agreement in 1992, and the first elections in 1993 inaugurated a period of economic growth that has lasted, at least

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until the recent debt crisis that started in 2013. Economic growth is visible in foreign investments in KaMpfumo, including luxury hotels, ample roads, and new industries. Some of these benefits have also percolated to the bairros, with many of them gaining access to water and electricity supplies for the first time. Other programs following international guidance to, for example, regularize land, were grossly ineffective (Jenkins 2000). This period of relative political stability and economic recovery has been shadowed by entrenched inequality, visible signs of elite corruption and nepotism (Hanlon 2004), a resource-extraction investment culture (Nino and Le Billon 2014, Hansen, Buur et al. 2016), and the creation of new structures of exclusion that reproduce the problems of the poorer sectors of the population (Jenkins and Wilkinson 2002, Sumich 2008). None of the above has challenged FRELIMO’s hegemony, but the party is constantly engaged in a fight to ensure its reproduction. Although the landscapes of Maputo reflect its history, the city is being transformed at high speed, with two trends emerging from FRELIMO’s need to maintain its power. FRELIMO must show that it can govern cities, for example through visible actions to control urbanization and service provision. As support for FRELIMO among the traditional urban middle class declines (Sumich 2016), improving the living conditions in cities has become a political priority. Electrification and streetlight policies have become strategies to make visible urban improvements as a political strategy. The 2010 riots that occurred in different Mozambican cities following a hike in the prices of food, electricity, and water were a reminder of the precarious hold on power of the current government (Bertelsen 2016). As the following section shows, the future of the city is intrinsically linked to the political ecology of resource use. This is particularly visible in its urban energy landscapes. 5.3 Energy Flows and Urban Circulation Energy resources in Mozambique are abundant. Mozambique boasts one of the largest hydropower generation facilities in Southern Africa and world-class deposits of coal and natural gas. However, Mozambique’s populations face some of the lowest levels of access to energy in the world. This point can be explained by a dual process shaping the political economy of energy provision in Mozambique: (1) the extractive nature of the energy sector, and (2) the complex processes of the territorialization of energy infrastructures. In this context, Maputo is a privileged location within the country in terms of possibilities for people to access electricity and modern fuels. In this section, I characterize this gap between relative resource abundance and extreme energy deprivation, and discuss how the gap shapes the energy landscapes observable in Maputo.

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Let us start with some numbers that provide some perspective on the “gap” between energy production and consumption, which defines the political economy of energy in Mozambique. The figures from the International Energy Agency are shocking. In 2015, energy production in Mozambique was estimated at 19,126 tonnes of oil equivalent. This figure is almost 2% of the energy production in Africa, a remarkable achievement for a country whose gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is approximately one-third the average of the whole continent. Since 2005, there has been an exponential growth of fossil fuels production, particularly coal (22% of the total energy production, up from 0% in 2005) and natural gas (21%, up from 2% in 2005). However, when we examine the energy statistics to examine energy consumption, the picture is very different. The total final consumption is over one-half of the amount of the energy produced (10,414 tonnes of oil equivalent in 2015). The majority of the energy consumed (78% of the Total Final Consumption, TFC) comes from biomass, which reflects the dependence of households upon charcoal and fuelwood (Cuvilas, Jirjis et al. 2010). Charcoal, in particular, is the dominant fuel in cities and the dominant presence in Maputo’s energy landscapes. Moreover, in 2015, only marginal amounts of coal and natural gas were used within the country. Instead, the sources of energy used alongside biomass were hydropower (11% of the TFC) and imported oil (11% of the TFC). These figures reflect the distinguishing characteristic of the energy sector in Mozambique – its orientation toward resource extraction and export markets (Mulder and Tembe 2008). Clearly, the energy sector is one of the main points of interest in Mozambique’s foreign trade. In 2016, energy exports accounted for 42% of all Mozambique’s exports in monetary terms (21% coal, 11% electricity, and 10% natural gas) (INE 2017). However, these figures stand in stark contrast to the low rates of access to energy in the country, with only 20% of the population having access to electricity and 4% having access to cleaner fuels (IEA/WB 2017). This contrast points to a double disconnect that is visible in the energy landscapes in Mozambique: first, a disconnect between energy production and local benefits; second, a disconnect between the rhetoric of development associated with extractives and the actual effects of energy policies on the ground. Concerning the former, the acceleration of extraction activities such as coal mining and gas drilling has not brought significant improvements either in access to energy services or in benefits to local economies. If anything, the opposite is true. For example, one of the main sources of coal is the “Moatize coal deposit” in one of the poorest northern provinces, Tete. A consortium led by the Brazilian company Vale won the rights to exploit the deposit in 2004, and a rush of smaller investments followed (Hatton and Fardell 2012). As Kirshner and Powell (2015) have explained, few benefits from these exploitations have circulated beyond the

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enclaves in which multinational companies organize themselves. These companies make only token efforts to train local people or provide employment. Even their food supplies leave little benefits for local producers. The environmental and social effects of mining remain unchecked. Moreover, the state’s enthusiasm for energy exports is directly detrimental to local livelihoods. This problem clearly exists with fossil fuel exploitation that inserts the country into global supply chains. However, similar dynamics can be associated, for example, with the promotion of biofuel resources. In 2004, for example, FRELIMO announced its intention to use Mozambique’s putatively unused land and to develop into an “oil exporting country” (see, for example, Schut, Slingerland et al. 2010). This plan led to an episode of land grabbing (Borras Jr. and Franco 2012) that resembled the dynamics of labor and land exploitation in Mozambique’s colonial haciendas under the Portuguese. In this case, livelihood-supporting activities were thought of as “unproductive” (Borras, Fig et al. 2011). Large land deals with hardly any benefits for the local population led to a wave of unrest and protests (Hall 2011). Enthusiasm for biofuels has waned in recent years, but the example remains symptomatic of a deeply ingrained approach to energy resources. Concerning the latter, there is a further gap between the rhetoric of development and the actual unfolding of energy services on the ground. As FRELIMO appears to lose support in its traditional centers of power (Sumich 2016), there have been increasing pressures to offer a discourse of hope and competence. Providing urban services and opportunities for growth is central to that discourse. If the state cannot bridge the above-mentioned gap, it must at least be viewed as attempting to bridge it. Linking energy extraction with increasing prosperity is common in both government and donor discourses. For example, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) prepared an investment policy review, which warned against the fact that large-scale consumers and export markets take precedence over domestic needs. In the same report, Aiuba Cuerencia, then Minister of Planning and Development, wrote in the foreword that . . . the growth model envisaged by the 2011–2014 Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (PARPA II) views that upstream and downstream activities related to extractive industries can be promoted hand-in-hand with broader diversification efforts in order to generate more employment for the Mozambican people (OECD 2013 pp. 8–9).

This approach has been visible, for example, in the approach to the exploitation of the large gas resources in the Rovuma Basin in the Indian Ocean in 2010. Although global conditions have compromised investment (England 2015), large oil multinationals have been attracted to the formerly ignored region of Cabo Delgado and its capital, Pemba (Court and McCarthy 2015). The usual concerns about the extent to which this resource industry can actually bring benefits to the

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country have emerged (Hanlon and Nuvunga 2015, Weimer and Carrilho 2017). Although the main focus of the Rovuma Basin is facilitating exports, the government of Mozambique made the news in 2017 with the results of a domestic gas tender to improve energy supplies in the country and develop fertilizers (with multinationals Yara International (a Norwegian company), Shell Mozambique, and GL Energy Africa). The operation of the extraction economy has a direct effect on the urban energy landscapes of Maputo. Urban centers, particularly Maputo, become sites from which these economies are remotely administered; the connection of remote sites such as Tete to global networks depends upon the urban elites in Maputo. The improvements in energy services in Maputo thus respond to a need to cater to those elites more than to an actual concern to provide for the whole city. Simultaneously, there is a constant disconnect between the narratives of development and hope and the actual operation of services. Thus, a discourse of change and transition dominates the thinking about energy landscapes. For example, charcoal is considered to be the symptom of an intermediary stage in the context of imminent modernization of the fuel supply chain, although it remains ubiquitous in every Mozambican city. In parallel, there is the powerful effect of the territorial structure of the energy system, which is manifested in structurally different systems of operation. Maputo has traditionally been a beneficiary of this differentiated territorial structure. Most electricity is provided by the dam in Cahora Bassa in the province of Tete (Ahlborg and Hammar 2014). At the time of its construction, FRELIMO considered the dam a symbol of oppressive colonial power. The social effects of the dam were significant (Isaacman and Sneddon 2000). Inaugurating the era of energy exploitation, electricity production since its beginning was oriented toward the South African market. Even today, only 15 percent of the electricity produced in the dam is available for national consumption (Sebitosi and da Graca 2009). However, Maputo has long benefitted from a wheeling agreement with the South African public utility ESKOM (Vasco and Costa 2009). The city has the highest electrification rates of the whole country. Energy access problems are rampant among local households, whose options are constrained by material, economic, and social factors. However, in the current conditions, the city has a situation of privilege with respect to the rest of the country. Changes in the energy system are likely to affect the provision systems in the city. In Mozambique, renewable innovations have been framed as alternatives for electricity generation and energy provision, which can have an effect locally, particularly for households not connected to the electricity grid (Ahlborg and Hammar 2014). Although such changes can herald new avenues for facilitating energy access, they also symbolize the discursive separation of the larger economy

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associated with extractive practices from local livelihoods. Much-heralded transitions to cleaner fuels or renewables appear to have little effect on the lives of people in the bairros of Maputo. 5.4 Urban Choreographies of Energy Use Three aspects characterize the daily choreographies of energy use in Maputo. First, there is an eclectic use of energy sources and, as in other cities with lower levels of energy access, coexistence of multiple fuels and close association of specific fuels or electricity with well-delimited uses (for example, the prioritization of electricity for communications uses, such as charging the mobile). Second, there is a strong association in Maputo between the use of certain appliances and the discourses of good citizenship that were forged in the post-independence period in the city. Third, there is a strong sense of energy – particularly electricity – as a collectively owned, public good. In Maputo, charcoal remains the prevalent fuel. However, the use of charcoal must be understood as part of a wide range of options that are used within the households of the bairros of Maputo. To investigate the daily choreographies of energy use, I focused on a single neighborhood, Chamanculo C, in the administrative division of Nlhamankulu. Chamanculo C is a historical bairro divided into 97 quarteirões. The bairro is on the boundary of the cement city; thus, it benefits from easy access to the city in terms of providing both employment and trade opportunities. The bairro suffers from deficiencies in infrastructure, particularly water, sanitation, and waste management. Waste management is particularly important because the deficient drainage and uncontrolled dumping of waste are key factors that increase the vulnerability of the neighborhood to flooding, as was true with recent cyclones, such as cyclone Funso in 2012 (for a review see Castán Broto, Oballa et al. 2013). In local government accounts supported by local academics, access to energy is conceptualized in terms of access to the energy network both in terms of physical access to that network and in terms of affordability. With respect to energy infrastructure, the electricity coverage of the city has improved considerably in the last several years. Local officials are keen to highlight the success of a prepaid system of energy provision that enables divisibility of energy and thus makes energy affordable because people can buy small quantities of it (Baptista 2015). However, an exclusive focus on access to the energy network overlooks the diverse ways in which energy is embedded in everyday life and how it sustains diverse livelihoods. To contextualize this research, a survey of energy poverty in 40 households in Chamanculo C used the methodology of Practical Action’s Total Energy Access

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survey (Practical Action 2012) to inquire into basic services for lighting, cooking and water heating, space heating and cooling, and communications (Castán Broto, Stevens et al. 2015 ). The survey suggested that over 70% of the households had a reliable electricity connection, with households lacking a connection being an exception. This figure demonstrates the tremendous progress in terms of electricity coverage made in Maputo since the armed conflict in 1992. Households that did not meet the minimum standard for lighting services found stronger limitations in the affordability of the electricity than in the access to the electricity network. The same survey, however, showed that the majority of households (77.5%) depended upon charcoal to meet their daily needs, with increasing access to liquid fuels (22.5%). Households rely on charcoal for cooking and heating water. Different modes of energy provision coexist in the households within the Chamanculo C neighborhood. The pilot survey suggested that there is a continuum between families that use exclusively electricity and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and the poorest families, which have access only to poor-quality fuels and, in a few cases, lack electricity completely. The majority of households combine the use of charcoal with access to electricity in different ways and with the occasional use of other fuels. The continuity of the electricity service and access to alternatives to charcoal depends upon the location of the household and how much electricity they can actually afford. Commentators have observed a tendency to improve the quality of the electricity supply and to extend the coverage of LPG over the city. Charcoal, however, persists. To understand how charcoal has been embedded within Maputo’s energy landscape, we must understand it in relation to the integration of the supply chain, to everyday practices of cooking and heating, and to the governance of resources. In her study of the prepaid system, “the default electricity retail model in Maputo,” Baptista emphasizes the importance of being able to control one’s own consumption to facilitate access to the electricity grid (Baptista 2015, p. 1,004). She highlights the question of “autonomy,” in the sense that through the prepayment system, urban dwellers can understand what they consume and divide purchases into smaller units that enable adjusting their consumption to available resources. Similarly, charcoal is embedded in an economic system that enables control and autonomy of urban dwellers over energy resources. Charcoal is embedded in different occupations across the city, and because it can be subdivided, it can be adapted to different business models (Mavhunga 2013). The possibility to subdivide amounts has facilitated the integration of both the prepaid system and charcoal flows into the everyday practices of energy use in Maputo. The situation in Maputo highlights the intricacy of autonomy questions in an urban context and how it relates to everyday challenges. In the following section, we delve into some of these questions through the words of institutional representatives, local business

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managers, and local community representatives to understand the dimensions of energy sovereignty in an urban context, with a focus on the Chamanculo C neighborhood. The constitution of the urban energy landscape around charcoal flows in Maputo is a question that receives dedicated attention below. However, the preference for both charcoal and the prepaid system speaks to autonomy being a priority for households in Chamanculo C and in other, similar neighborhoods in Maputo (Castán Broto 2017). The survey also revealed the selective use of electricity and fuels for certain activities. For example, one key insight relates to the prioritization of communication technologies in households, which in turn relates to the rapid spread of communication technologies such as mobile phones in bairros such as Chamanculo C. We held a community workshop in Chamanculo C in July 2014 to discuss the patterns of energy use, which revealed different spatial patterns of energy use through walks across the neighborhood (Castán Broto, Salazar et al. 2014). In the accounts emerging from collective dialogue during the workshop, participants highlighted that aspects such as thermal comfort and food preservation were closely associated with the structure of the built environment. The house was presented as the unit to define different practices of heating and cooling spaces. Thermal comfort was not thought of as an issue of great concern because of the relatively benign climate in Maputo that, according to participants, is never too cold. There was also little reflection on the difficulties raised by frequent flooding episodes in the neighborhood. Cooling needs, in contrast, provoked debate. Many participants argued that they simply opened the window when it was too hot. The conversation then turned toward the correct way to use fans and airconditioning units. Demonstrating the correct use of electric appliances was brought to the discussion as a marker of good citizenship. For example, a participant’s assertion that the electric heater was mostly used in the nighttime sparked an agitated debate. Another participant intervened: Suppose the day dawned cold, would then a person not turn on the electric heater? I would turn it on only in order to be inside the house; it is not only in the night. [Whether it is used or not] depends on the temperature inside the house (as cited in Castán Broto, Salazar et al. 2014).

Participants discussed at length the “correct” use of electrical appliances to maintain thermal comfort. Eventually, the facilitator asked each participant to explain how he or she was using such appliances themselves, in their own houses. The audience responded with laughs, and then one of them stated general agreement that they did not have such appliances and that this lack was why they did not know how to use them. At this moment, the whole group presented themselves as a community that maintains a collective strategy of engagement with thermal

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comfort appliances and distinct from those who use them daily and know how to use them (as represented, for example, by the facilitators). They illustrated this point on the conceptual map in terms of the extent to which certain ventilating technologies were more or less common. This discussion, however, reveals a series of contradictions shaping the urban energy landscape in Maputo. On the one hand, there are electrical appliances as markers of modernity. Although the discussion in the workshop was framed in terms of what households did, in a collective setting, it invariably turned toward whether the appliances were used correctly, thus demonstrating the legacy of reeducation policies. Such discourse is not exclusive to understandings of energy uses. I have found a similar reaction among local communities planning for flooding or attempting to improve waste management. Instead, it is a legacy of the postindependence period of urban development and FRELIMO’s plan to associate rightful citizenship with the figure of the deserving individual. The deserving individual is constructed in relation to the material operation of objects that represent an imagined modernity. Electrical appliances are one such chief object. On the other hand, other, similar modernity markets are emerging that are slowly being imposed on Mozambicans and the energy landscapes. The need to educate “responsible consumers” is a common discourse of both donors and local service providers. In Chamanculo C, I found something very rare, at least in the comparative study of the four urban energy landscapes in this book. The workshop discussions showed a sense of energy services, particularly electricity, as a public good. During the workshop, there were strong statements about the significance of lighting in community life. For example, the group was in agreement that the extension and upgrading of public lighting in the last few years had benefitted them directly through the improvement of the safety conditions in shared spaces. Public lighting contributes mostly to our security. We are safer because the streets without lights after dark are a problem, because of many reasons from random encounters with criminals to stumbling upon a stone; with public lighting we can see and then we walk (as cited in Castán Broto, Salazar et al. 2014).

Safety is a common good in the community. In Chamanculo C, the few main roads are connected by narrow and unpaved paths that are unsafe due to a lack of proper lighting or convenient transportation. Public lighting, though, is confined to the main roads. Hence, participants noted the importance of alternative means of lighting in the dark along these paths, including the moon as a source of lighting. Thus, lighting is related to spatial aspects such as the distribution of the houses in the neighborhood, the presence of appropriate roads, and the residents’ ability to bridge distances through walking. The reliability of the service and the need for the

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community to pursue the maintenance of the electricity network also point toward a conception of the electricity network as a common good. This attitude explains, for example, the success of the prepaid system. The system has changed perceptions that illegal connections were encroaching on the collective infrastructure, and residents argue that illegal connections to the electricity network have almost disappeared in the neighborhood. This perception matches the cartographic evidence gathered by AVSI 2 for a participatory local plan in 2012 (AVSI 2012). The organization of collective life is a factor structuring energy use. This structure is also facilitated by the spatial distribution of households, in which a handful of separated rooms are most often arranged around a courtyard shared with members of the extended family or with neighbors. 5.5 Governing Energy The governance of energy in Mozambique is embedded in major contradictions. Development discourses place energy access at the center of poverty reduction strategies, but efforts at providing energy access rarely reach those who are most in need (Arthur, Zahran et al. 2010). In urban areas, there is a mismatch between perceived and actual needs for accessing energy. The institutions addressing energy are configured at the national level, and Maputo has long benefitted from its situation as the capital of the nation. Simultaneously, the needs of the urban poor in Maputo tend to be overlooked, either for lack of resources or because of the prioritization of provision in higher income areas. Simultaneously, there is a strong tradition of organizing services at the local level in Maputo’s bairros. Often, this tradition is linked to subjectification, for example, in the ideas about the creation of the “new man” that emerged from the discourses of emancipation after independence. Although in the late 1970s, FRELIMO claimed to be making socialist citizens, government institutions are currently concerned with making “good consumers.” Overall, discourses about providing public services – for example, the social mandate defended by the utility Electriçidade de Mocambique – appear to be fantasies in the context of total lack of resources and capacities. This section reviews these issues and their consequences to frame the operation of the supply chain of charcoal in Maputo, as explained below. First, let us consider the institutional organization of the landscape of energy governance in Mozambique. The Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy (MIREME) works simultaneously on the management of fuel and energy resources and on energy planning. MIREME has provincial delegations, but its function is exclusively regulatory. Electriçidade de Moçambique (EDM) is the vertical utility in charge of the electricity network in Mozambique, managing generation infrastructures and transmission networks on the one hand and customer relationships

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on the other hand. EDM is the main actor advancing electrification policies; thus, it has a multi-level role, from the delivery of new electrification programs in new neighborhoods to the facilitation of electricity exports through their network to South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland. Petromoc is Mozambique’s government-owned fuel distribution. Qualitative interviews show that EDM and Petromoc pride themselves on territorial coverage, but neither is reaching rural areas or the most deprived urban neighborhoods. Other private actors compete with EDM and Petromoc but at much smaller scales. Because energy access has been identified as a key element of development and poverty reduction strategies (OECD 2013), there has been a growing interest from donors in energy access policies in Mozambique. The focus has traditionally been on either investments in resource exploitation or developing markets to give access to the private sector (WB 2003), all of which are policies with little effect on urban environments. Both resource extraction and energy planning are issues that are high on the agenda of the FRELIMO government; hence, these organizations are quite politicized. Their discourse is often closely aligned with FRELIMO’s discourses of modernization and citizen education. Many donors, particularly those concerned with the financing of fossil fuel projects in the context of concerns about climate change, might have postponed donations matching FRELIMO’s investment priorities. Thus, the most salient cooperation programs have focused on rural electrification and off-grid technologies in rural areas. Some donors have found a stronger partner in the Fundo Nacional de Energía (FUNAE). FUNAE was created in 1997 with the remit to target energy access and electrification in rural areas. FUNAE is the agency that has pioneered renewable technologies in Mozambique and has been open to alternative models of management. The perception of development workers, for example, is that FUNAE is much less politicized than are other energy-related agencies in Mozambique, such as EDM and Petromoc. This perception matches the FRELIMO elites’ interests in the energy industry, the perception of renewable technologies as secondary, and the waning interest in rural populations as FRELIMO has become preoccupied with securing votes in urban areas. FUNAE’s operation remains restricted to rural areas, and their influence on cities is limited. Urban planners working in Maputo’s municipality find a direct connection between gaining popular support in prosperous neighborhoods and enabling energy access. However, there are no effective linkages between urban and energy planning. Instead, urban planners tend to find energy institutions inaccessible. EDM operatives, in contrast, tend to reaffirm its “social mission,” that is, its dedication to the provision of energy to all Mozambicans. In practice, EDM is constrained by a reactive approach to network management in a system that requires constant

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attention to maintenance and repairs and a long history of rationing that has constituted clear-cut patterns of energy access. Moreover, EDM has a long history of rationing services. Rather than being the result of a concerted strategy of exclusion, the problems in energy access relate to continuing failing approaches to operation and lack of resources. In terms of urban service provision there are local institutions of provision whose operations have been consolidated over several decades. These decentralized groups might be subject to power control and abuse. However, decentralization has also been a means for different communities to challenge the existing operation of current systems of governance and FRELIMO’s ideology (Weimer and Carrilho 2017). “Grupos Dinamizadores,” local organizations that addressed neighborhood (bairros) challenges, were formed during the independence period. Their operation has had a lasting legacy of the socialist revolution in terms of understanding urban governance. Bairros are today organized in “quarteiraos” (groups of approximately fifty houses), which are then divided in groups of ten houses, each with their representatives. The bairro secretary acts as the main point of contact between neighborhood residents and the state institutions, particularly the municipality. Thus, bairro governance institutions can facilitate the improvement of services in their own bairro, such as, for example, lobbying for the construction of a transformation post or the designation of areas for the installation of street lighting. Such structures of decentralization appear to have constructed alternative arenas in which forms of democratic government can be achieved (Weimer and Carrilho 2017). In Chamanculo, for example, local residents attributed the improvements in the electricity network since the 1990s and the recent installation of streetlights to local groups’ activism and the possibility of lobbying with the support of the bairro secretary. Energy access policies thus reinforce and legitimize local power structures that are neither subservient nor antagonistic to the centralized power of FRELIMO. What permeates all the way from national to local institutions, and even local academics, is the sense that constructing a modern Mozambique requires constructing a new Mozambican, the homen novo of the revolution. The socialist citizen of the post-independence period is no longer invoked. Instead, now the requirement is for consumer-citizens who understand the need to pay for receiving a service. In an interview, for example, an EDM worker explained how difficult it was to bring energy to neighborhoods in which local people did not understand that they had to pay for and use the electricity services accordingly: So if I tell you “to have energy in your household, to have water, you need to pay. Three thousand meticais, four thousand, five thousand, ten thousand . . . all that money because you want to have electricity . . . or water. Is an automatic realization. It is a critical factor (MP Interview 15, 2014).

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Embedded in this account, a logic of production and consumption exists that, following neoliberal principles, moves away from the public character of service and the role of the state in providing it. The image of the “good citizen” has changed, but not the aim to transform people into citizens or consumers whose behaviors match the expectations from state visions of development. This aim results in attempts at disciplining urban populations in Maputo that contrast with the realities of service provision. 5.6 The Cycle of Charcoal Charcoal, firewood, and even waste continue to be key needs for households. These fuels coexist with much rarer electricity and gas networks. Surveys have long documented the social and economic importance of charcoal in urban areas (Brouwer and Magane 1999, Brouwer and Falcão 2004). The insertion of charcoal in urban spaces is less understood. It is easy to overlook the presence of charcoal as a foreign visitor to Maputo bairros, but charcoal is everywhere. The first time I walked into Chamaculo C, for example, the first thing I noticed was the importance of electricity everywhere – the music on the street, the buzz of the tool in the barber shop, a group of people around a computer in an Internet café, somebody texting on their mobile phone, and the cooling box in a makeshift café. In some places, the new transformation posts installed by EDM and the signs announcing the availability of Credelec, the electricity prepayment system, heralded a new era of electricity provision. The households I have visited in Chamanculo C rarely consist of one single house. Instead, daily life is organized around a courtyard surrounded by habitation units into which the visitor is rarely invited. In that courtyard, there will often be a tree, some chickens, and children running around. Somewhere in the courtyard, there will be a cookstove made with recycled materials (such as a disused car wheel). The design of the cookstove responds to the cooking needs of the family (Figure 5.2). For example, a family could have a “two-mouth cookstove” and a large “one-mouth cookstove.” The former would consist of two separate small receptacles, each holding sufficient space for a pot, to cook simultaneously two components of the meal (e.g., rice on one pot and beans on the other). The latter would hold a large pot of water, for cleaning and washing, which could be kept warm through the day. Under the umbrella of an electricity network accessed for limited and specific social uses, one finds charcoal at the center of life in the household. The cookstove is also a source of risks, particularly for women and children who are exposed to fumes and frequent accidents. Both the interviews and workshop discussions revealed a complex process of spatial ordering around the stove, as a series of multiple activities associated with different types of meals,

5.6 The Cycle of Charcoal

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Figure 5.2 Cooking outdoors using charcoal. Credit: Vanesa Castán Broto.

styles of cooking, warm water requirements, and safety practices are choreographed in relation to the structure of the home and the space available. These choreographies fix charcoal as an inherent part of everyday living and ultimately determine the extent to which change is possible. For example, in 2014, the international non-governmental organization AVSI delivered a cookstove program in Chamanculo C. The program provided cookstoves that reduce dramatically the use of charcoal and, hence, the pollution caused by it. AVSI provided a subsidy that made the cookstove competitive in relation to the cookstoves available in local markets. Interviews with women and men suggested that there was general support for the program, and AVSI continues to present it as a success. However, the interviews also showed a series of contradictions in the program that, at the time of fieldwork, were not fully addressed. For example, the improved cookstoves had one mouth; hence, they were not adequate to prepare meals with several components. They were not sufficiently large to heat water. Because cooking occurs in the courtyard, residents did not consider the reduction of indoor pollution an advantage. Two interviewees highlighted that cookstoves should be produced in the city rather than imported. AVSI, which is strongly rooted in the community, considered all of these aspects when examining other designs and delivering cookstovemaking workshops. However, three years later, during a visit in July 2017,

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I observed that the traditional cookstoves made of recycled materials continue to be sold at local markets and used in households and in cooking street food. Cooking itself is a practice that not only occurs in space, but also produces space and rhythms of living because other dwelling practices are organized in relation to cooking. One curious observation during the energy-mapping workshop in 2014 was that, although women constitute the main group of people in charge of cooking and heating water, some male participants were equally active in collective discussions and could describe with precision the routines of cooking and cookstove use. In my view, this ability speaks to the visibility of cooking practices in the city, which occur for the most part in collective spaces. This visibility extends beyond the household courtyard; many Mozambicans buy their lunches and snacks from street vendors and markets that offer charcoal on the street. In addition, the use of different fuels is associated with questions of taste and occasion. Firewood, for example, is associated with moments of celebration. A collective rhythm of cooking also brings the community together in terms of not only what they do but also who they are and how they relate to the task at hand. Once I started to view the cook stove as the central object articulating energy choreographies in Chamanculo C, the street landscape appeared entirely different. Rather than the shining transformation posts and new streetlights, I started to notice instead the movement of charcoal through the streets. Take for instance the old lady patiently sitting against the wall under a streetlight post. A tiny blanket is spread in front of her. On top of the blanket, there are four or five heaps of charcoal pebbles. Each heap is the amount of charcoal that a poor family would use in a day. When I was doing fieldwork in 2014, you could see ladies selling charcoal on almost every corner in Chamanculo C and other similar neighborhoods such as Polana Canico or Mafalala. One of those little heaps cost 30 meticais, approximately 13% of the household budget (the daily average income for a household in Maputo was 227 meticais in 2014). Although women sell small amounts of charcoal on street corners near the households that buy them, most markets, such as Xipaminine, have large charcoal depots. Run by men, these depots sell sacks of 20 or 30 kilos of charcoal. There are different types of vendors in terms of wholesalers and retail traders, and their location around the city depends upon their access to different means of transport (Brouwer and Magane 1999). Moreover, charcoal is used by both lowand high-income consumers (Brouwer and Falcão 2004), although charcoal is not as ubiquitous in the cement city as it is in the bairros. Flows of charcoal connect the city with more-distant spaces in which charcoal is produced. For many families, charcoal is a means to scrape a livelihood. As a charcoal producer explained during an interview in Maputo’s hinterland, “ . . . charcoal here can save a life. When somebody does not have any money,

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does not have anything, they can come here and cut one, two, three [trees] and already you have a bag of charcoal, you have something to eat at home” (MP Interview 11, 2014). However, this role of charcoal as a subsistence activity is rapidly shifting because deforestation around Maputo has displaced charcoal production to the Gaza Province (Chavana 2014, Baumert, Luz et al. 2016). The persistence of charcoal relates to both its integration in household choreographies and embeddedness in a specific supply chain upon which multiple livelihoods depend. Charcoal is embedded in flows of materials and technologies that reveal how the political economy of energy in Mozambique shapes everyday practices. Energy choreographies also rely on a particular flow of charcoal that depends on the socio-spatial ordering of the city and simultaneously reproduces it. The cookstove is an object organizing such flows and choreographies. However, there are also signs that citizens actively choose to use charcoal to ensure the autonomy of their supply. In the particular context of urban governance, charcoal emerges as the best alternative for the greatest energy needs of urban citizens. These complex aspects of the energy landscape ultimately determine the transition possibilities in Maputo. 5.7 Transition Trajectories In a recent workshop with urban planners about the question of energy access in Maputo, a question was raised, once again, about governability and, most of all, institutional capacity to ensure it. Let us assume for the sake of argument that Maputo’s bairros are ungovernable. The question then is “ungovernable for whom?” FRELIMO leaders have long understood that servicing the city goes handin-hand with demonstrating the effectiveness of their state-making project, but the evidence shows that they hardly lead such a project in Maputo’s suburbs (Nielsen 2011, Andersen, Jenkins et al. 2015a, Andersen, Jenkins et al. 2015b). Officials in either urban planning or service delivery find themselves conflicted between how they imagine a modern city and what they know can be delivered in Maputo from their experience of working there. Maputo is also shaped by the actions of a very active donor community that often uses it as an experimental location to pilot ideas and externally developed models. At the moment, ideas of marketization are increasing on energy access and climate finance agendas (Gray 2017). These interventions have at their cores a common concern – the constitution of strategic projects that configure the energy landscape in particular ways. The urban energy landscapes of Maputo reveal the encounter between those who attempt to control the city and those who dwell in it. From the perspective of those who dwell in the city, the energy landscape is governed in small spaces, for example, in the supply chain of charcoal that becomes

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visible in the streets and spaces of everyday life in the city. Examining the governance of urban life, Nielsen (2011) has argued that people’s attempts at urbanism imitate state projects and develop regular spaces with surprising mechanisms of control. From a landscape perspective, a fundamental difference exists between state-led or donor-led projects that seek to gain authority over populations and people’s structured attempts to organize their manner of living practically. In this chapter I explore that contrast, in terms of the evolution of the city in the post-colonial period and how this evolution has been translated into a zoned energy landscape with physical boundaries between those spaces that are deemed modern and those that are not. I then move on to explore the trajectories of change in the current context of governance. The end of the chapter focuses on the case of the supply chain of charcoal, which exemplifies how “ungovernability” is better understood as household claims for autonomy and control in accessing services. Maputo’s energy landscape demonstrates the multiple dimensions of infrastructural violence, from the plain exclusion of underserving areas from service to the construction of underserved subjects. However, the urban energy landscape cannot be reduced to those instances of violence. People dwelling in Maputo’s bairros have constructed a city in the face of war, economic crisis, lack of recognition, social violence, and tremendous infrastructure deficiencies. The city’s people work, play, sell, laugh, cook, fix, learn, and love. It is a lived-in city. At an international conference, an international scholar on urban sustainability expressed dismay about the dire state of the city. He was surprised by my comment about how much I appreciated the forms of living in the bairros. In this case, my positive comments referred to traditional architecture because people seamlessly integrated the natural and built environments without acknowledging their separation in daily tasks. “There are pockets of wonder everywhere,” the scholar responded. However, when I am in Maputo, I see those pockets of wonder in many places. Whatever hardships people face (and they are manifold), Maputo is not a dystopian urban landscape. Following Couto’s exortation, this is a city that should be appropriated from the inside. Regardless of the political conditions under which they live, people make a city to live in. Their being ungovernable – or being perceived as such – provides the opportunity to do so. Walking across Maputo, one wonders about whether dystopias are ever possible without an organized controlling apparatus – e.g., a state – that enforces and maintains such dystopias. The ungovernable gives hope.

6 Contiguous Heterogeneity and Private Strategies for Energy Provision: Urban Energy Landscapes in Bangalore, India

Swaminathan’s father felt ashamed of himself as he approached Ellaman Street, the last street of the town, which turned into a rough track for about a hundred yards and disappeared into the sands of the Sarayu River. He hesitated for a second at the end of Market Road, which was bright with the lights of a couple of late shops and a street gas-lamp, before he turned to plunge into the darkness and silence of Ellaman Street. A shaft of greenish light from the gas-lamp fell athwart Ellaman Street, illuminating only a few yards of the street and leaving the rest in deep gloom. A couple of municipal lanterns smoldered in their wicks, emphasizing the darkness around (Narayan 1997, p. 121).

6.1 Introduction This epigraph introduces a dramatic chapter in the beloved novel Swami and Friends, by R. K. Narayan (1906–2001), first published in 1935. In the opening paragraph of the chapter, the title character, Swami (short for Swaminathan), runs away from home and finds himself lost beyond the boundaries of the city. Swami is a ten-year-old who feels trapped between the violence of the headmaster at high school and his father’s strict demeanor. The chapter opens not with Swami’s ordeal in the wild but with the image of Swami’s father, W. T. Srinivasan, who feels lost in the city without his son. He is scared and ashamed, his thoughts shift between flashes of guilt and the embarrassment of disturbing his acquaintances in the search for his son. This organized and methodical character is, for the first time, lost without his son. The end of the city becomes a symbol of the end of civilization and the beginning of chaos for both Swami and his father. As Swami walks away from the city, the roads disappear and the tree shadows become menacing. The city is Swami’s home, the place in which his sense of the world corresponds to the surrounding landscape. 97

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Narayan’s characters live in Malgudi, a fictional town in South India. Where is Malgudi? Bangalore can be thought of as a candidate because the name itself, Malgudi, is a portmanteau of two of its neighborhoods, Malleshwaram and Basavangudi. These two neighborhoods, built in the early twentieth century, became a model for modern Bangalore. R. K. Narayan’s depiction of the life and landscapes of his characters constitute a window through which to observe life in Bangalore in the twentieth century. In building urban atmospheres, R. K. Narayan also reflects upon the urban changes occurring in the city. At the edge of the city, light and shadows separate wilderness from civilization, familiar spaces from strange ones, and the home from the unfamiliar. Swami’s father walks at the boundary of the city, in “the last street of the city,” from which he looks at the bright lights of the market. There in the darkness, the gas lamps reinforce the foreign character of the city’s boundaries. Narayan uses some words that technological changes have made obsolete in the English vocabulary. He talks of the “wick” of the gas-lamp, the thread or rope submerged in oil that burns slowly and maintains the flame over time. He explains how lamps “smolder” because they burn slowly, without a flame. All of these points speak to an earlier time before the arrival of electric street lamps. The gas lamps demarcated the land beyond the urban boundaries as patterns of shadow and “deep gloom.” The first streetlight in Bangalore was lit in 1905, but gas-lamps remained common in much of the city at the time of R. K. Narayan’s childhood. As this scene portrays, street lighting is an activity that makes the city, delimits its contours, and shapes people’s choreographies. Can we move away from lighting and electricity as a daily experience to understand how technological change shaped the city we see today? The urban energy landscape of Bangalore reflects the prioritization of an industrially based model of development that dominated the city’s administration since the late nineteenth century. Competing logics of energy governance (municipal, state, and private) map onto the socio-economic dynamics of a rapidly sprawling city. The focus of this chapter is on electricity provision, because electrification was a tool deliberately deployed to essay modernity in Bangalore, while fuel provision is most often thought of as a secondary problem. Fuels, however, also shape the experience of the built environment and the possibilities for households to secure energy services. The result is a landscape of fragmentation – that is, fragmentation of sources of energy, of energy practices, and of governance structures. There are abysmal differences between large consumers of electricity and those who have intermittent access or no access at all to the network. Simultaneously, there are differences between households that have access to fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and those that continue to collect fuelwood. There are also differences between those who view energy services as a part of their wellbeing,

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as a consumer item, and those for whom energy services are necessary for survival. Across these extreme ends of the spectrum, many ways exist to understand the provision and use of energy that coexist simultaneously in the city. Moreover, the energy landscape is changing rapidly. In recent years, there has also been a transformation of ideals of energy provision in Bangalore. On the one hand, higher classes have become interested in self-sufficiency and responding to global ideas of ecological citizenship (Bulkeley and Castán Broto 2014). On the other hand, decentralized energy solutions have provided new opportunities for electrification and energy access off-grid. I became interested in Bangalore as an example of an urban energy landscape in a rapidly sprawling city. Such sprawling dynamics interact with the realities of intermittency and fragmentation in the urban energy landscape. The contemporary energy landscape reflects both the effects of porous forms of urban governance (Benjamin and Bhuvaneswari 2001) and the consolidation and development of private strategies of service provision. However, a historical perspective suggests that fragmentation has always been an inherent characteristic of energy service provision in this city (cf. Coutard 2008, Zérah 2008). The fragmented landscape bears the imprint of the discourses of industrialization and modernization that have characterized the city’s growth in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Discourses of universal electrification relied on differential forms of provision reflected in both the fragmentation of resource flows and the contiguous development of multiple energy choreographies that result in numerous, disconnected economies and ways of living. Blackouts and intermittency management are tools to govern such a fragmented energy landscape. An outline of practices in twelve informal settlements within the city reveals that beyond the efforts to build dominant technological territories, there are practices that reconstitute energy landscapes in everyday living and that foster optimism about the possibility to find spaces for innovation. 6.2 Coevolution of Energy Services and the Urban Fabric The city of Bengaluru in the Indian state of Karnataka grew from under 200,000 inhabitants at the beginning of the twentieth century to over 8 million in 2011. During this time, the city underwent a profound transformation from being a “garden city” for pensioners under the British Empire to being thought of as the “Silicon Valley of India” after the rapid growth of the information technology (IT) and offshoring industries at the turn of the millennium (Nair 2005). If Princely Mysore (the state precursor to today’s Karnataka) was the “inaugural site” of a history of Indian modernity (Nair 2011), Bangalore was a central experimental site for such a project of modernity in-the-making. Electrification was pivotal in

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this enterprise. Resource exploitation and industrialization came to define the purpose of electricity and electrification in the city and continued to shape the urban energy landscape that we see in Bangalore today. The “Cauvery Power Scheme” led to the construction in 1902 of one of the first hydropower plants in Asia, in the Shivanasamudra water falls in the Cauvery River. This plant provided electricity to Bangalore in 1905, thus making it the first Asian city to have electrical street lighting. The objective of the project was not to provide electricity to Bangalore City, to the Civil and Military Station, or any other cities in Mysore. Rather, hydropower was considered a lucrative enterprise to exploit the most valuable resource of all – gold. The Kolar Gold Fields (KGFs) comprise a mining region some 100 kilometers east of Bangalore. In 1880, a concession to exploit the KGFs was given to a British company, John Taylor and Sons. Electricity offered the promise of ever more efficient means of exploitation. After failed attempts to finance it, the plant was finally commissioned by the Dewan of Mysore (the equivalent of today’s chief minister in Karnataka), K. Seshadri Iyer (dewan from 1894 to 1900). Because Bangalore was literally “in the way” between Shivanasamudra and the KGFs, it was rapidly electrified after the completion of the initial transmission line (Figure 6.1). Providing electricity to the KGFs would remain a priority for the state administration in the two decades that followed. The figures presented in the reports of the administration of Mysore show that, initially, the majority of the revenue from the Cauvery Power Scheme at its establishment derived from the KGFs. In the financial year 1905/6, only 3% of the revenue from the electricity supply was collected in the city of Bangalore or the Civil and Military Station, increasing to 7% in 1910. The Cauvery Power Scheme also accounted for a sizeable portion of the Public Works budget (30% in 1907/8) and posed numerous headaches for bureaucrats who could not fully spend the allocated budget for lack of materials or specialized labor. Interruptions of service to the KGFs was one of the chief preoccupations for state administrators; they carefully tracked every instance of “malicious interferences,” bird accidents, lightning, and diverse types of faults. An industrialization narrative has inspired electricity provision and electrification policies during the twentieth century in Bangalore (e.g., Visvesvaraya 1917). Bangalore’s trajectory follows three periods, in which political changes and cultural transformations led to major infrastructure reconfigurations (see also, Nair 2013). The pre-independence period occurred under the shared authority between the rulers of Princely Mysore and the British-controlled Bangalore Cantonment of the British Raj. Spatially, the political system led to the configuration of a divided urban area: Bangalore City, on the one hand, and the Civil and Military Station of the British, on the other hand. Following the success of the Shivanasamudra project, generation and transmission projects attempted to securitize spaces of

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BMA

BBMP BMRDA

Figure 6.1 Power transmission line from Shivanasamudra to Bangalore and the Kolar Gold Fields. Credit: Elaborated by H. S. Sudhira.

industrial production. New receiving stations were built in Bangalore in 1919–20. The first one was in the Ananda Rao Circle, in the center-east of the city, to supply the prosperous cotton mills and the new extensions that provided them with a labor force. The second one was in the center-west of the city, near today’s MG (after Mahatma Gandy) road, for the provision of the British Cantonment. New hydropower plants were built in the rivers Cauvery, Shimsha, and Sharavathi. In the city of Bangalore, the arrival of electricity fostered two industrialization strategies. First, there was an attempt to develop state-owned (or state-sponsored) companies that would not only provide new articles indispensable for the developmental project, but also constitute exemplars of pioneering industries that could be developed at scale. Given the demands of electrification projects for new products, a new electricity-related industry grew under the state’s own Electrical Department. A newspaper article in 1937 in The Hindu hailed the prosperous development of the Hindustan Electric Accumulators Manufacturing Company for the manufacture of storage batteries, the Mysore Lamp Works for the manufacture of electric bulbs, the Mysore Neon Signs (Anonymous 1937), and the important porcelain factory, which played a key role in providing insulation

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materials (Baldwin 1959). Second, cheap and abundant electricity was proposed as an incentive to support the establishment of entrepreneurs in the city (Ismail 1942). Not only was electricity provided at a cheaper rate, but also the needs of industrial users were prioritized over those of both households and small businesses. The provision of a beneficial business environment with a bundle of advantages that included cheap electricity was praised by prospective international investors (Nunn 1926, Baldwin 1959) and consolidated the model of a developmental state that shaped Bangalore (Gowda 2010). The second period, from 1947 until the early 1990s, corresponds to the postindependence period and the zenith of the developmental state (Gowda 2010). As the demands of energy increased and new infrastructures were built, the fossilfuel based system of provision consolidated. In Bangalore, this period was one of rapid growth. Between 1955 and 1960, Bangalore passed the milestone of 1 million inhabitants. The amalgamation of the City and the Civil and Military Station and the establishment of large factories, often beyond the boundaries of the city, attracted further population. The City Improvement Trust Board (CITB) was established in 1945 with a mandate to develop a master plan for urban development (Singh 1964). The priority was to foster and enable industrial growth, in line with the aspirations of Sir Mirza Ismail. The provision of electricity at cheap rates and water were forms of support to entice private entrepreneurs, but the state government struggled to maintain the industries in the sector (Baldwin 1959). Transmission projects prioritized the supply to new industrial areas. The state continued to rely on hydropower until the 1980s. In the mid1970s, environmental movements gained momentum, and one such hydroelectric project across the west-flowing Bedthi River was stopped. This termination marked a shift toward thermal power. The Raichur Thermal Power Station (RTPS) was completed in 1985 in North Karnataka, and the Bellary plant shortly after that. The two facilities today remain the primary source of electricity for Bangalore. The third period corresponds to the raising of Globalization-Privatization paradigms in public administration (Natraj 2002). The wave of “New Public Management” was very influential in Bangalore as the city became increasingly integrated into a newly reimagined global economy through the development of information and communication technology (ICT) and offshoring industries. Although the economy of Bangalore had always been integrated into international networks, the arrival of new sectors created a whole new set of challenges for the city concerning the intensification of resource demands (particularly water and energy). The new sectors also attracted a new influx of professionals with a whole new set of demands on the city. The changes in the urban fabric are tangible. Past industrial centers disappeared to provide spaces to meet the needs of the newly

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Figure 6.2 A knife workshop in Bangalore. Credit: Shutterstock/ Radiokafka.

globalized economy. For example, Rajajinagar Industrial Estate, which once boasted electricity-intensive mills and small industries, gradually paved the way for marriage halls in the late 1990s and 2000s. Small and medium textile-based industries survived and dotted most of the landscape in Western Bengaluru, and many became household-based enterprises (Figure 6.2). New complexes hosted the ICT industry, such as the Electronic City, a hub that hosted large companies such as Texas Instruments and the state-led KEONIKs. The first outer-ring road was initiated in the late 1990s, pushing the city’s boundaries further. Many of these changes are related to an instrumental use of the planning process. Alongside the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which inherited the municipal governance tradition in place in Bangalore since the formation of the municipal board in 1862, development plans have been made since 1976 by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) under the umbrella of the Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA). The BMRDA was created in 1985 as a response to the planning challenges emerging in the larger metropolitan region. Apartment complexes mushroomed, interspersed between the industrial corridors, often without any assurance of public services as planning violations became part of the mechanisms of vernacular governance shaping infrastructure landscapes (Sundaresan 2019).

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Bangalore’s complexities and its enchanting nature have generated compelling stories of urban development and its intersection with cultural and political dynamics (Hasan 1970, Nair 2005, Nagendra 2016). Nair’s account of Bangalore’s struggles for democracy over the twentieth century, for example, reads like a complex and multi-dimensional crime mystery in which Bangalore’s people are the sleuths trying to find who took their city away. There is, however, a tangle of optimism in her account because modernity’s promise of an orderly urban planning project in Bangalore appears never to have quite been realized. Instead, she describes how Bangalore’s citizens produce new practices and meanings that appropriate the landscape in a manner that always exceeds the technocratic imagination. As the sections below show, the urban energy landscape in Bangalore is one that reveals contrasting efforts by multiple actors producing a landscape of heterogeneity and intermittency. 6.3 Energy Flows and Urban Circulation There is a fragmented system of provision in Bangalore, with multiple sources of energy that relate to a diverse history of energy development, and how the use of energy and water resources has evolved in parallel to ideas about modernizing Karnataka (Figure 6.3). The installed capacity in the state of Karnataka in 2012 included hydropower (31%), thermal generation (42%), and renewables (27%) (CSO 2013). These numbers reflect the historical relevance of hydropower in the state, in comparison with the whole of India, in which most of the generation (70%) occurs in coal-fired power plants. Hydropower was the primary source of electricity for Bangalore until the completion of the Raichur thermal power plant in 1985. At the time of independence, for example, the state of Mysore concentrated 42% of the total generation capacity in India, almost exclusively from hydropower. In Bangalore, neither water nor energy systems of supply can be understood without reference to the other. Hydropower technologies made electrification and later electricity possible via large water transfers from the Cauvery River to supply drinking water. Approximately 2.5% of the electricity consumed in Bangalore is required today only to maintain public water works (CEA 2013). How water and electricity were embedded in the infrastructure landscape responded to a unique model of modernity promoted both during the colonial and post-colonial period. For example, electrification was central to the development of the piped system, particularly after the construction of the electric water pump in Soldenavanhalli, which determined the direction of water flows and the distribution of water across the city. Piped water led to changes in lifestyles and forms of habitation and to the transformation of urban citizens’ relationship with water and

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Figure 6.3 Skyline in Bangalore/Bengaluru. Credit: Noppasin Wongchum/Shutterstock.

energy resources. Between 1908 and 1938, the hydropower plant in Shivanasamudra gained capacity, and power transmission lines made electricity an everyday occurrence in most of the major cities of the Mysore state. Hydropower made the city’s electrification possible and supported a particular model of electricity-based industrial development. After independence, the rapid growth of electricity and water demand made previous systems of provision insufficient and led to the development of large-scale electricity generation and massive water withdrawals and transfers, particularly from the Cauvery River. Bangalore’s historian Hasan (1970) argued that Bangalore’s thirst was “eternal,” and the water transfer from the Cauvery River was a necessity, regardless of technical, financial, or ecological concerns. The provision of both power and water became entangled as infrastructures created resource dependencies to provide cheap electricity and abundant water in the context of the decline of the traditional system of water tanks for local water supply. As hydropower became less significant, in the 1980s, the relationship between the provision of electricity and water in Bangalore was inverted, and the city grew increasingly dependent upon fossil fuels. The last two decades have seen a new change toward renewable technologies. Several factors have favored such development: (1) India’s policies and interest in

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harnessing the power of the green economy have been adopted by local entrepreneurs; (2) local entrepreneurs have experimented with energy innovations during the development of products for higher income customers; (3) state institutions have been motivated to show innovation. Thus, in 2012 there were 3,607 megawatts of installed capacity from renewables. This amount represents a 64% growth rate in renewables between 2010–11 and 2011–12 (CSO 2013). Wind power is the main area of growth (54%), alongside small hydropower (24%) and biomass power (12%) installations. The modernization of the energy landscape of Bangalore did not follow a straightforward account of “modern infrastructural ideal” (Graham and Marvin, 2001). For example, from the outset, universal electrification was deemed unachievable in the context of urban India (Visvesvaraya 1917). Mirza Ismail (Diwan of Mysore from 1926 to 1941) sought to prioritize the use of electricity for economic development, with any sense of social mission being secondary. For example, under Ismail, the State’s Electrical Department provided grants for the development of transmission lines and pump installations for irrigation alongside the banks of the Arkavati River. Electrification of villages was considered an additional benefit of the industrialization of agriculture, considered only “wherever this can be done without disproportionate costs” (Ismail 1942, p. 113). However, these models were not accepted uncritically. A study of patterns of habitation in Bangalore’s extensions highlights the centrality of services, including energy services to urban life and the need to prioritize local needs (Srinivasan and Moorty 1935). In particular, they protest against urban policies that ignore a vision of the city as “the natural outcome and expression of the ideas and aspirations that have swayed the citizens” (Srinivasan and Moorty 1935, p. i). As a response, households have favored autonomous approaches to energy provision whenever possible. One clear example is the development of fuel markets. Renewable energy is attractive to many people in Bangalore, not only the affluent classes, because it enables autonomy. Solar water heaters, for example, have rapidly expanded in Bangalore’s energy landscape. As we will see in the following sections, fragmentation and autonomy shapes the daily choreographies of energy use and their manifestations in urban energy landscapes. 6.4 Urban Choreographies of Energy Use Statistical data compiled by the International Energy Agency suggests that access to electricity in urban Karnataka is almost universal (OECD/IEA 2015). A village is considered electrified if public spaces and 10% of households are electrified. Under this definition, 99.95 % of villages in the state have electricity. As often occurs with definitions, this datum masks the enormous variability of data and access

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disparities. Kerosene, for example, continues to be used in over 1 million households in Karnataka (CSTEP 2014). It is also used in urban areas in which the availability of electricity is by no means equivalent to universal access to it. For example, government data suggest that in terms of electricity, there is a tremendous disparity in Bangalore among the wards, with the highest annual per capita electricity consumption (Ejipura ward, which consumes 7,668 kWh) being more than 68 times that of the lowest (the Devsandara ward, 112 kWh) (Ramachandra, Bajpai et al. 2017). Similarly, the assumption that most Bangalore citizens have access to LPG masks the ubiquity of a variety of fuels and modes of distribution that question celebratory data on energy access. In particular, there are diverse patterns of energy access, needs, and uses that are relevant here. At least three distinctly differentiated social groups operate in the energy landscape of Bangalore, with very different understandings of the uses of energy and different possibilities of access. First, most of the population belongs to an illdefined middle class, whether long settled in Bangalore (living in the traditional extensions or urban villages that were progressively incorporated into the metropolitan area) or recently settled in new developments. In terms of energy choreographies, this group includes households for whom access to electricity and fuels is a normal occurrence, but so are intermittency and supply disruptions. The middle class is also increasingly settled in peri-urban areas, often without legal permission, in sub-serviced areas called “revenue layouts” in which residents negotiate semilegal or plainly illegal arrangements for tenure and service provision (Ranganathan, Kamath et al. 2009, Ranganathan 2014). Many of these households might face precarious situations, with service interruptions and substandard connections. Qualitative interviews with inhabitants in middle-class households show that they use electricity and LPG and that, in general, electricity is a negligible part of their budget. Although in the 1980s more than 80 percent of low-income households in Bangalore depended upon firewood for cooking and water heating (Reddy and Reddy 1983), there has been a marked shift to LPG in the last two decades. Estimates calculate that the majority of households use approximately one cylinder (of 14 kg LPG) per month, with only a small percentage using two (Ramachandra, Bajpai et al. 2017). Although disruptions to services are a common occurrence, they are considered integral to the service. However, these families do not take energy services for granted. Interviews suggest that access to electricity and LPG is celebrated, but there is also a sense of nostalgia in the accounts of life without energy access. Interviewees recall, for example, when they stopped using kerosene lamps (still commonly used today in festivities and religious celebrations) or when they started using LPG. Accounts of transitions often combine a brief statement of their benefits with a detailed account of lost practices. Such lost practices are

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thought to be sustainable and fitted to the actual environment. For example, interviewees speak of the growing need to heat water for bathing, the loss of practices of natural ventilation, and how plants were used to make mats or curtains (using a plant sprayed with water, which is called vetriyver root, vetiver, or khus grass, for example). These accounts of lost micro-practices of energy conservation relate to a broader sense of nature transformations, not always entirely welcome. Second, the urban landscape of Bangalore has been transformed by the rapid growth of a cosmopolitan middle class of professionals often working in global companies (such as IT and offshoring). Their rise is associated with “the residential enclave.” This residential enclave has emerged as a spatial means to securitize resources for the high-income classes, often through the appropriation of spaces that support traditional urban villages (Nair 2015). Enclaves constitute a means of securitizing service provisioning. This security is necessary for higher income residents, whose demands are diametrically different from those who were traditionally serviced in the city. They have energy-intensive lifestyles and seek reliability of service. Service interruptions are not thought of as a normal occurrence but as an issue to be resolved within the compound. For example, diesel generators to supply during electricity blackouts are common in these enclaves. This group of residents drives low-carbon innovation in Bangalore because renewable technologies are considered a means to securitize the energy supply (Bulkeley and Castán Broto, 2013). Third, a large proportion of people have precarious services in informal settlements. According to the Karnataka Slum Development Board,1 22.56% of the population in the metro area lives in slums with different degrees of permanency. Bangalore has 536 documented slums, distributed in all wards and hosting 370,000 people. Transect walks and informal settlement profiles demonstrate that not only is there no regular access to electricity and LPG in most of these settlements, but also a wide range of means of accessing energy access is on display. These include the design of roofs to sustain water pots and vegetables to be heated and desiccated by the sun; the three-stone fires using firewood, waste, and coal; and the use of multiple means of lighting from kerosene lamps to individual photovoltaic lamps. Informal settlements are not confined to parts of the city. Instead, they emerge interspersed with well-serviced areas. These settlements have multiple histories, whether they are the historical result of exclusionary processes of urbanization or have recently formed as new settlements of the dispossessed. Settlements lacking energy access are visible everywhere. These three major groups with radically different choreographies of energy use actually coexist, creating patterns of contiguous heterogeneity. This broad-brush analysis does not begin to scratch the surface of such complexity. For example, transects show that, in addition to modes of habitation, there is an additional

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complex pattern of energy use that relates to the ubiquitous development of productive activities in the household that require additional energy (see transect descriptions, below). Moreover, there is a constant redefinition of the practices of certain sectors of the city in comparison to others. For example, the adoption of renewable technologies in residential enclaves could be viewed as a precursor to the spread of appliances such as solar water heaters. These patterns of contiguous heterogeneity relate to the coevolution of the urban energy landscape, in terms of both the historical attempts at shaping and modernizing that landscape and the landscape dwellers’ responses to the progressive changes introduced through energy services. Different use strategies have developed into the heterogeneous patterns of energy choreographies we see today. Firewood was historically the dominant fuel because of its availability in local markets (Anonymous 1873) and remains present in the city’s landscape. As electrification changed the possibilities of the city, infrastructure access marked acute differences that correlated forms of habitation and social structures as enacted in the actual connection to the network. A United Nations report on the population of Mysore, whose main purpose was to elaborate population control measures, provides informative data about the different conditions of habitation in different wards at the time (UN 1961). In their sample, over 40% of people living in Bangalore are found to have electricity, in comparison with most rural areas, in which less than 5% of the population has connections. Table 6.1 provides the data about the type of house and lighting for the population sampled in Bangalore. The overall data for the city are stratified to consider different sectors of the population dependent upon different socio-economic conditions. The data distinguish between the more privileged areas (inhabited mostly by Muslims, Christians, and highly educated Hindus) and the areas in which there is a higher percentage of the population classified as “scheduled caste,” or with lower levels of literacy. In the latter, mud huts remained common. Only 17% of people living in “scheduled caste” areas had access to electricity in comparison with the over-40% average in the city (and over 66% in highly educated, Hindu areas). The data shows that in the late 1950s there was already a correlation between social structures of disadvantage and the constitution of the built environment, which shaped the energy landscape. Radical transformations of energy use and provision that enabled energy access for most people did not occur until the 1980s and even the 1990s. Many of these changes related to changes in appliances and living habits, such as the growing use of the household energy budget for heating water, which was estimated to be as high as 30% in the mid-1990s (Murthy, Sumithra et al. 2001). For example, the initial interest in the policy program “All Electric Homes” (houses that used no fossil fuels) waned as the majority of households adopted LPG as the primary fuel for cooking.

Bangalore City (total) Stratum 1 (over 35% Muslim) Stratum 2 (Over 35% Christian) Stratum 3 (Over 35% Schedule caste) Stratum 4 (Other Hindu, high male literacy) Stratum 5 (Other Hindu, low male literacy)

Zone and stratum 1.7 0.5 0.5 8.5 1.1 0.1

4,789

5,362

4,709

4,566

Hut

24,515 5,089

Number of persons in the sample

2.8

3.0

9.4

2.8

4.1 4.2

Mud house, thatched roof

31.8

18.7

29.7

24.0

28.4 23.7

65.3

77.2

52.5

72.8

65.9 71.6

Mud house, Brick, stone tiled roof and cement house

Type of house (%)

21.3

15.1

53.5

23.3

25.2 14.1

Crude lamps

36.8

18.7

29.4

32.4

34.0 46.5

41.9

66.2

17.1

44.5

40.8 39.4

Lamp or lantern Electric with chimney lights

Type of lighting (%)

Table 6.1: Conditions of habitation in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Bangalore (percent of population) (adapted from UN 1961)

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However, these changes have not reached everyone. In the case of deprived settlements, their fragmented nature means that they are not always counted or seen. Pockets of extreme deprivation are often small, temporary settlements, occupying abandoned spaces under or between infrastructures, occasionally a few tents only – which means that their lives are hardly even considered, and the lack of service is considered a fact of life. Normalization of substandard conditions of service is common, even for settlements that are contiguous to highconsuming residential enclaves. Private strategies of service provision are visible across all social groups in the city, although those strategies can occur at different scales. A survey in 2013 of 2,000 consumers with a contract with BESCOM (Bangalore Energy Services Company) found that 47 percent of consumers have alternative strategies to support electric appliances to cope with power cuts (Prabhakar and Nair 2013). Intermittency and heterogeneity continue to be features of the urban energy landscape in Bangalore. These features can include, for example: the simultaneous use of various forms of energy and fuels; the emphasis on independent means of generation (from small solar lamps to large, collective diesel generators); and occasional access to the electricity network. In summary, the landscape is characterized by patterns of contiguous heterogeneity that are also spatially reflected in the organization of the city. 6.5 Governing Energy Energy governance in Bangalore follows the consolidation of an overall narrative of modernization and control of infrastructures. There was a movement from local management to state control in the period after independence, and there has been rapid globalization since the early 1990s with the prevalence of liberalization policies. However, the analysis of the evolution of structures of energy governance suggests that institutional changes have served to reproduce, rather than challenge, narratives of resource management that were already perceptible in the modernity project at the turn of the twentieth century. On the one hand, there is a consolidation of engineering-inspired discourses of the management of public services; on the other hand, there is a strong narrative of resource scarcity and impending crisis as a tool to manage service expectations and plan resource futures. Let us focus on the example of the evolution of institutions managing electricity. Increasing institutional complexity is partly the result of the extension of the electricity network and the ever-growing portfolio of generation and transmission technologies. However, a trajectory also exists toward an increasing separation of local concerns based on the use and distribution of energy and decision-making.

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Simultaneously, we see a narrowing of the types of decision-making that are available to managers in the institutions involved in the provision of services. The government of Princely Mysore had an “Electrical Department” that started, initially, as a department maintaining and collecting the revenue from the Shivanasamudra Power Plant. The Electrical Department progressively acquired other competences, including the development and maintenance of generation projects, electrification, street lighting, and business development. Experimentation with electrical technologies occurred within a broad interest in town planning and the provision of modern amenities. In the first decade following the electrification of Bangalore, for example, the Electrical Department reported annually any new power and lighting installations. By 1915, for example, there were 17 power installations in the Civil and Military Station, with 48 in Bangalore city; and 1,030 street lighting installations in the Civil and Military Station, with 1,425 in the City. The administration tracked the success of the Department in terms of new installations of power, lights, and pumps, and the minimization of service interruptions. Little attention was given, however, to the actual needs of households and none to the fuels they used. For a brief period, administration reports emphasized the need for “interior electrification,” marking the ascent of household lighting as a modern commodity. Travel guides for visitors to Bangalore at the time contain hotel commercials that emphasize “electricity conveniences” as a marker of status and luxury (Paul 1929, Hicken 1930). However, universal electrification was always deemed unachievable (Visvesvaraya 1917). Successive dewans (M. Visvesvaraya, Mirza Ismail) understood universal electrification as a goal secondary only to securing a reliable and profitable supply of electricity for the industrial sector. Independence consolidated the state management structures of electricity governance. Despite the emphasis on electricity as an instrument for social change (Kale 2014), Bangalore’s electrification followed previously determined models of development involving urban industries and irrigation agriculture. For Kale (2014), electrification in post-independence India was a means for advancing an infrastructural state. This narrative built upon cultural logics that had constructed an image of Mysore as a progressive state (Gowda 2010, Nair 2011). Bangalore played a crucial role in this state-making project as a laboratory for modernization policies. In 1944, the state of Princely Mysore published regulations to support private licenses for electricity distribution to further promote industrial growth. Then, in 1948, the Electricity (supply) Act meant a U-turn to reorient the sector with a focus on public control of electricity and renationalization of electricity resources. The Act proposed the creation of a national body, the Central Electricity Authority, and the State Electricity Boards (SEBs) that acted as regional agencies

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for electrification. In Mysore (soon to be Karnataka), administrators opposed the formation of an SEB because the Electrical Department provided a constant source of revenue, even in the context of the decline of the Kolar Gold Fields (Kale 2014). It took four years (1953–7) to establish the State Electricity Board. The integration of private licenses in the Board was complex, and special tariffs agreed with local industries led to endless litigation. During the first decades of operation, the role of the Board became redefined. Eventually, an independent body to manage electricity generation, the Karnataka Power Corporation Ltd. (KPCL), was constituted in 1970. In the 1990s, the paradigm of state control was challenged with the adoption of new models of public management and reforms that have carved out public sector enterprises in favor of privatization of services. In 1999, the Government of Karnataka passed a bill (the Karnataka Electricity Reforms Act) that established an independent Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) and incorporated the Karnataka Electricity Board (renamed the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation). In 2002, this transmission corporation was unbundled into five locally based energy service companies (ESCOMs). The Bangalore ESCOM (BESCOM) maintains the infrastructure to manage the load and its distribution in the city and surrounding areas. Power Purchase Agreements have become the tool to establish a working relationship between the ESCOMs and generation companies, under the approval of KERC. Some of these agreements build on existing relationships with generators managed by KPCL, such as the agreements to purchase power from the plants of Raichur, Bellary and other thermal plants that accounted for 28 percent of the amount billed through Power Purchase Agreements in 2015. Power Purchase Agreements also open the door, at least in theory, to a range of multi-scalar connections between different types of operators and ESCOMS. Interstate provision, for example, includes Power Purchase Agreements with central government sources (up to 20 percent of the total amount billed) and with companies such as the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation (up to 20 percent of total amount billed in the agreements). The Agreements also open the door for purchases from small, local operators such as renewable energy producers, with a notable increase in purchases from wind power. This progressive process of the unbundling of institutions and fragmentation of supply through Power Purchase Agreements resembles the trajectory described in splintering urbanism (Graham and Marvin 2001). However, this analysis fails to reflect the prevalence of historically configured practices of infrastructure governance. Engineers and bureaucrats facing the market reforms since the early 1990s have sought to reimagine the state-making project as a hybrid model of privatization and state regulation. Kale (2014) argues that electricity policy in India today continues to follow the logics of the developmental

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state. The principles of the neoliberal project might occasionally be implemented in the Karnataka state, as long as such principles serve the interests and modes of operation of policy makers (Natraj 2002). However, the liberalization project has never been fully accomplished. Instead, we are witnessing the reversal of the 1950s process that led to the formation of the State Electricity Board and the abandonment of private contracting. The result in the 1950s was a hybrid model that combined state-based management with private contracting. Similarly, now, the Power Purchase Agreements allow for a combination of state-based and private generation. Analyses of the effects of the fragmentation of the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd. (KPTCL) into ESCOMs are lacking, but concerning the energy landscape of Bangalore, they both appear to be giant, bureaucratized, and inaccessible parastatal corporations. 6.6 Engineering and the Making of Electric Modernities The consolidation of the figure of the specialized engineer as a manager of public services is a constant feature of Bangalore’s institutional landscape. Few would contest that engineering is a problem-solving activity that responds to society’s needs. The identification of those needs, however, is something that is not always explicit in the engineering profession. As electricity has become a goal in itself in Bangalore, what the electricity is for has remained unquestioned. Thus, when electricity theft, blackouts, or renewable innovation are brought forward in the public discourse, there is hardly a questioning of the networked system. This point became evident to me during a workshop in February 2015, during which a co-investigator, H. S. Sudhira, and I wanted to open up a conversation about the potential to integrate current practices of electricity provision with urban planning processes. Participants included a wide range of representatives from organizations involved in urban planning and the energy sector. The discussion was animated and friendly until we divided participants into two groups for an in-depth policy discussion. One of the engineers took over the debate and became engrossed in a monologue about problems with existing tariffs. The other participants found it impossible to follow the argument, and the discussion of challenges in the energy sector ended. Participating in this debate would have required a full understanding of the complex system of tariffs employed by BESCOM. The discussion was limited to the specific parcel of knowledge as framed within BESCOM’s operations rather than involving a broader understanding of how energy challenges are experienced elsewhere in the city. Specialization can be important in certain sectors, but it hinders open debate about sustainable futures. M. Visvesvaraya (1861–1962), Dewan of Mysore from 1912 to 1918 and previously the state’s Chief Engineer, always called for

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modernization of both the means of government and the lives of those to be governed. He inspired generations of engineers for public service. Some of his most memorable speeches were addressed to the Mysore Engineers Association, in which he extoled the multi-layered nature of engineering work (from compiling statistics to managing contractors) and the promise of life satisfaction through the use of the intellect (tables and calculations) for public service. He promoted a cosmopolitan view of public service and recommended traveling as a means to develop expertise and understand best practices elsewhere. Specialization was central to his account of the role of the modern engineer. In 1912, he said, “Then, there is the question of specialization. At the last session, we considered the need of special studies. No man can be a master of every subject, and if we are not to fritter away our energies, the comparatively small staff of engineers in the State cannot do better than concentrate attention, each on some one special subject” (Visvesvaraya 1917, p. 42). This commitment to a particular subject is what prevents opening up conversations. Qualitative interviews with key actors in the energy sector in Bangalore reveal limited or no interest in urban planning as a means to address energy access, provision, and governance challenges. Qualitative interviews with governance officials focused on understanding the challenge of providing energy to Bangalore, particularly electricity, and on how urban planning could be relevant. Interviewees were given the interview guide in advance. However, the interviews invariably focused on the participant’s expertise, with no assessments of broader themes about urban energy futures. Interview questions simply did not resonate with current practices of energy governance. Not being able to perform the role of a specialized expert hindered interviews from the outset. Consider the example of an interview conducted by a collaborator. He arranged a meeting with a manager at BESCOM. The notes of the interview start with a painful account of the efforts to meet him, including canceled meetings and endless waiting time. His efforts were successful, and he eventually had a meeting. However, the interview never moved beyond the attempt to gain informed consent. The interviewer said, “Are you an Electrical Engineer? What is your basic qualification?” He explained that he was a civil engineer with a PhD. The interviewer concluded the interview rapidly: “See, if you are not an Electrical Engineer, you can’t understand anything here. You may be a PhD or whatever; I don’t think you know what we do” (BG Interview 7, 2015). What is peculiar in this case is the argument that engineers would only talk with engineers about general matters of public concern. Worse, electrical engineers would only talk with electrical engineers.

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When discussing this experience with the interviewer I was reminded of Benjamin and Bhuvaneswari’s (2001) account of the moment in which they realized their efforts to improve Bangalore’s planning system for the urban poor did not match the urban poor’s needs or definitions of the situation. A personal account of their experience is powerful: The Nehru Colony experience raised important issues on my role and approaches as a “professional planner.” I was sandwiched in between an institutional structure rift with conflicts. (. . .) Despite the professed ideologies of community participation and empowerment, many of my actions were driven by an academic view that attempted to be complete and definitive but in reality did not provide a complete explanation for the processes at work (Benjamin and Bhuvaneswari 2001, p. 205).

This quotation reflects a planner’s dilemma – whether to work to challenge structural injustices faced by the urban poor or accept the current state of affairs and work with the structures that allow incremental improvements in people’s lives. The engineering dilemma does not enable a questioning of the problem itself. As shown in the workshop, the main effect of the deployment of engineering accounts of electricity provision is the silencing of so-called “lay views.” The interview example shows how the constitution of the energy system goes unquestioned, denying the energy landscape as experienced by people and foreclosing change possibilities. A transition is impossible without somehow challenging this model of public services management.

6.7 Scarcity in the Electric City The central master narrative that organizes the provision of energy is one of scarcity. Such a narrative is already prominent in energy planning at the national level (CEA 2011, OECD/IEA 2015), but takes a new color in relation to processes of urban development in Bangalore. Urban political ecologists have long used narratives of scarcity as a tool to implement infrastructure reforms, particularly the privatization of services (Bakker 2000, Kaika 2003). In the case of Bangalore, however, such narratives of scarcity were central to the project of urban modernization since its inception. In urban political ecology accounts, scarcity narratives respond to the conceptualization of nature as menacing, as incomplete, and as inadequate (Kaika 2005, Heynen, Kaika et al. 2006). In Bangalore, however, the uncontrollable element is the city itself and its growth; the modern city emerges against the organic one. This emergence is visible through three strategies that follow from the narrative of scarcity: the portrayal of electrification as an incomplete activity, the daily management of shortages through blackouts, and the management of futures as the continuous creation of more generation capacity.

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First, the electrical project of Bangalore has always been one of incompleteness. There is thus a strategy of regulating the prioritization of services. This strategy was progressively implemented, initially, through the spatial distribution of the transmission network in Bangalore and, later, through the development of a system of tariffs that, in its principles, reproduces ideas about service already present in the colonial era. Let us zoom into the tariff structure. Currently, BESCOM has eight different tariffs. Approximately 7.6 million of BESCOM consumers are domestic households, and 10 percent of them fall within the Bhagya Jyothi category. These low-income consumers have their tariffs wholly subsidized, but their supply is severely restricted. The remaining tariffs cover commercial power, high- and lowtension industrial consumers, irrigation pumps, streetlights, and other, miscellaneous types of users. The question of irrigation pumps is polemic. M. Visvesvaraya was already an enthusiast of supporting electrical pumps to facilitate the modernization of irrigation agriculture a century ago. Under the dewan Mirza Ismail in the 1940s, the Electrical Department installed transmission lines to facilitate the installation of pumps for irrigation in peri-urban Bangalore, for example, alongside the banks of the Arkavati River. The Electrical Department also financed the pumps. Electrification of villages was considered an additional benefit of the industrialization of agriculture. Pumps were prioritized over other uses that did not feature prominently in the vision of modern Mysore. Under these policies, social differences in terms of network coverage, affordability, and needs rapidly led to a differentiation between households integrated into the networked system and those that relied on private solutions for both water and energy provision. A revised version of the same principles of subsidized tariffs for industries and irrigation pumps has subsisted until today. Currently, the supply of pump sets is fully subsidized by the state government, alongside those within the Bhagya Jyothi category (CSTEP 2013). The debate on irrigation pumps goes beyond the scope of this chapter (Mukherji 2016), but clearly, there is increasing criticism from those living in urban areas about the sustainability of this system. Analyzing the State Electricity Board before its conversion into ESCOMs, Natraj (2002) explains that the focus on a critique of subsidies might be obscuring fundamental questions about management practices and tariff structures (Natraj 2002). Kale (2014) discusses the extent to which concessionary tariffs to industries (and less well understood practices of reliability protection) have an effect similar to pump-set subsidies. In the case of BESCOM, unbundling has not provided a final solution for the tariffs, and subsidy questions remain unanswered (CSTEP 2013). These debates map the contours of the constitution of an electricity network (both the material fabric of the network and its institutional regulation) through the prioritization of a development vision based upon industrial zones and irrigation

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agriculture. Models of universal energy access are at odds with this historical configuration. Second, in the context of scarcity, power outages emerge as a tool for governance. Nye’s account of blackouts in America explains how they challenge the model of a city in the absence of crisis (Nye 2010). The blackout challenges the illusion of normality and confronts the individual with a different city. As I edited the last version of this chapter, I found a new film online, released in 2017, called Blackout Bangalore, by a Bangalore-based film-maker who calls himself Venky Rover Scout. The movie is a powerful statement of the beauty of cities away from light pollution, with its impressive images of the Vidana Souda silhouetted against the starry sky. The movie reflects a darkened twin of the city with lights, similar to the one that Nye describes in his book. This perspective, however, ignores that blackouts are actually routine in the lives of residents in Bangalore. Blackouts are routinely used to manage peak demand; thus, they are an essential instrument for the governance of the energy system. Blackouts are not unique to Bangalore. In late July 2012, a blackout in the north of India affected over 600 million people. Kale (2014) explains this blackout as the result of the fragmentation of the institutional system for energy provision associated with differentiated patterns of electrification that vary from state to state. She highlights not only the extent of the disruption, but also how independent means for service provision shaped who could cope with a lack of service – people who can afford a stand-alone generator, on the one hand, and people who never had a reliable supply of electricity from the network, on the other hand: Trains came to a halt; cars, trucks, and buses clogged highways and roads as traffic signals went dark; and hundreds of millions of households, shops, manufacturers, and hospitals lost supply from the electric grid. The lucky among those turned to backup power sources, either diesel generating sets or power invertors. Many residents in the affected regions were spared the worst effects of the blackout for an altogether different reason – because they are among the millions of Indian households that still have no electric connection or get their electricity “off-grid” through highly localized initiatives (Kale 2014, p. 176).

Bangalore was not affected by the 2012 blackout. However, blackouts are a familiar occurrence in the city. As Kale explains, blackouts reveal the social structure of the city, in this case, a gruyere cheese structure that reflects the heterogeneity of spatial patterns in accessing energy (see also, Graham 2010). Only when the lights in the town are off do the flickering lights in informal settlements become visible. In the hectic MG Road, diesel generators take space on the pavement; no shop can afford to lose any business. “We have not had electricity for a week,” a colleague based in Bangalore tells me on Skype, his eyes shining against a pitch-black background. Faced with competing demands, he prioritizes computer and Internet access over lighting the room.

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Reading Kale’s account of the 2012 blackout as a national problem suggests that energy systems in Bangalore reproduce national-scale dynamics at the city level. The city becomes a fractal reproduction of the material fabric of the infrastructure state. Bangalore’s spatial dynamics often reflect the same logics of development as did those that focused on electrification as an engine for modernization. However, in this case, a fundamental difference exists between the national-scale blackout of 2012 and the routine blackouts that occur in Bangalore. The latter are planned and well integrated into the structures of normal management of the energy landscape. Sure enough, heavy rains can cause “unscheduled outages.” However, load shedding is a common practice for BESCOM to handle peak demand. In September 2015, after a drought that affected hydropower generation, BESCOM announced three hours of load shedding daily in the city. Today, a load-shedding pattern can be downloaded from the website. The Deccan Herald, Karnataka’s daily newspaper in English, routinely publishes notices of the planned blackouts, mapping the areas affected. The blackout is not an occurrence to be managed; it is a tool for governance. Scarcity is the central discourse organizing the planning of the electricity system at both the state and national levels. The Central Electricity Authority publishes electrical energy forecasts with future expected demands from utilities (CEA 2011, CEA 2013). These forecasts further support ESCOM’s elaboration of “Perspective Planning” documents and enable state-level planning of energy. Based upon forecasts, ESCOM establishes long-term power purchase agreements, but these agreements invariably fall short of needs. For example, over 15 percent of the amount that BESCOM billed for power purchase agreements involves short-term agreements, which tend to be more expensive in unit price than long-term ones. The specter of future scarcity looms over Bangalore. The city thus constitutes an amorphous, uncontrollable entity that threatens the operation of well-oiled engineering institutions. All of the interviews show that there are no purposive attempts to connect urban development and electricity provision through either the integration of energy concerns into urban planning or vice versa. Instead, scarcity is – predictably – linked to a question of insufficient generation and poor management. According to the forecasts, the total electricity requirements of Bangalore are expected to grow by 30 percent between 2017 and 2022, in a context in which shortages already affect service (CEA 2013). This situation is perceived as a crisis that must be met with an aggressive expansion policy. In an assessment of future prospects of the energy sector in Karnataka, the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) mapped out 38 planned infrastructures that would increase the capacity of the state with 14,265 megawatts (MW) (CSTEP 2013). The list includes smaller projects directed at securing the supply in certain areas, such as the renovation of a 350-MW gas-fired plant in

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Yelahanka in northern Bangalore. However, for the most part, the list focuses on the completion of large, fossil-fuel-based projects, whether they are state-based (such as the giant Yermarus Thermal Power Station in Raichur with two 800 MW units) or involve state transfers (23% of the capacity additions are expected from the National Thermal Power Corporation, and 11% are expected from the national Ultra Mega Power Projects program of the Ministry of Power). Anshu Bharadwaj, the executive director of the CSTEP in Bangalore, has argued that the focus on massive infrastructures for generation is drawing attention from efforts at local innovation (Martin 2015). This point is true not only for innovation practices (see also Bulkeley, Castán Broto et al. 2014), but also for understanding energy access and other experiences in the energy landscape. CSTEP has argued for improving operational performance, for reducing transmission losses (CSTEP 2013) and for a dramatic increase in renewable production (CSTEP 2014). To this end, in 2014, KERC promulgated an order establishing an “open access” distribution model for certain (large) consumers to purchase power from independent renewable generators when transmitting power through the state’s grid, alongside the operation of an agency for renewable power (WRI undated). All of these initiatives, however, reproduce the assumption of scarcity and shortage, without questioning for a moment the century-old idea that a successful Bangalore requires a cheap and abundant supply of electricity for industrial development and irrigation in peri-urban areas. 6.8 Transition Trajectories The theory behind urban energy landscapes is oriented toward understanding how energy flows and energy choreographies shape the lives of people and what opportunities exist to change them. This understanding cannot be achieved without situating such infrastructure landscapes within their urban history. As the first city in South Asia to have electrical public lighting, Bangalore’s model of urban development provided the template to link urban planning, sanitation, and industrialization through the provision of electricity. Electricity became the engine of each economic development wave in the city – the mills of the early twentieth century, the engineering industry of the post-independence period, and the ICT and offshoring of industry of the last three decades. In doing so, energy provision separated the fortunes of different social groups who, in turn, adapted to the changing state of affairs. As electricity became embedded in the urban infrastructure landscape, differentiations deepened. Bangalore, the city, has never been a passive recipient of strategic projects of state-making (Nair 2005). In the energy sectors, coping practices have led to an increasing diversification of the energy landscape (Figure 6.4). Appreciating this diversity is key to designing alternative futures for Bangalore’s energy.

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Figure 6.4 Solar water heaters are increasingly frequent in Bangalore. Credit: Vanesa Castán Broto.

As Anshu Bharadwaj argues, much of the debate about the future of energy in Bangalore misses the key changes that are occurring on the ground and are transforming radically the energy landscape. First, most debates focus on electricity and ignore the central importance of fuels for the wellbeing of the poorest urban citizens, such as using fuels for cooking. Second, the debate overlooks the potential for innovation that exists among urban communities. When asked about the energy futures of the city, governance officials offer unfocused dreams of implementing “smart” technologies (without a specific statement of what they are) and efficiency measures. All of the institutional interviewees reproduced discourses of engineering management whereby they argued for the possibility to develop ever more accurate demand estimations, without questioning the assumptions underlying the provision of energy and the lack of alignment between energy and urban policies. Even when there is recognition of the distributed character of innovation and the new possibilities created through thinking about decentralized generation and open access models of distribution, few interviewees recognized the urban challenges that emerge at the local level. As R. K. Narayan portraits in his novels, the south Indian city is ultimately made by its people as they go on living. Bangalore’s potential for innovation relates more to the open spaces for action than for strict blueprints for future development. Such potential is, in any case, uncontrollable.

7 When Equal Access to Energy Causes Injustice: Urban Energy Landscapes in Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

7.1 Introduction In the first scene of the 1973 Hong Kong comedy The House of 72 Tenants (七十二家房客), we encounter a squalid and overcrowded tenement community in Hong Kong where life is made harsher by a cruel landlady, Pak Ku, and her sleazy husband, Bing. Pak Ku torments her tenants through substandard provision of water and electricity. A journalist faces his writing block under a gas light. A laundry woman burns a client’s trousers when she is distracted by the landlady. When Pak Ku wants to prevent a tenant from revealing what he know about her last mischief, she offers to reconnect him to the electricity supply. Eventually, the 72 tenants come together to help each other to face the depraved Pak Ku. One of the community heroes is Fat Chai, a young local cobbler. When Fat Chai enters the initial scene in the movie, the landlord, Bing asks him who he is, “Who am I?,” he responds, and then he goes on to detail that he lives in that building as one of its 72 tenants; he lives next to Shanghai Po (the laundry woman), under the flat of Pak Ku, the landlady, on the left of the communal staircase and next to the cigarette vendor’s room. In fact, he lives on a bunk bed that the landlord fixed halfway up the wall. As Fat Chai describes his place of residence, we travel across the building from the shared spaces to the very private bunk bed in which he lives. He speaks as he demonstrates the different ways of living in the tenement and how residents’ lives depend upon a small amount of water and electricity. His explanation demonstrates the complex social hierarchy that they live in and how it shapes the spatial distribution of the tenement. Fat Chai might be the poorest, latest arrival to the House, but he shares something with the other 72 tenants because their basic needs for space, energy, and water places them at the mercy of mean landlords. 122

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Directed by Chor Yuen for the Shaw Brothers’ Hong Kong studios, The House of 72 Tenants was an enormous success that marked a radical change in the Hong Kong film industry from Mandarin- to Cantonese-spoken cinema. It grossed HK$ 5.6 million and eclipsed Bruce Lee’s classic Enter the Dragon (Teo 2000). The story has had an enduring presence in Hong Kong’s cinema and television and inspired a new reimagined version in 2010. The themes in the movie are universal. Urban inequality finds its expression in the living conditions of different tenants. The House explores questions of what makes a community and what makes a home. The House also reflects the particularities of the urban infrastructure landscape of Hong Kong and its uniqueness. The most obvious is the combination of small habitable spaces with a strong dependence upon services, particularly water and electricity. The movie shows the materiality of everyday life, its dependence upon basic infrastructures and how access is negotiated through landlords. Density is something which all of the inhabitants of the House live with. With a population of 7.3 million people, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Hong Kong is the epitome of the compact city and exemplifies modern models of transport-oriented development. Hong Kong is a city in a constant housing crisis; housing unaffordability is one of the main challenges for Hong Kong’s people (Wong 2015). Hong Kong is thought of as a global city because of its role as a business and financial hub for the Asia-Pacific region and as a gateway to China, particularly the manufacturing region of the Pearl River Delta (Clark and Moonen 2014). Hong Kong’s topography is unique, with its undulating mountains, its skyline over both sides of the Victoria Bay and the land reclamation projects that have made growth possible. The urban energy landscape of Hong Kong is shaped by multiple contradictions that result in a surprisingly homogeneous and static configuration of energy flow and energy use choreographies. Hong Kong is a city in constant flux. In a branding exercise, the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) chose “a powerful and energetic dragon” to represent the city’s visual identity. This choice is justified as follows: The image incorporates the Chinese characters for “Hong Kong” (香港) and the letters ‘H’ and ‘K’. This dual expression symbolizes the blend of East and West that characterizes Hong Kong. The dragon’s fluid shape imparts a sense of movement and speed, communicating that Hong Kong is forever changing (HKSAR 2009 p. 1).

This character of Hong Kong as a “forever changing” and “moving” city is constantly reproduced in narratives about the city. However, structures for governance, ideas of the good city, and citizen practices appear to be surprisingly durable.

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This durability is manifested in Hong Kong’s urban energy landscape. Although Hong Kong is a center for technological innovation, the possibilities for a green transition in the city are very limited. The energy system in Hong Kong has long been characterized by a reliable, fossil fuel-dependent energy supply and steadily growing energy demand. For such a dynamic city, the flows of energy provisioning and how energy is used have remained remarkably unchanged since the construction of the first coal-fired power plants in the late 1960s and the transition to a service-based economy in the 1980s. Environmental sustainability, pollution, carbon emissions, and resilience are growing concerns in Hong Kong – among residents, businesses, and government officials. However, there appear to be only limited efforts to realize a substantial change in the current constitution of the energy system. The Climate Change Action Plan of 2017, for example, contemplates the substitution of coal-fired generation plans with natural gas ones and proposes a target for renewable energy of 2–3% of the total energy mix (Environment Bureau 2017). The proposals indicate the magnitude of change that is considered feasible and acceptable by current policymakers within the energy sector in Hong Kong. Contradictions also permeate the performance of energy use choreographies in Hong Kong’s built environment. One idea that permeates green urban thought in Hong Kong is that the city is low carbon “by chance” – that the high-density style of living of the Hong Kong-ese made possible the coevolution of high-rise buildings and public transport infrastructures. Electricity and gas are generally physically accessible and affordable. The relative homogeneity of service provision, however, masks gross inequalities in access to energy provision. Although the conditions to access the electricity network can be similar across the city, the spaces in which energy needs are configured are very different. For those living in middle class flats, the challenges faced by a tenant living in “a small space hanging on the wall” are unimaginable. Although the story of Fat Chain in The House of 72 Tenants might tend toward caricature, rising house prices continues to move people to live in dwellings of ever-decreasing size. Electricity might be affordable, but no amount of electricity is likely to be sufficient to cool crowded dwellings and supply old and outdated appliances. Inefficiencies in the use of energy are masked by the complexities of energy provision in subdivided units and by the demands for cool public spaces to support the wellbeing of the population living in an increasingly depleted housing stock. Contradictions also emerge in the structures of energy governance. During colonial times, the energy system was shaped by principles of self-sufficiency. The autarky legacy remains visible (Moss and Francesch-Huidobro 2016) but is being eroded in a context of rapid political change. Discourses of liberalism and privatization remain stronger in public management discourses, but they do not

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always materialize into concrete policies within the energy sector. Since 1997, when China regained control of the city-state from Britain, Hong Kong has operated as a Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People’s Republic of China. Under the 1997 agreement, Hong Kong retained practical autonomy in all issues except foreign and defense affairs. Efforts from mainland China to strengthen political control of the city have been occasionally contested, but not reversed. Within the energy sector, there have been simultaneous efforts to access energy resources from China but maintain a degree of control over the city’s networks. The example of Hong Kong shows how to build a largely homogeneous energy landscape. This landscape relates to a history of energy development in the city and the configuration of energy provision around coal-fired generation plants and the provision of gas, on the one hand, and to the reproduction of high-density models of development in both public and private housing, on the other hand. The second half of this chapter discusses homogeneity in relation to the dynamics of change in the energy landscape of Hong Kong, with reference to three different aspects of energy governance: (1) the persistence of reliability discourses as the main discourse articulating the institutional structure of the energy landscape; (2) the politics of technological change, with reference to the case of neon lighting; and (3) how standardization of approaches to thinking about energy tends to overlook major challenges in terms of accessing energy services. 7.2 Coevolution of Energy Services and the Urban Fabric Hong Kong, the city along the bay, is a unique place. As a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China, the city has been shaped by its colonial history, having been under British rule from 1842 to 1997. Today, Hong Kong is considered to be one of the economic powerhouses of the world, with an urban landscape that reflects its complex political history and a memorable skyline spanning the two sides of Victoria Bay. Hong Kong remains shaped by the differentiation between the former colonial area in Hong Kong Island, the largely Chinese area in Kowloon, and the New Territories. In terms of the distribution of the population, 17.5 percent live in Hong Kong Island, 30.2 percent in Kowloon and the rest in the New Territories. The city is extremely densely populated, with an average density of over 6,000 people per square kilometer. Some neighborhoods in Hong Kong reach over 50,000 people per square kilometer (HKSAR 2017). Hong Kong Island consists of the compendium of businesses and residences that grew up from the original urban strip in which the English colonialists settled. In place of former colonial buildings, we encounter the landmark buildings that characterize the city today, such as the HSBC building and the Bank of China tower, to form Hong Kong’s magnificent

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Figure 7.1 Different types of housing coexist in Hong Kong. Credit: Cozyta/Shutterstock.

skyline across Victoria Bay. Hong Kong Island stands in a highly mountainous landscape, including some of the most expensive pieces of real state on the planet. Real estate prices are shaped by topography; higher locations tend to be more expensive. On the other side of Victoria Bay, Kowloon extends north into the New Territories. Kowloon consists of some of the densest neighborhoods in the city, overlapping residential and commercial areas. Highly developed engineering designs sustain impressive skyscrapers in the hills. Old tenements and abandoned industrial buildings coexist with expanding malls and new public housing developments (Figure 7.1). Rapid economic changes and changes of thinking about infrastructure are visible in Kowloon against the signs of traditional Chinese culture. Since the 1970s, the government of Hong Kong has promoted the development of self-contained urban communities in the New Territories. The first three towns built in the early 1970s (Tsuen Wan, Sha Tin, and Tuen Mu) were thought to host 1.8 million people (HKSAR 2017). Now, nine towns host one-half of the city’s population. Hong Kong’s history comprises a series of overlaid identities, such as a fishing village, a colonial port, a trade post, a post-industrial metropolis, a financial hub, a melting pot of cultural identities, an innovation engine, and a place of tradition. The tenement, such as the one depicted in The House of 72 Tenants, was the

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traditional style of habitation in Hong Kong. Tenements consisted of four- or fivestory buildings, with shops on the first floor and a flexible internal part that could be adapted to the economic needs of different tenants. The Second World War brought rapid spatial changes in Hong Kong, not least because of the migration to China that followed Japanese occupation (1941–5) and the return of Chinese emigrants after the war. Lack of land led to the proliferation of substandard, self-built structures. The provision of public housing has been one of the main processes that has shaped the spatial history of Hong Kong. In 1953, the terrible Christmas fire in the informal area Shek Kip Mei made 53,000 people homeless (Yeh and Fong 1984, Yeh 1990). Resettlement estates were built in Kowloon, making sites available through “squatter clearance.” Initially, these sites were simple, low-quality dwelling units to facilitate the fast relocation of squatter families. A fundamental change occurred around 1973 with the creation of the Housing Authority to administer the new ten-year housing program. Changes in housing were directed toward increasing tolerance toward squatters’ lives, recognition of the need to provide space for commercial activities of hawkers, a simplification of the allocation system, and significant improvements in the minimum standards of housing (Drakakis-Smith 1976). In the 1980s, Hong Kong transitioned from an industrial to a service-based economy, with manufacturing moving to mainland China. Since the 1970s, the New Territories have provided development opportunities. A growing middle class had new demands for housing and services. A real-estate explosion in 1999 led to a building boom that resulted in the construction of 225 skyscrapers of over 150 meters high (Chow 2009). Since the mid-2000s, real-estate market prices in Hong Kong have soared, making housing unaffordable for many families. Neither public housing nor the private market are able to respond to the housing crisis in the city. Hong Kong is presented as a city running a purely capitalist economy following principles of free markets, low taxation, and government non-intervention. However, although private companies have played an important role in shaping Hong Kong’s energy landscape, the government has always had a determining influence in any changes in the urban energy landscapes of the city. The Hong Kong Electric Company (HKE) has been providing electricity to Hong Kong Island since 1890. The first streetlights were powered by two 50-kW steam-engines imported from Britain (Pedersen, 1998). Hong Kong’s first power station was the Wanchai Power Station, commissioned in 1890. As demand grew rapidly, new power plants were built at North Point (Pedersen 1998). As the city industrialized and real-estate pressure increased during the first half of the twentieth century, new oil-fired plants were built beyond the center of the city in Ap Lei Chau Power Plant in 1968

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(Pedersen 1998). This trend toward the development of energy generation facilities was consolidated in the 1980s with the construction of three, 250-MW oil and coal fired units at Lamma Power Station, an outlying island, and the old city facilities were closed (HEK 2011). Overall, Hong Kong Island presents a uniform trajectory from the city conceived in colonial times to its graduation as a node in the global economy, financial center, and real-estate hub. In Kowloon, a utility, China Light and Power Co Ltd (CLP) began operations in 1903, using generation facilities built within the city (initially a 75-kW power station on Chatham Road) (CLP 2010). There was a lag of public services in Kowloon. For example, the first street lighting was lit in 1919. New oil-fired stations were built in 1949 (Hok Un A) and 1969 (Tsing Yi Power Station). Since 1979, CLP has imported energy resources from China. CLP continued to build fossil fuel generation facilities through the 1980s and 1990s, and in 2006, CLP completed Black Point Power Station, Hong Kong’s first natural gas station (CLP 2010). Gas has also played a key role in Hong Kong’s urbanization. Since the 1980s, manufactured town gas provided to households has become increasingly significant. This use followed aggressive expansion of the town gas company, The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited. In the 1980s, the Hong Kong government made mandatory the provision of gas infrastructure in new residential buildings. This requirement became the norm, moving gas from being “the fuel of the rich” (HK Interview 4, 2015) to being one of the main cornerstones of the Hong Kong energy landscape. In terms of the flows of energy, Hong Kong is shaped by its complete dependence upon imported fossil fuel resources. The specific modes of habitation in the built environment of Hong Kong strongly determine energy uses. Discourses of reliability and risk avoidance justify governmental intervention in the energy sector. Overall, this landscape tends toward homogenization of multiple practices of high-density living. The following section reviews the contradictions in the energy landscape in Hong Kong, examining the constitution of flows of energy. 7.3 Energy Flows and Urban Circulation Two trends characterize the urban energy landscape in Hong Kong: its complete dependence upon fossil fuel resources; and increasingly, upon importing energy resources. According to the last government annual report of the Census and Statistics Department, the energy landscape of the city is shaped by the use of coal products (46% of the total energy requirements), oil products (47% of the total energy requirements) and a small proportion of imports of electricity (6% of the total energy requirements) (CSD 2017). Coal is used for electricity generation, alongside 38% of oil products. CLP Group operates three coal-based power plants

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in Hong Kong, including power stations at Black Point (2,500 MW), Castle Peak (4,108 MW) and Penny’s Bay (300 MW) (HKSAR 2013). The Hong Kong Electric Company (HKE) operates the Lamma Power Station (3,737 MW), primarily with coal, although the plant has experimented with wind power systems and solar energy generation (HKE 2014). According to Hong Kong’s energy balance, approximately 12% of available oil products were used for gas manufacturing. Town gas is produced at two plants located in Tai Po and Ma Tau (HKSAR 2013). In addition, LPG is imported via sea and stored in local terminals (HKSAR 2013). Although Hong Kong has had a wind power plant since 2006, and there have been efforts to use biodiesel and solar energies, these efforts are not sufficiently significant to be considered in the energy balance. The geographical location of Hong Kong and land scarcity are the factors most frequently mentioned as limiting a transition to renewables (EEO 2014). Hong Kong’s government presents the energy balances alongside a narrative about the lack of endogenous energy resources. Electricity production, for example, depends upon coal and oil products. In 2016, 86% of the steam coal imports came from Indonesia. Other countries such as Australia and Russia provided the rest. In terms of oil products, mainland China is the provider of the majority of imports of gasoline, kerosene, diesel, LPG, and natural gas, whereas Singapore is the main provider of fuel oil. Although China has disappeared from the list of countries from which Hong Kong imports coal since 2006, there is considerable anxiety about the perceived growing dependence upon China’s energy resources. In particular, meeting the growing demand for electricity in Hong Kong is increasingly dependent upon Chinese exports. For example, until 1993, Hong Kong generated a surplus of electricity, but since then, demand has grown faster than has generation capacity. CLP has a contract that guarantees the import of 70% of the power produced by water reactors at Daya Bay Nuclear Station in Guangdong and one-half of the 1200 MW produced at Guangzhou Pumped Storage Power Station (HKSAR 2013). The Electricity and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD) reported that Hong Kong’s power generation in 2009 was based on a fuel mix ratio of 54% coal, 23% natural gas, and 23% imported nuclear power (EMSD 2013). Interviews with academics and officials involved in energy supply in Hong Kong suggest that there is a growing interest in the possibility of switching from coal to natural gas. However, coal remains the main fuel for electricity generation. The perceived investment costs for fuel switching appear to be the main obstacle for such a transition. Hong Kong has pioneered renewable innovations but, as of 2016, renewables play no part in the overall energy system of the city. Interviews with both officials and environmental activists show that local views on the potential of renewables are extremely pessimistic. A government report of the EMSD, for example,

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provided a positive view on renewables and argued that 17% of the energy needs of the city could be supplied by solar power alone (EMSD 2013). However, the official from EMSD explained that it was very unlikely that Hong Kong would ever achieve a fuel transition other than perhaps switching to natural gas for electricity generation (HK Interview 8, 2014). Despite calls for Hong Kong to embrace renewable energy, there have been few advances in this area. The Energy Efficiency Office (EEO) of the EMSD cites that in 2011, 2,350 TJ (terajoules) of energy was generated from renewable sources within the city, exactly 0.7% of the final energy requirements reported by the statistical office in that year (EEO 2013). In 2017, the EMSD office reported a figure of 1,899 TJ of renewable energy produced and used in Hong Kong (EMSD 2017). Those renewable resources included 85% biogas-generated energy, 12% bio-diesel, 1.2% solar energy, and less than 1% wind power. In other words, less than 0.01% of the final energy requirements actually came from solar or wind power; their presence is merely anecdotal. Hong Kong’s Climate Change Action Plan for 2017 proposes a target of 2–3% of energy from renewable sources by 2030 (Environment Bureau 2017), and this is an ambitious plan considering the current situation. A new Feed-in Tariff aims at facilitating household participation in enlarging renewable capacities, but its expansion appears unlikely (see also: Francesch-Huidobro 2014, Mah and Hills 2016). The history of Hong Kong is full of stories of innovation in the energy industry. For example, Hong Kong pioneered the use of solar energy in the 1980s, in small, automatic weather-monitoring devices. However, renewable technologies are absent in the energy landscape of the city. Solar initiatives, for example, have been limited to a few installations. The largest solar installation and the only sizeable wind turbine were both built in Lamma Island and are owned by HKE. An HKE official joked about the fact that they own the largest solar and wind facilities in the island, but these facilities constitute an extremely low portion of the supply of energy there (HK Interview 17, 2014). The wind turbine is valued because of its “educational value.” The turbine is part of the tourist trail in Lamma Island, and tourists crowd around it to take photographs. Landfill gas has been used in gas manufacturing, although, according to our interviews, only in small proportions. In any case, the use of landfill gas addresses waste management concerns rather than any strategic vision of the development of the renewable energy industry (HK Industrialist 2010). The most salient feature of local discourses is that Hong Kong’s dependence upon imported fossil fuel resources is related as inevitable. Hong Kong is thought to lack resources; few interviewees acknowledged that factors such as the history of the city or the structure of the governance system (see section below) could also influence what type of technological futures are thought to be possible. A retired

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HKE official summarized the most common explanation for the lack of development of renewable energy in the city: “What is the greatest barrier to adoption of wind and solar power systems? Space. Space, definitely. And the land price, because the owner or the land developer could always find much more valuable revenue sources” (HK Interview 28, 2015). Other interviews highlight that the lack of space is due to the need to ensure the protection of natural environments or increasing public opposition to any such project. For example, preliminary efforts to deliver an offshore wind park quickly encountered restrictions: “Because there may be some corals, or something interesting down there, so those SSSIs, the navigation channels, the birding areas, so after taking out all this and some [additional land] for some future development, actually the available area left behind is not much” (HK Interview 17, 2014). These nature conservation concerns appear to be of minor relevance in relation to the vertiginous development of the real-estate markets and the tight control of the two energy companies (HKE and CCP) over the supply of energy. Environmental activists lament that the city has repeatedly failed to attain risible targets in terms of the proportion of renewable energy in the energy mix. Even more worrying is that interest in renewables has dwindled outside of academic circles and they are completely absent from the government’s energy statistics. Overall, this change points toward the permanence of the current configuration of energy flows; fossil fuels are in Hong Kong to stay. 7.4 Urban Choreographies of Energy Use The Hong Kong energy landscape is characterized by high levels of energy consumption per capita. According to the current figures presented in Hong Kong’s energy balance and the recent census, the city uses 44.5 GJ (gigajoules) per capita (a city such as London could double that figure). The city has grown to 7.3 million people in 2016, alongside growth in gross domestic product (GDP). However, energy use is also growing, but not at the same speed as the economy or size of the city. This observation has motivated analyses of the possible decoupling of energy use and GDP and decreasing energy intensity (Chung, Kam et al. 2011, EMSD 2017). Up to 2000, the growth in the use of both electricity and gas (LPG and town gas) followed a steep curve, but the curve has somewhat flattened since then (Figure 7.2). However, these hypotheses must be approached with caution because differences in energy consumption should be explained alongside sectoral changes in energy use, the reorganization of commercial relationships with mainland China since 1997 and major infrastructure changes.

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30000 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 1996

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Domestic Electricity Domestic Gas Median Monthly Domestic Household Income

Figure 7.2 Consumption of gas and electricity in Hong Kong compared with median monthly domestic house income, 1996–2016. Data source: Census and Statistics Department, HKSAR.

In 2015, the commercial sector consumed 43% of the energy consumed in the city, in comparison with 31% of energy consumed for transport, 21% residential, and 5% industrial. Although transport accounts for most of the final use of oil, the commercial and residential sectors rely on electricity and LPG/town gas. There is a steep growth in the use of electricity and gas, and a change in the share of the energy balance of each sector. In 1980, the commercial and industrial sectors were the two most important consumers of electricity (37% and 39%, respectively). In contrast, in 2016, the commercial sector accounted for 62% of the total electricity used in the city, whereas only 7% was used by the industrial sector. In contrast, the domestic sector has maintained a relatively stable share of the total energy consumed in the city (approximately 50% of the gas and approximately 25% of the electricity used) (see Figure 7.3). These relationships point toward a relatively static energy landscape in the residential sector in Hong Kong. It appears that the structure of the energy system has barely changed in the last three decades (for examples see: Sathaye and Tyler 1991, Hills 1994, Lam 1996, Chow 2001, Chung, Kam et al. 2011). This stasis has translated into a set of recognizable choreographies of energy use in residential settings to the extent that the government has typified those in government statistics. For example, in their analysis of Hong Kong end-use energy data, the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department distinguishes among three types of household (Table 7.1):

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GAS USE (%) 100 90 80

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Figure 7.3 Consumption of gas and electricity in different economic sectors, HK. Data source: Census and Statistics Department, HKSAR.

• Public housing includes households that rent directly from Hong Kong’s Housing Authority or an associated housing society. According to the last by-census, 29.1% of the population lives in this type of housing, and they have a median monthly income of HK$ 16,000 (1 HK$ = 0.9 GBP). They tend to be smaller households, averaging 2.4 rooms per household and 0.9 rooms per household inhabitant. Using current data on household sizes, I have calculated an average size of dwelling of 31 square meters. • People living in Housing Authority Subsidized Sale Flats own their own flats, having acquired them from the Housing Authority at discounted prices. According to the last census, 15.8% of the population lives in these flats. They tend to have better economic circumstances than tenants do, with a median

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Table 7.1: End use data for Hong Kong. Subsidized home Private Public rental ownership permanent housing housing housing Population % of population Number of households Median monthly domestic household (HK$) Average number of rooms Average household size (square meters) Total consumption of energy (terajoules) Average increase 2005–2015 (%) Average energy consumption per capita (gigajoules) Average energy consumption per household (gigajoules) Average energy consumption per square meter (gigajoules)

2,131,553 29.1 761,905 16,000

1,161,166 15.8 384,006 27,000

3,901,743 53.2 1,329,922 33,680

2.4 31

3.5 44

3.7 47

17,052

9,711

29,125

8.0 8.0

0.5 8.4

10.0 7.5

22.4

25.3

21.9

0.7

0.6

0.5

(Source: Own elaboration using Hong Kong government data from the Electricity and Mechanical Services Department [EMSD] and the 2016 By-census report)

monthly income of HK$ 27,000. Houses also tend to be larger, averaging 3.5 rooms and 44 square meters in size. • Private housing includes a heterogeneous group of dwellings, from flats in private housing developments to the few remaining traditional village houses and more comfortable bungalows. Over one-half of the population (53.2%) lives in some form of private housing. The median monthly income is considerably greater at HK$ 33,680, and the dwellings are slightly larger (the average number of rooms is 3.7, and the average household size is 47 square meters). Although the majority of the population lives in these three conventional types of housing, the census recognizes that less than 2 % of the population live in dwellings categorized as “other” including, for example, temporary housing and people living on vessels. The three categories described above cover the large majority of dwellings in Hong Kong. They show a certain stratification, with lower-income families living in public housing.

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However, these statistics mask important variables that are critical to understanding the patterns of energy use in Hong Kong. These categories do not reflect the state of conservation of the buildings. In the case of public housing, for example, there is an abyssal difference between the blocks of flats that were built after the disaster of Shek Kip Mei (such as the eponymous block of flats), those built under new quality regulations in the 1970s and 1980s, and those built in recent years with the availability of new designs and technologies. These categories can also hide socio-economic differences, particularly in the case of private housing. For example, the category of private housing includes 150,000 households with incomes over 100,000 HK dollars per month, but also approximately 200,000 households that do not make 10,000 HK dollars per month. Both the superrich and the destitute are included in this category. Placing aside concerns about using these numbers, information can be extracted from the analysis of information from these categories. In particular, I seek to understand how everyday uses of energy are structured in particular types of choreography in the residential sector in Hong Kong. The statistics point toward the extremely small average size of dwellings. Public housing flats tend to be smaller, with an estimated average size of 31 square meters per house. Historically, public housing in Hong Kong prioritized providing large quantities of flats at the lowest possible price; in other words, space and construction quality was compromised. Although minimum standards have improved considerably during the history of Hong Kong’s public housing, there is a legacy of a built environment with certain characteristics; houses are smaller, the designs always compromise quality to lower the costs, and the quality of the construction and design tends to be lower. Much of this housing stock is aging. In contrast, private houses are heterogeneous. Although, they tend to be larger (47 square meters on average), the real estate boom has been associated with decreasing flat sizes and a greater recurrence of housing sharing models. Subsidized home ownership is associated with higher consumption of energy per capita and per habitation unit. That association is in line with expectations for households that are larger on average and tend to have higher incomes. Because household incomes are larger in the private sector (more than double those in the public rental market), one could reasonably expect that the energy consumption would be higher, on average, than in public housing flats. Other factors such as household size and patterns of habitation also do not correspond with the expectations emerging from the energy data. For example, Table 7.1 shows that 48% of the total energy consumed in the residential sector is consumed in privately owned households. This figure is however less than the proportion of households and population in this category, which is greater than 50%. Average data indeed show that energy consumption per capita and per habitation unit is clearly greater in

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Figure 7.4 Profiles of energy use for different types of housing. Data source: Hong Kong Electricity and Mechanical Services Department.

public housing than in private accommodations. Moreover, although the ten-year increase is greater in private permanent housing, this point might be better explained in relation to increases of population in that category rather than an actual change in everyday practices. This statistic is puzzling and against the most common expectations in energy studies. Most energy is used in cooking, air conditioning, and heating water, with shares of 24%, 25%, and 18% of the total energy budget, respectively. However, the pattern of energy use in appliances is different for each type of housing. Figure 7.4 shows the average profile for each type of housing in terms of total use of gas and electricity per household. The comparison between public rental housing and subsidized sale housing shows the relative importance of cooking and heating water in comparison with private housing. Without an ethnographic study of energy use, we can only speculate about the reasons for this difference. For example, it could be due to different cooking practices, a tendency to have lessefficient appliances, or a lack of space to install solar water heaters. Conversely, air conditioning is more common in subsidized sale flats and private housing, which to me suggests that poorer families in smaller flats in public rental housing are compromising on thermal comfort to reduce energy costs. Overall, this point speaks to the complex landscape of urban energy poverty in Hong Kong, which I will discuss in the section below. Here, we can invoke the literature and anecdotal evidence that has constructed air conditioning in Hong Kong as a status symbol. When I turned off the recorder, one interviewee laughed about how, in the hottest days of the year, people enjoyed going to restaurants in which the air conditioning

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level was so high that they would be given a blanket to cover themselves. However, air conditioning is not only a status symbol. Urban heat island concerns are being raised regarding the habitability of the currently built environment infrastructure (Chen and Jeong 2018). Raising temperatures will affect citizens who live in moredensely populated areas and have limited or deficient access to air conditioning. Another question concerning the overall rates of energy consumption is the potential location for sustainable energy practices. Initiatives to change energy use practices are popular among climate change activists in Hong Kong (Bulkeley, Castán Broto et al. 2014). Such initiatives match a long tradition of energy policies focused on energy efficiency and conservation. Programs to coach residents in energy efficiency measures have been the main strategy to promote energy conservation in Hong Kong since at least the 1980s (Yik and Burnett 1995, Lam and Hui 1996, Davies 1999, Lee and Burnett 2003, Chan and Yeung 2005, Lee and Chen 2008, Chung, Kam et al. 2011). Moreover, they are effective. For example, the effects of energy savings measures in public rental housing have long been documented (Lam 1995). However, in the age of experimentation, innovations associated with a certain amount of uncertainty might not be viable in the public rental housing and subsidized housing sectors. Sustainable experiments are more feasible in private permanent housing because they do not depend upon the strictures of templates or models of development in public housing. In an interview, a director from the Housing Authority lamented the limited scope for innovation within current housing models, particularly in the context of advancing sustainability policy. Viewed in the light of the interviews with Hong Kong officials, consultants, and activities, these data offer a fascinating picture of the energy landscape and the extent to which we understand how those patterns of habitation shape the urban energy landscape. This initial exploration opens more questions than it answers. Ethnographic exploration of these different types of housing would help to discern more-concrete dynamics of everyday practices. Unfortunately, I could not perform this investigation within the terms of reference and the budget allocated for this project. However, a superficial review of the dominant perspectives on energy systems in Hong Kong already suggests that there is a complex and heterogeneous landscape of everyday practices that is summarized in largescale data, which reflects little of people’s experiences. Although I could not investigate this issue further on this occasion, what I observed immediately is that this apparent heterogeneity was subsumed under the presumed homogeneity of the energy system and its constitution of two networks of provision (electricity and gas) on every side of Victoria Bay. The prevalent view of the urban energy landscape as a homogeneous, consistent unit can be at odds with the everyday experience of the city, but that view has an extraordinary hold on the structures of

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governance and, ultimately, limits the possibilities for any type of transition toward sustainable energy in the city. The construction of homogeneity in the governance of the urban energy landscape of Hong Kong is the question further investigated in the remainder of this chapter.

7.5 Experiences of Energy Poverty in a Densely Built Environment Hong Kong’s economy has been expanding in recent decades, but along with this rise, income inequalities have been growing. In 2013, approximately 20% of the population was reported as living below the poverty line, and from 2001 to 2011, the Gini coefficient has increased from 0.525 to 0.537 (which is above the level of 0.4 used to indicate risk of social unrest) (Hu and Yun, 2013). Over the same period, average household income of the poorest 10% is reported to have fallen by 16%, whereas the income of the top 10% rose by 12% (HKSAR 2011). Housing prices have doubled since 2008 (Chan 2013, Pomfret 2014). The housing market in Hong Kong remains one of the most unaffordable in the world (Cox and Pavletich 2017). Land scarcity and rising demand (which media reports to be present as the result of the inflow of new residents from mainland China) have produced precarious conditions of habitation for low-income and even middle-income families in Hong Kong. Some of the aspects of the traditional tenement, such as those depicted in The House of 72 Tenants are increasingly visible again in housing provision. Some aspects of low-income housing provision that I encountered in Hong Kong include the following: (1) Overlapping of commercial and residential uses, because people must extract rental value from their accommodation. (2) Subdivision using flexible partitions. Partitions divide homogeneous flat units into different-sized spaces to accommodate different economic conditions. As in The House of 72 Tenants, the space is distributed hierarchically. Occasionally, this distribution entails the occupation of low-quality habitational spaces, with the conversion of disused industrial buildings and other inappropriate infrastructures. (3) Maximization of the occupation of the space, with additional habitational units built on top of the buildings and ventilation areas, and extensions of the functional space through hanging objects and appliances from windows, for example. (4) Different institutionalized systems of accessing housing through rentals and sublets of varied duration. However, as in The House of 72 Tenants, being at the mercy of the landlords is one thing common to most of the low-income residents without access to public housing.

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What does having energy access in the context of a housing crisis of this magnitude mean? Low-income families living in low-quality housing, particularly in subdivided units, face specific energy challenges. Let us imagine some examples: (1) A family can have different family members who might need the space simultaneously for different uses. (2) Lack of availability of space and overlapping uses in a hot climate can require extra means of ventilation and air-cooling, which the habitational unit might lack. Air conditioning systems can be a luxury in those conditions, and families might rely on outdated, malfunctioning equipment. (3) Partitions can be made ad-hoc in relation to economic demand, without considering any design and habitational aspects. Accessing a window, a sunny spot, or a well-ventilated room might also be a luxury. Although new facilities for cooking or sanitation have been built, they might not have the appropriate exhausts, a problem that can be worsened when ventilation areas are obstructed. (4) Families living in subdivided units depend institutionally upon their landlords to access energy services. Landlords can charge inflated rates and use access to services as a means to extract further rents from impoverished residents. When space is a luxury, so is performing daily tasks that depend upon energy. Access to the electricity and gas networks and affordability alone do not explain energy poverty. Having appropriate access to energy depends upon not only access itself, but also the conditions in which such service is provided. However, this relationship does not appear to exist in Hong Kong. Most policymakers in Hong Kong assert that there is no issue of energy poverty in the city. First, several interviewees argued that the supply network extends over the whole city, and hence, there are no families that have no access to energy (HK Interviews 1, 8, 9, 10, 11 12). The assumption is that if there is network coverage, households must have access to it. The normalizing, homogenizing view of the system of provision obscures the fact that many families cannot connect directly to such a network. This issue is clear in subdivided units (SDUs), in which such connection can be mediated by the landlord or another tenant. The 2016 by-census suggests that approximately 27,100 residences have been subdivided and now accommodate some 91,800 households and over 200,000 people (HKSAR 2016). In addition, approximately 150,000 people in Hong Kong live in houses classified as “other,” which can include, for example, people living on boats and in temporary housing. These households have disproportionally high consumption of energy (over five times the average energy consumption in the whole city) and depend upon oil fuels. Thus, over 5 % of the population might not have access to the network.

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Similarly, policymakers highlight that energy poverty is not a problem in Hong Kong because tariffs are low and subsidies are offered for low-income families (HK Interview 3, 2014). Again, access is thought of as equivalent to energy use. In general, the argument is that compared with other expenses such as rent and food, energy poverty is not a critical issue (HK Interview 15, 2014). As two interviewed representatives from a housing charity explained, in Hong Kong “you work, work, work, work, work . . . [but] you might never be able to afford an apartment” (HK Interview 25, 2015). Access to housing becomes a route to self-improvement. However, the issue of energy access is, according to these two interviewees, “never raised.” Several interviewees related ideas of energy poverty with lack of fuel for the winter, which is seldom an issue in Hong Kong. High temperatures are often not considered a problem because people might be able to simply go to an air-conditioned mall to cool down. The World Green Organization (WGO) is a civil society organization that aims to redefine energy poverty in the context of Hong Kong. They argue that approximately 1 in 11 households in Hong Kong is energy-poor (WGO 2012). In recent years, the Hong Kong government has adopted electricity charge subsidies as a “non-recurrent cash benefit” to help low-income households (CSD 2012). However, many households remain unaffected by these subsidies, rebates or lowcost schemes because they pay electricity tariffs directly to their landlords, who do not pass the rebates on and instead charge inflated rates (WGO 2012). Thus, many families turn to coping mechanisms such as avoiding turning on lights and suffering through the heat of summer and cold of winter in rooms without space conditioning. In an interview, a WGO representative explained the dire conditions in which some people who could not afford electricity lived: They avoid using electricity. Imagine, it’s 36 degrees in the house . . . 36 degrees of indoor temperature. They live there every day, everyone sweating . . . And then they try to save energy by not turning on the air-con. It’s very inhuman” (HK Interview 18, 2014).

In addition, the WGO finds that there are specific issues that affect SDUs that worsen energy poverty in Hong Kong. The WGO is particularly concerned about the high prices that SDU households pay for energy: [In SDUs] they need to pay a higher tariff rate, 30% higher than a normal family. Why? Because one flat is divided into many, then the overall, I mean I have ten families living here. Even when one family only uses 100 kWh, adding up all of the families together is 1,000 kWh. For the residential sector, the higher you use, the higher the tariff you pay. Thus, although they only use 100 kWh, they are paying a 1,000 kWh tariff. They are already kind of energy poor families, but they pay a higher price for their electricity. That is why it makes sense to save every kilowatt hour for them” (HK Interview 18, 2014).

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In their programs for reducing energy poverty in Hong Kong, the WGO is trying to understand energy poverty within the built environment context. Approximately 70% of SDUs comprise spaces of 7 to 13 square meters, with a median per-capita area of 5.3 square meters. Approximately 4% of SDUs lack toilets, and 28% lack kitchen facilities. Often, toilet and kitchen facilities are shared. Some houses have one single plug to which they connect all of their appliances. WGO argues that in these conditions, small improvements can be achieved through the substitution or provision of energy-efficient appliances (occasionally, appliances in subdivided units are also owned by landlords). Ventilation practices might have also a strong effect. However, it appears that energy poverty is another manifestation of a wider structural problem, in terms of lack of personal space and the inequalities associated with an increasingly unaffordable housing market. 7.6 Governing Energy The urban energy landscape of Hong Kong is characterized by a contradiction. Although the landscape of energy practices can appear diverse and dynamic, the energy system as a whole appears to be characterized by a remarkable homogeneity and stability. The systems of energy provision remain unchanged since the construction of the first coal-fired power plants, with changes directed toward maintaining the structure of the energy system – increasing generation capacity, developing networks to cope with changes in population and different patterns of urbanization, and establishing new international relationships to secure the supply of fossil fuels. A fuel switch from coal to natural gas in some generation plans and the incorporation of a small percentage of nuclear into the energy mix have been the most radical changes in the energy system in the last three decades. Equally, the institutional structure of the urban energy landscape remains unchanged since the late nineteenth century. Even a radical governance change such as the return of Hong Kong to PR China in 1997 has not fundamentally changed the institutional configuration of the energy landscape. Homogeneity and stability are intrinsically linked in Hong Kong’s energy landscape. Such a landscape requires strong maintenance efforts to prevent changes from materializing. This focus is only possible because of the configuration of a landscape of governance in which public, private, and civil society actors have one shared priority – avoiding any risks. This avoidance translates into an energy policy discourse in which reliability is the primary priority. Reliability is the motivation behind the Scheme of Control Agreements (SOCs), the key regulatory mechanism of Hong Kong’s supply chain. A consequence is the deployment of discourses of governance that tend to control and reduce the possibility of change. In the following sections, I use two examples to explain the contradictions of the

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dynamics of change in Hong Kong. The first explores efforts to “green” the energy supply in Hong Kong and how these efforts are prevented by discourses of reliability. The second examines an actual technological transition, from neon to light emitting diode (LED) lighting in Hong Kong, and the contradictions that underlie this transition. 7.7 Reliability as Electricity Politics At the time of the interviews in 2014 and 2015, the government of Hong Kong had started a consultation over the future of energy in the city. Some interviewees spoke of a government trying to change the rules of the game and increase privatization of the institutional system. Greening the energy supply appeared to be a key objective. Most interviewees explained that there were two scenarios under consideration. The first scenario focused on greening the electricity supply by importing from China a greater percentage of low-carbon energy. This scenario suggests that Hong Kong’s network could be further integrated with the South China grid. Because China appears to be increasing the renewable fraction of its energy supply, this change could immediately have environmental benefits (HK Interviews 1, 26). Conversely, because coal remains a major part of mainland China’s fuel mix, increasing the percentage of electricity from China is often considered an exercise of displacement of emissions (HK Interviews 4, 5, 18). The second scenario would entail increasing the percentage of natural gas imports to support a fuel-switching process in the coal-fired generation plants and substitute town gas with natural gas. There are, however, several fears about what a change toward natural gas would mean for Hong Kong – for example, in the context of increasing international markets for natural gas (HK Interviews 5, 18). In both cases, the question of reliability appears to be intrinsically linked to the protection of local business interests, in direct contradiction with Hong Kong’s image as an example of liberalism. This contrast is possible because the main objective for all of the actors in the current institutional set up is achieving maximum reliability. Reliability is the core principle on which the governance of energy is structured in Hong Kong. The government of Hong Kong operates under a number of ambiguities; the transference of sovereignty in 1997 to PR China resulted in the establishment of Hong Kong as a special administrative region (i.e., HKSAR) with a certain degree of autonomy from mainland China, except in defense and foreign affairs. Among interviewees, there is an ambiguity between accessing newly found resources in China and maintaining the principles that emerge from a legacy of autarky in

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Hong Kong (see also, Moss and Francesch-Huidobro 2016). The Hong Kong government has a Chief Executive. In addition, the administration of the government and day-to-day operations are performed by policy bureaus, departments, and agencies. The Environment Bureau has key responsibilities in the energy sector, including the financial monitoring of the energy companies and the promotion of renewable energy and energy efficiency policies. In addition, the Electric and Mechanical Services Department, which is part of the Development Bureau, has overall responsibility for the delivery of energy to homes, safety, and engineering services related to the provision and use of energy. However, the provision of electricity and gas is in the hands of private utilities. As explained above, electricity is supplied by two investor-based private firms (HKSAR 2013). The CLP Group (established 1901) provides electricity to over 2.4 million users in Hong Kong, which accounts for approximately 80% of the city’s population, primarily located in Kowloon and the New Territories (CLP 2014). The Hong Kong Electric Company (HKE) (established 1889) supplies the rest of the city in Hong Kong Island and operates the power plant in Lamma Island. CLP and HKE are vertically integrated firms; thus, they are involved in all steps of the business chain, from generation of electricity to transmission, distribution, and supply (Lam 2004). The main supplier of town gas, Hong Kong and China Gas Company Ltd., is another investor-owned private company. With 1.9 million customers in 2015 (Towngas, 2015), it has steadily increased its market share from 66% in the early 2000s to over 70% of the market today (cf. Leung, Chu et al. 2002). The Financial Monitoring Division (FMD) of the Environment Bureau has the strongest influence on the operation of energy companies by monitoring the financial aspects relating to the electricity and town gas companies. CLP and HKE both operate under very similar Scheme of Control Agreements (SCAs) (HKSAR 2013). SCAs are long-term contracts signed between the firms and the Hong Kong government under which the companies agree to be subject to control of rates-of-return and abide by price controls (Lam 2004). The principles of the SCAs remain essentially unchanged since their introduction in 1964. The New SCAs entered into force in October 2018 (for HKE) and January 2019 (for CLP) and will remain in force until 2033. The new SCAs request that companies consider the HKSAR government efforts to address climate change in line with the city’s 2017 Climate Change Action Plan (Environment Bureau 2017), improve their environmental performance, and promote the efficient use of energy. The new SCAs reduce the permitted rate of return for the companies and envisage the phase out of coal-fired power plants. The main objective of the SCAs remains that of providing sufficient facilities to satisfy the demand for electricity. This mechanism of operation provides an incentive to both companies to make sufficient

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investments to meet the demand with higher levels of reliability (Lam 2004). Thus, HKE and CLP both claim near 100% levels of reliability (CLP 2014, HKE 2014). This tendency toward prioritizing reliability with an assured rate of return has long been associated with over-expansion and over-capacity of the two firms (Lam 2004). Twelve interviewees expressed their concerns about the extent to which the stated reliability objectives were achievable or even desirable, including academics (HK Interviews 1, 2, 5, 28), environmental activists (HK Interviews 3, 7, 15, 18) and private sector actors and utilities (HK Interviews 13, 14, 16, 17). Civic Exchange has long argued that the SCAs are linked to incentives to prevent energy conservation measures (Civic Exchange 2007). My interviews suggest that the SCAs can also link to incentives to prevent major changes in the electricity provision system. A former manager of HKE explained that in terms of reliability, the Hong Kong system was “gold plated” but that it forecloses any alternatives in electricity provision: It is gold plated like, for example, a car. To go from A to B, you can have a Toyota or you can have a Rolls Royce. Is it necessary to have a Rolls Royce? Is it necessary we have so high reliability? . . . the reserve margin for the power generation is so high, 30 to 50 percent. Do we need so much backup? Can we cut it down? And can we bring down the tariff? Is it transparent enough? Do we have a right to make a choice? Do we have the right to, you know, voice our concerns? It might be something like collusion between government and developers, not much the customer’s choice” (HK Interview 28, 2015).

This reliability discourse is linked to fears about blackouts. For several interviewees, blackouts are not a choice, given the architecture and building operation of Hong Kong. Lift accidents, for example, are a common worry. Other interviewees, however, argue that concerns about the risk of lack of electricity are exaggerated. An environmental activist expressed this concern passionately: Why is Hong Kong paying so much for the reliability? For that 0.0001 reliability difference? It doesn’t make sense . . . for residential households, you know their back-up systems really can [support reliability], at least you won’t die from a one-second blackout, and then the back-up system of the residential building will take up the load. It won’t cause a really bad problem, but the households also say, “Is it reliable? We won”t accept a onesecond black-out!” I don’t know why” (HK Interview 3, 2014).

How does this discourse affect the provision of electricity? The options discussed in previous consultation exercises were to increase the proportion of natural gas in energy generation or to allow integration with the South China grid. There is a strong perception that the latter option will lower reliability (a third of interviewees from both the private and civil society sectors highlighted reliability as

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a problem for this option). However, both the SCAs and the discourse of reliability are ultimately related to the regulation of business operations in the energy sector in Hong Kong. In this process, the government is going to decide what the city’s future energy mix is going to be. Of course, they take a lot of opinions into account in this process, but the decision will remain with the government. This decision will of course affect the power companies [HKE and CPL] a lot. For example, if the government goes with the second option, which basically consists of importing more electricity generated by the South China Grid, then the two firms lose that market share. This option is still being discussed though because there may be issues of reliability associated with this strategy. But if they decide to go with this option, the companies will be heavily affected. In this way, the policy direction set by the government is determining how the energy system develops ” (HK Interview 7, 2014).

Both the new SCAs and the Hong Kong Climate Change Action plan favor the first option – the progressive substitution of coal by natural gas in existing and new generation facilities. Thus, under the umbrella discourse of reliability and safety, the Hong Kong Government protects the city’s business interests and its independence but also negotiates a more competitive agreement with the utility companies that in the new SCAs have agreed to a lower rate of return. Both options increase the dependence on energy resources from China because one entails importing natural gas from China and the other integrating the electricity system. However, it appears that the first option allows for a greater degree of control of the energy supply. Although the instruments for the Environment Bureau to govern the fuel sector are different, the dynamics are similar; the government allows manufacturing town gas from oil products without a fundamental drive toward greening the fuel supply through any other mechanisms than technological improvements within the existing supply chain. Maintaining the reliability of the service from the main fuel provider is again the expressed objective, but the means of implementation are directed toward ensuring maximum autonomy within the existing circumstances. Reliability is a legacy of the management of energy systems over the history of Hong Kong. However, currently, this style of management of the energy system also has unresolved political implications. Safety and reliability are a priority in Hong Kong beyond the operation of the electricity and fuel supply. As explained above, this orientation results in stagnated processes of change and relative homogeneity of the landscape. 7.8 The Politics of Lighting Transitions The case of the transition from neon to LED lighting illustrates how discourses of safety can foster broader urban changes. The urban energy landscape of Hong Kong has been long marked by neon signs (Figure 7.5). In the last decade,

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Figure 7.5 Mongkok at night, with neon and LED lighting on display. Credit: Lebelmont/Shutterstock.

however, the HKSAR has had an active campaign against illegal, risky, and unsafe street furniture, which has included taking down some iconic neon signs. Another factor is the design guidelines to improve the city’s microclimate and resilience, which favor vertical signage to remove obstructions to air flow (Planning Department 2003). In the period that followed the Second World War, neon signs substituted the traditional oil lamps and banners that shopkeepers used to advertise their shops. In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the “sea of neon lights” in Kowloon trading streets such as Nathan Road became a symbol of growth and wealth. Neon lights were viewed as a symbol of prosperity, and all types of trades adopted them. Neon became a common feature of the city’s experience as much as part of the identity of the city that was projected externally. In contrast, neon signs in cities in mainland China such as Shanghai became symbols of consumerism and decadence in the communist imagination (Braester 2005). In Hong Kong, neon has been celebrated by vendors and businessmen who have adopted it and enabled its proliferation, by the customers who have been attracted by it, by the tourists who have sent home pictures of the sea of lights, and by all those who attached the name of Hong Kong indelibly to neon. The signs are varied and in many colors. Neon is reproduced in unique ways across the city. Factors that

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differentiate neon billboards are size, iconography, typography, style and virtuosity of calligraphy, and the flickering effects that accompany neon. These variations reflect closely the process of making neon lights. Each piece of neon is an artwork. Being an artisanal industry, its development required real enthusiasm by customers who wanted a personalized product and were willing to make a significant investment in a neon billboard. Light emitting diode (LED) lighting was already developed in the 1960s, but commercial applications became popular at the turn of the millennium. Shopkeepers in Hong Kong like LED lighting because it consumes less electricity but provides more-intense light. Compared with the traditional craft of neon signs, LED signs can be produced relatively inexpensively, and shopkeepers can choose from a range of available designs. The main difference between LEDs and neon is that the former privileges the dots over the more intuitive lines in neon signs. Unlike neon, LED lights are relatively homogeneous in terms of designs and colors. LED lighting offers possibilities that neon never offered, such as giant signs over whole building facades, with dynamic effects. It also allows for complex designs, is free from irreparable mistakes, and provides clear light without flickering and buzzing. Since the late 2000s, LED signs have appeared in the streets of Hong Kong, often replacing neon signs. Business owners have found LED signs cheaper in terms of both installation and use. The unique, personalized style of neon signs, however, is lost. The removal of neon signs continues. Removal is not a trivial matter because most neon billboards are located in densely populated areas with constant traffic of cars and pedestrians, which makes it very difficult to mount a large-scale removal operation. Maintaining them can be increasingly expensive because craft masters are rapidly disappearing. Faced with deteriorated neon signs and the dictate of the government, business owners who are not already convinced by LED lighting might nevertheless adopt the new technology to avoid future headaches. Thus, as LED lights proliferate, neon billboards appear to recede. Neon is not disappearing entirely. Embedded with a sense of nostalgia, neon signs have gained new significance – they have come to represent a disappearing past. A museum curator explained that in the context of Hong Kong’s return to China, “One of the responses among this younger generation is to . . . reassert this notion of a local Hong Kong identity, as opposed and differentiated from mainland China . . . this fear of Hong Kong becoming . . . ‘just another Chinese city’ . . . that has produced a general sense of nostalgia, that again has been very, very pronounced among young people” (HK Interview 29, 2015). This attitude has led to cultural manifestations that consider neon a celebration of the uniqueness of the city’s identity. If, in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, neon was a means to display the local names and customs of the Chinese living under the rule of London, in the

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post-integration context, it constitutes a means to differentiate local culture from that of mainland China. Against the portrayals of neon-based decadence, Hong Kong’s neon billboards are celebrated as heritage. Heritage in Hong Kong is notably implicated in multiple urban struggles, from the privatization of public space to state-led urban renewal and regional economic integration (Barber 2014). For example, the Blue House in Wan Chain, Hong Kong Island, incorporates a few of the remaining buildings from the nineteenth century and is a bastion against gentrification. In the spring of 2015, the Blue House organized an exhibition that celebrated local signs, in which neon lighting played a key role. Here, neon represented a bastion of resistance of traditional Chinese culture against capital-led regeneration. In 2014, the Kowloon Cultural Centre organized an online neon exhibition that requested the submission of pictures and its organizers were overwhelmed by the number of submissions.1 With a display of the latest LED lighting technologies, neon lights expose a contradiction between diverse forms of urban nostalgia and the aspirations to be a modern world city. However, the portrait of neon lights as unique to Hong Kong’s heritage is leasing a new life to neon lights and opening up the spaces of possibility. Neon signs are now collected in museums and activists’ spaces. Neon craftsmen become artists whose work is exhibited (something hardly imaginable in the case of mass-produced LED lights). In doing so, neon lights are part of new forms of material politics. Take the fishing village of Lei Yue Mun, for example, which the Hong Kong tourist board describes as “a slice of old Hong Kong alive and well in the modern metropolis.” Lei Yue Mun’s presence in the landscape is announced by gigantic neon billboards visible from far away. Neon guides the visitor across fish restaurants and away from the poorer households in the back of the village. The village, like Hong Kong, is only visible from far away (the billboards) or from close (the crowded restaurants). In Lei Yue Mun, neon billboards are designed to address both scales. The signs conceal Lei Yue Mun’s conversion from mining village to seafood paradise in the 1970s, though. Now the village is threatened by the demands for space for redevelopment. The neon billboards stand defiant, markers of the identity of the village against the skyline of the global city. The changing fortunes of neon in Hong Kong expose the material politics of urban energy landscapes. 7.9 Transition Trajectories Hong Kong’s energy landscape is a landscape of contradiction. As a changeable, dynamic environment, it appears to have one of the most stable energy landscapes I can imagine. The stability of energy flows is conditioned by the political economy

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of the city, and although the structures that supported the city in conditions of autarky have progressively been eroded with the progressive integration with the energy system of mainland China, efforts to control the supply of electricity and gas predominate. At the center of such efforts is the discourse of reliability. Reliability is the main articulating principle of the relationship between public and private as stated in the SCAs and similar governing documents with fuel companies. The governance system allows for the operation of other companies, but in this context, few find doing so competitive. In material terms, the result is a continuous dependence upon fossil fuels. The substitution of coal by natural gas for electricity generation could lead to a decrease of carbon emissions in the coming decades, but this change is not akin to a fundamental realignment of the energy supply. Similarly, energy use choreographies point toward a relatively stable configuration of everyday dwelling practices and tasks that configure energy use. The built environment appears to structure practices of energy use. Lack of space is characteristic of Hong Kong life but becomes extreme in the case of subdivided units and forms of housing that do not fit the dominant modes of habitation. Addressing carbon emissions alongside energy access goals will require, in Hong Kong, addressing the current challenges within the housing sector. The housing crisis and established ideas about housing and energy provision drive forward the energy demand. Although reductions in energy intensity point toward improvements in the housing stock, a broader change in patterns of habitation might be needed to address the current challenges of the energy landscape. This urban energy landscape is one in which specific artifacts – neon lights, air conditioning units – display a powerful influence on the city’s material politics. Change is the one thing missing in the urban energy landscapes of Hong Kong. Mostly, there is a generalized perception that Hong Kong can do little to change the current situation. Alternative visions of energy futures focus on large-scale renewable energy facilities to reduce coal dependency or large-scale programs for energy efficiency. Land scarcity hampers the development of both renewable energy infrastructures and alternative models of housing. Energy efficiency programs have long been implemented in the residential and commercial sectors with varied degrees of success (Lam 1996), but they have not transformed the principles that inform the governance of energy or the implementation of alternatives for energy provision and housing. In Hong Kong, a relatively homogeneous energy network is coupled with energy choreographies in an extremely obdurate energy landscape.

8 Industrial Legacy and Governance through Activism: Urban Energy Landscapes in Concepción, Chile

todo mezclado en el siglo de las luces donde usted trabaja de antorcha, de petróleo, de luz a gas pobre donde usted anda, con tongo y a pata pelada echando humo barato1 (Alcalde 1969, p 282).

8.1 Introduction All cities have their writers. The Chilean poet Alfonso Alcalde (1921–92) chronicled the transformations of the city of Concepción through its political struggles. In the midst of the rapid industrialization and development of the energy sector in the 1960s, Alcalde documented numerous struggles around energy, including the decline of coal, the political repression of the coalmines, and the exploitation of the Bio Bio River that resembled the genocide of the indigenous Mapuches in the hands of the conquistadores. He also documented the development of the two-speed city of Gran Concepción – the industrial city of the engineer, the technician, and the bureaucrat – and the marginal urban spaces in which small scale, traditional businesses survive. Alcalde was a stern critic of the engineer “who measures the doubtful frontier between people.” In his writing, Alcalde revealed the subaltern views hidden behind hegemonic discourses of regional development and national interest (Ostria Reinoso 2016). Alcalde celebrated the daily life in the city of Concepción from the perspective of the dispossessed: the food and celebrations, the drunkards and the prostitutes, the trials of hard work of the miners and the fishermen, and the embrace of lovers as a defiant gesture against death. In Alcalde’s writing, death awaits behind every corner in every street and every hill facing the sea – behind the mines, the warehouses, and the industrial chimneys. Oil, gas, iron, and coal are a central part of Alcalde’s poetry and reporting (Alcalde 1973), as forces that shape 150

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the routine life of Concepción’s poorest inhabitants. The Bio Bio region emerges from a sacrifice of its people and its nature in the name of an obscure and bureaucratic project of modernization. Alcalde represents the disquieting manifestation of unequal economics in an industrial energy landscape. This chapter focuses on the urban energy landscape in Gran Concepción as a case study to analyze the following question: how does the constitution of a large metropolitan area dedicated to large-scale, export-oriented industrial and energy production shape people’s lives and experiences? After the coup d’état in 1973, Chile became a laboratory for neoliberal ideologies. Paradoxically, neoliberal ideologies led to a reinforcement of state-led projects and technocratic bureaucracies that remained operative after the transition to democracy. If the urban energy landscape of Concepción reflects what occurs when national interest projects are implemented in the context of savage neoliberalism, it also reflects a profound contradiction at the heart of neoliberal practice, which both repudiates and necessitates the advancement of the State. In terms of governance, a strict focus on top-down management to guarantee the workings of a centralized network has led to a visible spatial fragmentation of the energy landscape. A landscape that responds to the national interest, providing energy for large industry complexes and for the generation of energy resources for export, coexists with a local landscape with its own circuits of energy provision that relies on the energy resources of the city and its hinterland. The spatial manifestation of the landscape in Gran Concepción at first might appear fragmented, but it is actually divided neatly between two spaces whose economic flows operate with different rhythms. One economic space, shaped by industrial interests oriented toward the insertion of local economic processes into the global economy, follows development strategies that emphasize the national strategic importance of Gran Concepción and the region of Bio Bio. The other economic space, less consolidated around a single set of interests, reflects the perspectives of those whose livelihoods depend upon place-based operations. This second economic space relates to the subaltern perspectives of those who have been systematically excluded from Concepción’s history of industrial development. The result is the structuration of the energy landscape around high-energy-consuming industrial production centers, surrounded by the inhabited fabric of the city. The coexistence of landscapes with radically different vocations translates into the high visibility of social conflicts surrounding energy issues. In this context, local activist groups have turned to a form of “governance by activism” that seeks to influence broader arguments and ideas about the desirability of energy developments, beyond specific siting conflicts in Concepción. In recent years, there have been shifts away from the technocratic approach in government, with an increased interest in participatory processes, an acceptance of the

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environment-based arguments against energy developments (although there is little reflection on social justice arguments), and interest from business because companies find that processes of engagement with local communities facilitate their operation. These changes have led to an emphasis on the inclusion of local actors in energy-related decisions, which is reflected in the proliferation of corporate social responsibility departments and consultancies dedicated to community consultation. The new focus on participation emphasizes ensuring the local acceptance of nationally designed new energy developments over improving decision-making at the local level or integrating energy planning and territorial policies. However, in the context of a long history of struggles and political action around energy conflicts, these governance changes are not yet visible in the energy landscape. For the majority of people living in Concepción, political activism is the only possibility to intervene in the governance of local energy resources. 8.2 Coevolution of Energy Services and the Urban Fabric The metropolitan area of Gran Concepción extends along 60 kilometers of coast, between the sea and the mountain range Cordillera de la Costa, at both sides of the mouth of the Bio Bio River. The urban area, with over 1 million inhabitants, is the capital of the resource-rich Bio Bio region. Gran Concepción developed out of a history of industrial development and strategic resource interests. After the decline in the production and export of wheat and then coal, the main keystones of industrial development in Concepción in the mid-nineteenth century, the period to the mid-twentieth century was characterized by the deployment of a strategy of growing poles, which followed the developmental ideologies of the political coalitions in power (Aliste, Contreras et al. 2012). This change meant the development of large, state-owned primary industries such as the steel industry in Huachipato in 1950, the development of key infrastructures for the energy sector such as the petrochemical complex of San Vicente in 1966, and the state boost of the fishing industry and forestry. Industrial development concentrated in two municipalities, Talcahuano and Concepción, creating a dual pattern of urban development that separated more prosperous parts of the population from those who depended upon a traditional economic model (Gurruchaga 1983). Interest in the exploitation of natural resources grew during Pinochet’s dictatorship, which initiated a process of regionalization, whereby each region had to take advantage of its natural resources according to nationally set priorities (Almuna, Álvarez et al. 2015). In the 1980s, the orientation toward international trade and the privatization of public companies (in Concepción, 95 percent of public companies were sold by 1980, occasionally at ridiculous prices) consolidated this extractive model of economic development, only partially challenged by the emergence of

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Figure 8.1 A view of the city of Lota, former mining center in the metropolitan area of Concepción. Credit: The World in HDR/Shutterstock.

environmental sensitivities in the 1990s (Almuna, Álvarez et al. 2015, Araneda and Contreras 2015). This structure of the regional economy has influenced contemporary narratives of economic development. As a local activist explains, the sector directs “all work towards the requirements of external rather than internal markets” (CC Interview, 2016). The ten municipalities of Gran Concepción were gradually differentiated between the service center in the city of Concepción, municipalities with a great industrial and logistics development (Talcahuano), and poorer municipalities that constituted reservoirs of land and labor, some of them emerging from a heritage of poverty around the coal mines and the three coal-fired plants (such as Lota and Coronel) (Figure 8.1). The history of the city has also been shaped by frequent disasters and constant adaptation to socio-ecological change (Rojas, Mardones et al. 2017). Crises have been frequently used to foster processes of regeneration, and occasionally gentrification, at the expense of deprived communities (Matus, Ganter et al. 2016). Today, Gran Concepción has an orientation toward international trade. It boasts four major industrial ports: Talcahuano, San Vicente, Lirquén, and Coronel – the greatest concentration of ports in Chile. From heavy steel industry to manufacturing and forestry industries, Greater Concepción is an industrial and logistics hub.

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The energy sector has had a central importance in the development of the city. Hualpén, one of Gran Concepción’s municipalities, hosts the Bio Bio refinery, one of Chile’s two major refineries operated by the national oil company (Empresa Nacional del Petróleo; ENAP). Another municipality, Coronel, hosts three coalfired power plants called Santa María (managed by the Chilean group Colbún) and Bocamina I and II (currently managed by the multinational energy company ENEL). Energy has played a key role in the development of this economic model: first, because of the dominance of energy-intensive industries such as iron and steel works; second, because of the prominence of industries of energy generation and transformation, such as the thermal plants and the refinery; and third, because of the dependence of key industries upon endogenous energy resources, such as the copper mines in the central region of the country, and the paper industry, which is the largest consumer of biomass. The history of industrially oriented development and the emphasis on endogenous resources have led to an urban energy landscape that reflects the dependence of the region upon both fossil fuels and biomass. 8.3 Energy Flows and Urban Circulation Oil derivatives, coal, and natural gas accounted for 47% of the total final energy consumption in 2015 (38%, 7%, and 2%, respectively). Biomass accounts for 38% of the final energy uses, with the difference that biomass consumption is increasing, whereas the consumption of oil and coal is diminishing. The final consumption figures for 2015 show that industrial uses accounted for 54% of all energy used in the region of the Bio Bio (39,674 teracalories), with such industries concentrated in the region of Gran Concepción (Ministerio de Energía 2016). Such data stands in contrast with figures for residential consumption (13%) and transport (17%). Being the main consumers of energy, industries in Gran Concepción have greatly influenced energy policy, particularly the imperative of keeping energy costs low because they are directly related to the competitiveness of the industry (unlike consumer prices). Moreover, the Bio Bio region is a key articulating region in the constitution and organization of national energy systems. For example, a key infrastructure shaping the energy system in Gran Concepción is the Central Interconnected System (SIC), a centralized alternating current network in Chile that provides electricity to over 90% of the population. The Bio Bio region generates approximately 35% of the electricity in the SIC, although the region hosts only 12% of the population. At least 42 out of 54 municipalities in the Bio Bio region have energy generation projects, which provide up to 4,753 MW to the SIC. Moreover, the country tends to look

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toward the region of Bio Bio in times of crisis, whether to revitalize debates around the coalmines, increase the productivity of biomass, or situate Gran Concepción in the circuits of the global circulation of natural gas. Liquid natural gas is imported by ship and re-gasified in coastal plants to supply the industrial, commerce/services and residential areas, as either methane through urban pipelines or butane and propane in bottled cylinders. Final energy uses only account for 30% of the total energy budget in the Bio Bio region. The rest relate to the transformation of primary energy in refineries and generation facilities, in which the dominance of fossil fuel resources is definitive, although biomass continues to play an important role. Although environmental policy often focuses on the use of biomass in households, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Energy, less than 10% of the consumption of biomass relates to residential use; the majority is used for energy generation and the paper industry (60% of the total biomass used in the Bio Bio region). Overall, the development of Gran Concepción as one of the largest industryenergy complexes in Chile has led to the development of world-class infrastructures for mobility and communications geared to industrial use, which actively works to the exclusion of the urban poor. Similar trends can be observed in relation to the electricity and fuel flows that shape the city and that are chiefly directed toward the reproduction of the industrial system. Although both hydropower and biomass are consolidated as key sources of energy (with hydropower being the main source of electricity in the city of Concepción, despite hosting two coal-fired power plants in Coronel), there have been attempts to develop a local renewable energy industry. The potential of the solar industry in the area is supported by recent research (Campos, Troncoso et al. 2016), and small wind power projects are in progress. Progress in these projects has been, for the most part, small. At the industrial level, there have been technological improvements, particularly the development of cogeneration processes, now a norm in large industries. Simultaneously, there are active efforts to promote a shift toward natural gas as a low carbon, less polluting measure (Mardones and Jimenez 2015). 8.4 Urban Choreographies of Energy Use How is energy integrated in the daily life of the inhabitants in Gran Concepción? Patterns of energy consumption are shaped by the polycentric structure of the metropolitan area and the different forms of housing that predominate. Although there have been dramatic reductions in the indicators of income poverty, conditions of habitation are harsh for poorer families. For example, nearly 20 percent of the population in the city lives in what the government defines as overcrowding

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conditions (BCN 2016). There are substantial differences between richer municipalities such as San Pedro and Concepción and those that host households in lowincome categories, such as Coronel and Tomé. The majority of dwellings, almost 80 percent, are detached or semidetached, most often built with timber-framed structures and brickwork (Alvarado, Soto et al. 2014). Even in smaller dwelling units, extensions and modifications of the original unit of habitation are common. Precarious dwellings abound, with roofs built with metal sheets and deficient ventilation. Thermal comfort, particularly in winter, is a household priority. The transcripts from participatory workshops suggest that multiple fuels are available. Participants used different means, from gas-cylinder heaters to firewood and, more rarely, paraffin stoves. Electrical devices such as small heaters and blankets were rare and mostly for personal use only. Participants eventually agreed that firewood was the main fuel they use for residential heating, a view shared by all interviewees. Less recognized is the role of firewood/biomass in public buildings and industries (particularly the paper industry). Firewood is very visible in the urban energy landscape of Gran Concepción. Despite representing only 9 percent of the total consumption of biomass in 2015, the domestic use of firewood continues to be a major preoccupation for most actors in the environmental and energy sectors. Charcoal and coal have all but disappeared from household use, except for some pockets of use exclusively in areas in which it was traditionally produced, such as Coronel. Gas is viewed as the next frontier. However, wider cultural and material relationships make firewood a central component of Gran Concepción’s energy landscape. The patterns of use of firewood and gas can be used to characterize divisions in the energy landscape around those households that are integrated in the exportoriented economy (in high-income areas) and those households that remain dependent upon firewood. An engineer in a major energy company explained this pattern: . . . at the residential level, Gran Concepción still has an important prevalence of firewood, in many households, which may occupy electricity for appliances – but firewood is used for heating, and in the more precarious communities for cooking too. Think of Hualqui, or Coronel, which also have firewood stoves. Natural gas is used in some households of the more developed communities, such as Concepción and part of San Pedro . . . and in certain areas, we can see some users such as Talcahuano and Las Lomas too. But the rest of communities do not have access to gas . . . so 50–55% of the households still use firewood and in places like Coronel or Chiguayante more than 75% . . . and gas is a lot more expensive! That is why many households decide to use firewood. Another key reason that they also have more access to buy it, because firewood is sold everywhere (CC Interview 8, 2016).

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The above quote encapsulates three common assumptions about the practices of heating in Gran Concepción. First, gas is considered a superior, cleaner fuel, including both piped gas and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders. All interviewees but one (who represented the firewood industry) emphasized the desirability of a transition to gas away from firewood. Factors related to both fuel availability and models of urban development in the central urban areas have facilitated its adoption as a means of heating. However, it has yet to displace firewood. These factors include significant differences in prices, the complexity of institutional arrangements for gas distribution and the physical arrangements shaping both the provision of gas and its use in households. For example, LPG cylinders are more flexible than piped gas (which only reaches the richer neighborhoods). The structure of the tariffs is also an important factor limiting the access of poorer households to natural gas, as explained by a regional delegate of the Ministry of Energy (CC Interview 5, 2016). The emphasis on the transition to gas hinders an understanding of the actual needs for thermal comfort and cooking, both in higher and lower income households in Gran Concepción. Second, firewood use remains associated with poorer communities in the imagination of energy providers. The underlying assumption is that for households, firewood is a cheaper fuel. Because poverty is spatially configured, so is the use of firewood. In this type of narrative, firewood is an emergency fuel to support the poor because “banning the use of firewood in poor households would be a crime” (CC Interview 12, 2016). Third, physical access to firewood is easier, particularly for poor families. For example, the same interviewee explained that “firewood is sold everywhere.” This geographic availability pattern is perceptible in energy landscapes – a clear separation between those richer neighborhoods with infrastructures for gas provision and poorer neighborhoods with numerous firewood selling points. Although there is a visible separation of contiguous energy landscapes, this separation is not the whole story. Firewood is held in place by a series of physical and cultural relationships, and low incomes alone do not explain its prevalence. The same interviewee, for example, later reflected on the complex factors that ultimately determine the suitability and cleanliness of firewood: the characteristics of the wood, how it is treated (particularly whether it is dry), and the actual stove used. Ultimately, simply banning firewood would be “a crime” not only because of the poor families that use it, but also for the complex web of livelihoods that depend upon its trade. Firewood has always been part of the Gran Concepción local economy, surviving economic transformations such as the abandonment of coal. Moreover, firewood is central to the local culture. It is not simply an emergency fuel for low-income families but rather an integral part of the energy cultures of Gran Concepción.

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For example, the centrality of firewood for the local culture also emerges in the discussions about cooking. In the participatory workshops, participants (mostly women) explained that they used a variety of fuels and appliances simultaneously. Although participants could describe in detail the ingredients of their food and the actual preparation of their recipes, they tended to “black box” their practices of energy use, implying that these practices are shared (and hence, anyone would know them) and are part of the routine mechanization of the process of cooking. As they talked about the practices of food preparation through the day, three variables appeared to shape their cooking practices: habit, costs, and time.2 In terms of habits, the discussions linked the use of different fuels, stoves, and cooking styles in relation to the requirements of different meals. Only some participants emphasized costs as a consideration to select specific fuels. However, time also played a key role because many participants, particularly young ones, said that they would prefer to use electric appliances such as microwave ovens or water heaters to shorten the cooking times. Firewood again emerges as an important component associated with cultures of cooking. During the workshops, participants agreed on the central role of the fuel used to cook in relation to what is cooked and how. Firewood is linked to meals that take longer to cook, such as beans, or as a superior alternative to charcoal to prepare grilled meat, such as roasted lamb or beef. Firewood also links cooking with the creation of habitable space and a focal point that can serve to build family cohesion. The linkages between the use of firewood and the culture of food transcend class and demonstrate that firewood is widely used in different circumstances by all types of family. For example, in Chilean creole cooking there is a mythology associated with the meat roast, particularly beef, as cooked outdoors. Orlove (1997) has demonstrated the traditional importance of meat in the constitution of the moral economy of Chile. Eating meat, particularly beef, is common in all types of households in the region of Bio Bio (Schnettler, Silva et al. 2008). There is abundant anecdotal evidence of the role of firewood in making “a good roast,” from restaurants that publicize the use of a firewood oven to the advice on traditional Chilean cooking given in books and websites. For example, one of the activists for firewood certification related an anecdote involving Francis Mallmann, a celebrity chef from Argentina, who during a culinary event in Chile requested “lenga firewood” (from the species Nothofagus pumilio, an endemic – and protected – tree from Patagonia) and required it to be certified, from a known origin. He required firewood, and not just any firewood, but high quality firewood to make an “authentic” meat roast. Clearly, outdoors cooking is not the norm. Cooking a meat roast outdoors is often presented as a celebratory, manly event, perhaps separated from the daily practices of cooking led by women. However, anecdotes such as this one

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Figure 8.2 Firewood is central for the “asado,” a style of roasting meat vertically that is appreciated in Chile. Credit: ermess/Shutterstock.

can focus attention on the cultural significance of certain firewood cooking practices. Cooking depends upon the stacking of fuels and the adaptation to different rhythms of cooking and eating, which in the case of Gran Concepción remain misunderstood (Figure 8.2). Other forms of energy use remained less discussed. Electricity plays a key role in lighting, communication uses, and other specific uses (electric heating and cookstoves are rare, although some developers are promoting all-electrical housing solutions). In urban areas in Chile, electricity is ubiquitous but expensive. Activists criticize the manner in which privatization occurred as one of the explanations for the price of electricity. The use of electricity in lighting and communication is ubiquitous, but there are changes underway. Participants in workshops found themselves at the two ends of the digital divide, with younger members emphasizing the importance of smart phones and tablets, whereas older members focused their discussions on the television and the mobile phone. A push toward energy efficiency is also changing practices of electricity use. For example, workshop participants had extensive discussions comparing different types of bulbs. Such discussions showed that in their homes, most participants would use different types of bulbs depending upon the perceived requirements of

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each room in the household and the actual physical connections existing in the room. Some policymakers with a specific interest in energy-efficiency policies remarked that the only visible changes that had occurred at the level of the households were that there was a greater interest in understanding the consumption of different appliances. There is less recognition of the importance of the use of energy in households for productive uses. Alongside the large industries, a large part of the population works in smaller companies or microbusinesses. In the city of Concepción, for example, over 11,000 microbusinesses were taxed in 2013, employing 10,238 workers. With an average of 0.86 positions per company, these microbusinesses are only one manifestation of how service and small industry companies are constituted in the city. In addition, they depend greatly upon the provision of energy to their location, often a household, which might have been extended or modified to host the business. As one participant in one of the workshops explained, Participant 3: “among us, there are a lot of people who work in their houses . . . for example his [pointing] mum is a dressmaker and uses energy for many things: the iron, the sewing machine. Also, there are a lot of people who have a workshop in their houses and need energy to power tools” Participant 2: “People produce all kinds of things in their houses” Overall, there is little understanding of the overlapping of productive and personal uses in households, particularly considering that the overall consumption of energy in households is relatively small when compared with the heavy and manufacturing industries that have a greater power to shape energy policies. From the cultural significance of firewood to the maintenance of livelihoods, the energy choreographies in Concepción remain unexplored. 8.5 Governing Energy Three dynamics characterize the structure of governance of the urban energy landscape in the large metropolitan area of Concepción. First, there is a mismatch between the structures of energy and territorial governance. Second, there is the isolation of the public, which turns to conflict and activism as a means to advance locally relevant plans for energy action. Finally, there is a visible reaction of the private sector toward processes of enrolment of communities through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs oriented toward the local acceptance of large energy projects. The case of the development of the PDA plan at the end of this section offers an example of how these processes of governance unfold in the metropolitan area.

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The bulk of energy policy in the region of the Bio Bio is produced at the national level, dissociated from strategies of territorial development. The governance structure combines national centralization with sectorial independence, both in the public and private spheres. The Ministry of Energy sets, implements, and controls national plans and policies. The Superintendence of Electricity and Fuels regulates the industry, and the Environmental Assessment System sets the conditions for the operation of the industry. These organizations are independent from each other, and all have regional branches that control the enactment of national guidelines locally. Public companies such as the National Electricity Coordinator (CDECSIC) and the National Company of Oil (ENAP) also operate highly centralized structures. Viewed at the national level, local priorities are reduced to externalities and environmental impacts. More recently, there have been attempts to incorporate public consultation as a means to open up energy policy, but these consultations do not reflect the local preoccupations in locations such as Concepción. The national energy strategy “Energy 2050” is a comprehensive and ambitious program to create renewable power sources that, however, envisages little transformation of the existing governance structures (Ministerio de Energía 2017). The plan emphasizes that it is the product of a national consultation with over 4,000 participants, but it reduces protests against energy projects to environmental concerns about biodiversity. There have been efforts to deliver an energy policy at the regional level aligned with other territorial objectives. Like other regions, Bio Bio has a presidential delegate, the “Intendente,” who is also the head of the elected body, the Regional Council, which is in charge of budget decisions and large infrastructure projects. The most recent iteration of the Regional Development Strategy (2015–2030) recognizes the need to address historically produced inequalities and proposes a series of models that challenge the model of development in industrial clusters. The Strategy has a section to advance sustainable energy measures that also emphasizes the need to “advance the implementation of energy planning through its integration with existing tools for territorial planning . . . ” (Bio Bío 2015, p. 22). This objective remains, however, an aspiration because there are few means to make that integration possible. A planner from the regional government explained, “The link between energy and urban planning? None. Indeed, this absence is the cause of these problems” (CC Interview 10, 2016). The Ministry of Energy also has a regional secretariat (SEREMI). During the interviews, however, the members of the SEREMI of energy in Concepción refer exclusively to national objectives to justify any intervention. Following their interventions in public meetings, other actors perceive the SEREMI of energy as an organization that depends upon nationally set political objectives and has little responsiveness to local concerns. In particular, activists perceive a complicit alliance between the institutions with a capacity to intervene in the energy system and the

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companies whose operations align with national energy strategies (CC Interviews 3 and 6, 2016). Other interviewees raised questions about the competences of the SEREMI Energy and the instruments available to intervene directly in debates that are already shaped by techno-economic arguments and in which decision-making occurs in the country’s capital, Santiago de Chile. In that sense, they appreciate government officials’ attempts to integrate local priorities into those strategies: [u]ltimately it is about how to make a plan which recognizes energy as a priority, and our region as an energy power, without having a negative impact on the people. In the SEREMI, they have started to do some local participation, but much is needed . . . but they are interested in energy planning at the metropolitan level” (CC Interview, 2016).

The possibilities for local government to intervene in energy policy are limited by the division in boroughs, the lack of coordination at the metropolitan level, and the limited means of communication with other levels of government. Each of the ten boroughs in the metropolitan area of Gran Concepción has an elected mayor heading an elected body of local councilors. Some of these councilors have been vocal in bringing forward different local concerns about energy developments, including opposition to large generation projects. However, this body has little or no influence over energy policies, other than energy efficiency initiatives at the local level. At the metropolitan level, there are only a few sectoral policies, including a metropolitan masterplan, a metropolitan decontamination plan, and policies for the metropolitan coordination of transport and disaster risk. For example, each borough has a binding masterplan, the Communal Regulation Plan for territorial planning, and these plans are organized in a metropolitan masterplan, the Metropolitan Regulation Plan. However, these instruments are not sufficient to challenge siting conflicts around energy industries, pollution challenges, or the development of energy alternatives and energy innovation. The result is that there are no arenas to voice local concerns against the dominant model of energy development. Beyond the local level, territorial planning continues to align with the priorities of industrial development. The overall situation translates into governance instruments that reproduce an unequal energy landscape. The following section presents an example, the decontamination plan of Gran Concepción, to exemplify how the operation of these governance structures reproduces technocratic discourses and ignores the concerns of local inhabitants.

8.6 Environmental Planning as Energy Governance Over the last three decades, concerns have been rising about pollution in the metropolitan area of Concepción. Controlling pollution has become a social

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demand, a policy priority, and a business concern. During the last few years, the debate crystalized in a government-led process to deliver an environmental decontamination plan (Plan Decontaminación Atmosférica, PDA) for the metropolitan area, whose first version for public consultation was published in April 2017. The process started after the official declaration of the metropolitan area as an area saturated with fine particles (PM2.5). Several technicians from local universities elaborated different assessments of the pollution. Based on this information, the PDA concluded that the main sources of pollution are domestic heating, which generates 59% of PM2.5 emissions according to the plan, and stationary sources, corresponding to 34% of the emissions. The PDA has also provided an ensemble of actions to regulate the quality of firewood, give specifications for burning stoves, and improve thermal efficiency in households. For stationary sources, the PDA proposes stricter regulatory emission limits (MME 2017). The plan, however, relies on an interpretation of pollution levels and its causes that directs attention to households rather than stationary sources. An economic evaluation of the plan estimated that households would bear 65% of the costs of implementation of the PDA due to its restrictions on the use of firewood and requirements to improve the thermal efficiency of households and appliances (Rojas, Mardones et al. 2017). In contrast, industries responsible for pollution as stationary sources would bear only 29% of the costs, and this limitation does not consider that meeting the requirements of the plan will depend upon industrial interventions likely to improve the competitiveness of those installations. As one local technician explained, air pollution can be understood as a question requiring innovative solutions in the industrial sector: If you do not have an energy alternative to reduce emissions in the industrial sector, you are tied from the point of view of options. For example, the industry could do fuel switching, for example, towards natural gas. You could have emissions reductions without necessarily increasing the costs for industries. Without clean alternatives, you will need to invest in filtering technologies, which are more costly (CC Interview 8, 2016).

However, the PDA emphasizes the consequences of household consumption of firewood. The conclusions of the PDA can only be understood in a context in which the interests of the industry are prioritized over those of the rest of the population. There are several reasons that would support an alternative plan, with a stronger focus on control of emissions of stationary sources rather than of household emissions. First, the PDA could reflect the results of a full inventory of emissions. The focus on PM2.5 hides the fact that industrial sources emit other emissions that are considered precursors of PM2.5. For example, stationary sources are responsible for 62% of NOx emissions and 99% of SO2 emissions (Rojas, Mardones et al. 2017).

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Moreover, whereas household emissions correspond to a much larger number of emitters distributed throughout the whole metropolitan area, the stationary sources of emissions create hazards in the immediate vicinity of their operation. The identification of pollution sources depends upon the location of measuring stations and their capacity to reflect periodic changes in those emissions; the approach is not necessarily designed to measure stationary-point emissions. However, epidemiological research shows that communities living in the proximity of coal-fired plants in Coronel have significantly higher rates of bronchial diseases than do communities located far from stationary sources in Talcahuano (UgarteAviles, Manterola et al. 2017). As one local activist explained, the effect of the three coal-fired power plants and the refinery is felt acutely locally but mostly by powerless communities that live in the surrounding areas. In the same vein, the PDA does not reflect the spatial distribution of risk, the history of injustices in the area, or the capacity to respond to the proposed measures of those most affected by those injustices. Rather than establishing mechanisms to palliate the perception that the metropolitan area is sacrificed for the imposition of strategic projects for the national interest with little local benefit, the PDA has contributed to raise even more tensions around existing conflicts. As one local activist explains, the PDA is locally perceived as a means to consolidate industrial interests: . . . we came together to analyze every item in the PDA. We formulated our pros and cons for every item. We wrote a response letter and sent it within the legal dispositions to elaborate the PDA. But we did not really know what happened with it. We were not sure whether the PDA was going to come already assembled and cooked from Santiago or they were really going to consider our concerns here, in the regions. Because the order from Santiago was “stop firewood” because we have [in the country] two industrial lobbies, the natural gas industry and the oil industry which are talking directly to government, and they are saying, “here in Chile only gas and paraffin must be sold (CC Interview 3, 2016).

Local environmental activists, for example, argue that the most dangerous chemical compounds are emitted by industries rather than by firewood stoves. They call for the relocation of industries, instead of the relocation of people living around the industries. In a context of lack of understanding between different parties, any critical episode of pollution generates an angry response within the communities. Ultimately, the PDA is a reflection of a system of governance characterized by large levels of centralized and distant bureaucracy in government and continuous conflicts around energy facilities. Communities have developed a strategy of governance through activism, whose operation and responses are explained below.

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8.7 Local Practices as Spaces of Possibility For activists and community organizers, active attempts to engage in protest constitute the only opportunity to have their voices heard. Socio-environmental conflicts have been continuous since the 1990s, mostly related to the opposition of communities to the construction of new energy projects and against the effects of the already operating energy industries. In the case of the metropolitan area of Gran Concepcion, the most stark conflicts have been the continuous struggle of the residents near the ENAP petrochemical compound in Hualpén against the industry’s atmospheric emission of particles and gases; the opposition to the expansion of the Bocamina coal thermoelectric plant by ENDESA and the construction of a new coal thermoelectric plant by Colbún, both in Coronel; the opposition to the approval of a wind power park from ENHOL in an urban natural reserve in Hualpén; and the opposition to the construction of a maritime regasification terminal by BIOBIOGENERA in Penco. Levels of conflict appear to have increased over the last decade, extending from fossil fuels to more sustainable initiatives for wind energy, for example. Paradoxically, these conflicts appear to have energized communities that have viewed activism as a means to influence wider thinking about energy and shape national policies. At least, government interviewees highlighted citizens’ intervention in key processes of governance: With respect to citizens, I think they have been gradually empowered to intervene in these [energy] themes. They understand more, they have a clear idea of what are their rights, they reclaim more. Still citizens feel that, in some way, companies [take advantage] and they feel abused. Many times, companies are installed in very poor communities. There is a need in the private sector to respect the environment and to generate benefits for those who live in it (CC Interview 1, 2016).

In doing so, citizen groups have been able to articulate their opposition to current models of development and trigger action to relocate them or to compensate them for relocation. They explain how they attempt to shape debates using every instance of public consultation and delaying the processes of giving permits. What we see here is an attempt to create new forms of governance through mobilization and protest. This “governance through activism” represents an attempt to use collective action to construct alternatives to promote different decisions and management of the environment. Simultaneously, “governance through activism” has become a key tool to express alternative perspectives on the development model that suits the metropolitan region of Concepción. To a certain extent, local protest movements have been effective in shaping energy policy. The persistence of citizens’ movements over time, for example, has

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been a factor that has led to certain successes and, as explained above, the growing concern about the integration of energy planning and territorial policies. Although the government has insisted on regulatory and economy decisions being centralized, particularly the siting of industrial facilities, the private companies addressing the local consequences of those decisions are progressively turning to managing local concerns to avoid costly delays in the implementation of projects. For example, a community leader in Hualpén explained the history of the relationship with ENAP as follows, quoted here at length: This story started 45 years ago, when they installed themselves here, but the settlement went on growing next to ENAP, suffering foul smells, emergency episodes, pollution, discrimination. The company always had certain relationships with the community, mostly giving sweets for Christmas, supporting football teams, that kind of thing. Being Hualpén, all the support was through the mayor [who supported ENAP unconditionally]. Then, in 2007, I think, there was a rain of white ash. At dawn, all Hualpén was covered with some kind of snow, particulates from the plant. And people got angry . . . [ENAP] offered [money] to clean the houses. That was worse; they added fuel to the fire. We said, “this is not acceptable,” and more people join us, to ask for more, to demand ENAP in the courts . . . and the municipality closed the doors to us. I only remember very aggressive propaganda against us . . . then, the earthquake happened in 2010, and we did not know where to go, so we asked ENAP to help us evacuate and then, what do you think happened? There was a change of government, both at the national level and in the municipal government, and the old mayor left, so the new authorities had no financial links with the company. So, we found ourselves more free . . . then, even the politicians that agitated against us turned their jackets in our favor . . . then, a management panel was established in Santiago and then even the management in the company changed, with a complete different position towards us . . . I think they got tired to be in the papers (CC Interview 16, 2016).

In many respects, the above is a classic story of a contaminated community (cf. Edelstein 1988), its struggles to demand environmental justice, and its attempt to have their environmental worries recognized by the industry, followed by the occurrence of dramatic events. However, it has a twist, namely, an understanding of the political dynamics of local government and how these can be turned in favor of community activism, influencing action at the national level. This situation places the large industries in the position of having to justify their role in the development of the region, as is clear in the interviews with actors from the private sector, who emphasize their collaboration with local consultants and how their company benefits the Bio Bio region rather than reinforcing their role in national development strategies. This approach constitutes a fundamental challenge to the developmental and extractive industries accessing the territory underlying the imagined city of Gran Concepción (Aliste and Musset 2014).

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However, strategies of governance through activism are fostering an institutional change around environmental action. As energy companies have become aware of the increasing costs of conflicts with communities, they have turned to rethinking those relationships. Every company appears to have a well-funded Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) department with a corresponding program of action, including social projects or direct payments to communities. However, because traditional strategies have failed to achieve business objectives, new intermediary actors have irrupted in the governance landscape; consultants and academics play different roles in planning and siting conflicts, but mostly act as intermediaries between complicated interests: This is where we see our role as consultants, in delivering a diagnostic look on a situation and specify the intervention. From a social perspective, it is obvious that there is greater pressure capacity, of socialization of problems through different channels. Among the communities, there are long-established organizations with a track record of active fight against an unresolved problem . . . the large megaprojects of Chile, especially in the energy sector, have lately been questioned because of their environmental and social consequences. They represent a majority view that the big enterprises have not done anything, or at least, cannot translate their profits into benefits to the surrounding community . . . These megaprojects do not generate local jobs . . . The local community cannot see itself as part of the project . . . and that is why these companies begin to understand that there is a high cost, at least of image costs, in the lack of development of a more harmonious or closer relationship with the community . . . equally the public institutions . . . have operative limitations . . . and they look for a coordinated solution but it is difficult . . . and there it emerges a niche, a space for consultants to contribute management elements for the resolution of problems. (CC Interview 11, 2016)

Thus, the relative success of community groups in challenging current models of development in a process of governance through activism has generated active responses among other actors. A new type of intermediary actor has developed to respond to the need to find collaboration spaces between the industry and communities. Because conflicts continue, these new actors appear not to have represented a radical change in the energy development of the region. However, they mark new trajectories of energy governance that in the long term can challenge the reproduction of an urban energy landscape oriented toward the extraction of resources. 8.8 Transition Trajectories The dominance of an extractive model of development has led to the consolidation of energy intensive industries and energy generation facilities. Although there have been major material changes, most notably the decline of coal mining, the overall model has adapted to different conditions. To what extent is there a possibility of change in this context? The analysis of governance, in particular the relative

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success of the strategy of governance through activism, suggests that there is a possibility of change on the horizon. For now, at the national level, there has been an acknowledgment of the emergence of conflicts around energy infrastructure and the need for a participatory approach to the development of energy policy. However, there has also been a reduction in conflicts addressing environmental concerns without recognizing the fundamental contradictions that underpin the current model of development. These concerns are better understood at the local and regional levels. Territorial policy discourses do not refer to the need to integrate energy planning as part of the processes of local development. This change of discourse has yet to deliver radical changes in the area. Faced with the limited capacity of local governments to radically shift the course of action, a new group of intermediary actors has emerged seeking to bring together the perspectives of both communities and industry. Their proposal is to generate development solutions in parallel with (or despite) territorial strategies of development. Although the potential for change is there, the actual prospects for change are not that optimistic. The PDA case exemplifies how the process of governance operates in practice. CSR and endless public consultations do not substitute for a plan that once again prioritizes the interests of large industries over local households and places the bulk of the costs of the policy on the poorest families. Without a radical change in the operation of the large industries, protests are likely to continue. How do these institutional processes of governance interact with the formation of the urban energy landscape? Activism depends upon the creation of public forums in which people bring together these views. Such forums are fostered by concrete events in the landscape and physical transformations that influence residents’ lives. Other symptoms of the industrial landscape – from the fragmentation of the landscape to the degradation of spaces – remain integrated in the particular landscapes in which everyday lives continue. This landscape is being progressively shaped by everyday practices such as the preparation of roast meat, the drying of fish, and the markets. Women and men shape marginal spaces as they live and work but the urban energy landscape remains divided between those areas sacrificed to maintain the flows of energy and materials, and those areas that people inhabit.

Part III Change and Transformation in Urban Energy Landscapes

9 Exploring Connective Tissues through Walking Different Urban Energy Landscapes

9.1 Introduction Is it possible to compare urban infrastructure landscapes in four radically different cities? The cases of Maputo, Bangalore, Hong Kong, and Concepción cannot be easily compared. At the outset of the project, my intention was to dispel any myths about the homogeneity of urban energy landscapes. Rather, I saw a specific connection that emerged from within the encounter between specific flows of energy in a particular location and the emergence of the built environment. I saw the coevolution of physical, technological, social, and political variables within a city as the root of obduracy. The analysis focused on what was specific about each city – how urban energy landscapes emerge from particular histories and accidental events. The key message of my research concerns the heterogeneity of urban infrastructures, as manifested in the urban landscape (Lawhon, Nilsson et al. 2018). Conversely, why should comparison not be possible? In the end, comparison emerges as a means of viewing from within a given location. Traditionally, comparison might have been understood as a means to apply a theory across different locations. However, comparison could also be thought of inversely as what do those locations say about a particular theory (McFarlane and Robinson 2012, Robinson 2016). In what ways do the urban energy landscapes in each of these cities read as connective tissue? What is the set of relationships that sustains specific energy flows and practices that use energy? Connective tissue points toward the constitution of different functional areas of the city in which the energy landscapes appear completely different. The operation of those functional areas depends not upon grand projects of landscape appropriation, but upon the summative effect of the daily operation of relationships in collective tasks. These tasks transform the landscape not only materially but also culturally, because new ideas of what the

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landscape is and should be emerge only from our interaction with it. Conversely, connective tissue is also a means to reflect upon the relational aspects of material culture. In an infrastructure regime made of objects, the landscape sustains the multiple relationships that make those objects. Hence, landscape as connective tissue can be apprehended through a process of enchantment with the different objects encountered in the landscape and the multiple forward and backward linkages that sustain them. In Chapter 3, I suggested that walking is a methodology that helps apprehend the connective aspects of urban energy landscapes (see also: Wylie 2009, Knowles 2012, Knowles 2017). Because landscapes are constituted by tasks, making and participating in such tasks is the best way to comprehend them. For the scholar – always a privileged observer – engaging in daily tasks entails performing a pretense in an unfamiliar context. However, walking is a task that also belongs to the everydayness of doing research. By walking is how the researcher examines the unfamiliar landscape. This approach can entail not only solitary walking but also exercises in collective walking. In Maputo and Concepción, the research also draws on collective walks with residents, seeking to capture something of the experience of walking both the familiar and the unfamiliar landscapes. This chapter seeks to explain urban energy landscapes as connective tissue through the perspectives that emerge in each city studied. To do so, I provide four vignettes that capture a walking experience through transects in each city. Each vignette starts with an appraisal of the texture of the landscape by examining a hand-drawn sketch of the urban fabric as connective tissue. Then, the transect accounts attempt to capture the moment of encounter between the researcher and the urban energy landscape. The section on reassembling urban infrastructure landscapes reflects upon how functional spaces of operation are defined only in relation to a spatial configuration and history. In other words, urban energy landscapes can never be fully appropriated for one single purpose. The chapter ends with an attempt to reflect upon the relational character of material cultures. I call this section “extraordinary ordinariness” to capture something of the fascinating encounter with an object that appears to make the city unique. The focus is on what makes the average everydayness of those landscapes. The limitation, however, is that walking is never akin to inhabiting landscapes. The cookstove in Maputo, the diesel generator in Bangalore, the air conditioning system in Hong Kong, and the pipelines in Concepción all speak of distinctive energy landscapes. Energy landscapes propose an enchantment with the routine operation of energy provision and use as a means to find means for activating change.

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9.2 Walking Urban Energy Landscapes 9.2.1 Urban Boundaries in Maputo The hand-drawn map of Maputo demonstrates the organization of the city in relation to the Bay. The old city – the Cidade de Cimento – at the bottom of the picture can still be visually separated from the rest of the city in terms of its structure, the regularity of the urban form, and the visible appearance of the more developed areas (Figure 9.1). The picture also shows how the Cidade de Cimento is expanding upward alongside the Costa do Sol (on the right of the picture), a preferred location for higher income residents and hotels. The limiting factors for such expansion are the existing bairros and the mangrove areas, which are frequently flooded. On the left of the picture, we see the structure of the historical neighborhoods that link with central areas with much lower levels of service provision. A string of green areas (dotted in the picture) appears to establish a natural boundary for the city. North of the city, the bairros surround the airport. Although the picture does not reflect the exact distribution of houses in the different neighborhoods, it does show that there is a pattern of regularities in the layout of some of the northern neighborhoods, as demonstrated by the geometrical regularities of some of the neighborhoods in the center of the picture. As explained above, Maputo can be represented as divided between the central area, with an overall supply of infrastructure dating back to the colonial era, and the surrounding neighborhoods, the bairros, with larger deficiencies in service provision – the former being Cidade de Cimento, and the latter, Cidade de Caniço. This division is constantly challenged by the integration of formal and informal processes in everyday life. Nevertheless, expectations of electricity provision differ across this divide, making the supply and use of energy spatially differentiated. Therefore, whereas in “the cement city,” both electricity and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) are widely available, the bairros are characterized by the ubiquitous presence of charcoal in markets and public areas. That divide between the former colonial city and the rest of Maputo persists (Barros, Chivangue et al. 2014). However, at the same time, thinking of Maputo as a divided city misrepresents its complex structure. Let me elaborate with an example. That division between the Cidade de Cimento and the Cidade de Caniço is often represented as a planned, governed city as compared to an unplanned one. However, when approaching the bairros, there is evidence that planning is central to their constitution (Andersen, Jenkins et al. 2015a, Andersen, Jenkins et al. 2015b). Local associations operate in local neighborhoods to develop services including roads, sanitation, waste collection, and electricity. While the constitution and operation of “Grupos Dinamizadores” may have evolved through time, these local associations enroll

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Figure 9.1 A hand drawn representation of Maputo’s landscapes as connective tissue. Credit: Drawn by Bower Serfontein.

citizens not only to contribute to service provision, but also to make concessions for demolitions to make room for new infrastructures (Center for Habitat Studies and Development 2006). Citizen-based services constitute a key part of urban life. In some Maputo neighborhoods, citizen groups “stand for the state,” providing otherwise inexistent services (Nielsen 2010). These actions also translate into urban form patterns that exhibit a surprising regularity, with ample avenues

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Figure 9.2 A Maputo household that uses, among other fuels, firewood. Credit: Vanesa Castán Broto.

following parallel lines and uniformly sized dwellings. Nielsen (2011) has explained urbanization in Maputo as an “incomplete project” in which outcomes are achieved despite rather than because of the formal structures of planning. Others have observed how everyday life activities, particularly those associated with trade, transcend the invisible divide between formal and informal spaces (Brooks 2012, Kamete 2013, Boyd, Ensor et al. 2014). What we find, instead, is a constant attempt to reproduce the spatial divide between an imagined modern city and the city in which the majority of Maputo’s inhabitants live (Figure 9.2). In designing the transects to investigate the urban energy landscapes in Maputo, I sought to reflect the transient condition of those spaces in which modernity is enacted through the constitution of boundaries between two cities – modern/unmodern and governed/ungoverned. For example, in 2014, we (myself and two colleagues) did a walking transect to characterize the landscapes of change in Maputo, alongside the expanding boundaries of the central district of KaMpfumo. The transect walk commenced in the Avenida da Marginal, the avenue that runs across the Costa Do Sol, the beachfront of Maputo. New hotels and expensive gated dwellings spread across this avenue. Here, gated communities have emerged as the preserve of the superrich (Morange, Folio et al. 2012). We started walking toward the west, going inland from the sea,

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on a street called El Palmar. To our right, we could see new expensive dwellings with complex security features, including outdoor cameras, intercoms, and even electric fences. Practices of securitization go hand-in-hand with high-carbon styles of living, rare in Maputo. On the left, we could see a neighborhood rapidly shifting. In 2014, a key landmark on this site was the Mercado do Peixe, the market in which one was said to eat the best fish in Maputo. In 2017, new dwellings had been erected in that location, and a new Mercado do Peixe had been built going north from Avenida da Marginal. The street we walked on, El Palmar, goes up suddenly, marking the abrupt rolling landscape that characterizes Maputo’s bairros. The luxury dwellings and facilities for those higher-income inhabitants (such as the new Portuguese School of Mozambique) stand side-by-side the subserviced system that extends on the left. There are unbuilt areas occupied by small home gardens alongside a stream in which people were working as we walked. We continued climbing until reaching the large Avenue of Julius Nyerere. This avenue is one of the main arteries of communication from the center of the city, and as it extends, the Cidade de Cimento expands with it. Construction workers are hard at work. Far north, on our left, we saw the precarious dwellings of one of the poorest historical neighborhoods in central Maputo, Polana Caniço A. On the other side, new buildings sprout. One of them has a green façade, the Café do Solar, a sample of the high-income style of living in this area of town. In 2014, this exact location was a point of encounter between the Cidade de Cimento and the Cidade de Caniço, a boundary which is constantly shifting. Following the boundary of the district, we continued walking on a perpendicular trajectory to the Avenue Julius Nyerere, following the transect plan. This neighborhood is called Sommerschield. The settlement runs alongside the fence of the campus of Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, which on our map marks the limit of the KaMpfumo District. Sommerschield is thought of as one of the richer neighborhoods, but the area in which we walked lacked collective infrastructures. Streets are surrounded by large – always-fenced – mansions. Roads are not paved, and there are visible signs of a precarious and badly maintained electricity network. However, the settlement is anything but unplanned. The system of parallel roads is very easy to navigate. The little shops are found often, and they are well supplied. They sell charcoal in bags and credit for electricity. The houses are mostly built with cement, and the presence of trees inside suggest that the general housing structure around a courtyard is the most common way of building. This area appears to be a sleepy neighborhood with beautiful home gardens and chickens everywhere. Finally, we reached a congested road, the Avenue Vladimir Lenin. This is where drivers in local buses, called Chapas, wait patiently while people walk across and alongside the traffic jam. There are shops everywhere. Horns, smoke, dust, and

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general business contrast with the peaceful environment we have just gone through. The Avenue separates Sommerschield from Maxaquene. Maxaquene is very different, with its incredibly dense patterns of habitation and makeshift markets everywhere. Vendors, mostly women, sit against the wall next to wooden tables replete with tomatoes of any color, cucumbers, carrots, oranges, lettuce, peppers . . . . Electricity posts and cables are everywhere; occasionally, the cables link posts with trees and houses. Charcoal is also everywhere, sold in black plastic bags. Many women cook on the street with charcoal, and the smell of fried shrimp is everywhere. We continued walking until, eventually, we reached the Avenue Acordos do Lusaka, and the cement city emerged again – paved roads, blocks of flats, and a petrol station. The division between the cement city and the peri-urban periphery is something to be regularly contested, particularly when facing strategies for survival and livelihood reproduction (Nielsen 2009, Nielsen 2011, Bertelsen, Tvedten et al. 2014). Nevertheless, those differences are enacted repeatedly in the myriad ways in which urban life occurs. For example, there are differences in the visual appearance of the electricity network, with marked signs of deterioration and makeshift fixes outside the cement city. Equally, charcoal is ubiquitous everywhere outside the cement city, but it disappears within the administrative boundaries of KaMpfumo. Thus, although the formal and informal are entangled and inseparable in everyday practices, there is a certain continuity to the urban imaginations already developed under the colonial regime (Grest 1995, Jenkins 2000, da Costa 2002). I walked with members of the community across Chamanculo C to observe different elements that people considered part of their energy system in an interactive manner. The walks were followed by on-the-floor collective mapping of the features observed and a discussion among participants. Both walks were significant not only because of what participants highlighted, but also because of what they ignored. Because they were instructed to think about community and energy, participants avoided households, focusing instead on collective artifacts. When thinking about energy uses and their dynamics, the discussion emphasized the home as the central unit for energy consumption, either implicitly or explicitly, and related the energy system to the home and home-based artifacts. However, when they were walking around the neighborhood, participants highlighted their awareness of infrastructure in shared spaces and of how that infrastructure becomes visible in their everyday lives. For example, participants pointed at public lighting, transmission towers, and electricity connecting points. In both walks, participants highlighted every electricity transmission station in the neighborhood as part of the collective energy infrastructure. This infrastructure bears little relevance to their everyday life in any way other than as an object that facilitates energy connections and as a source of

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concern when there is an electricity fault. The idea that energy infrastructure is invisible to people as they go about their daily life is pervasive in energy research, but the collective walks show that citizens are well aware of the location of every transmission station in their neighborhood. Residents mapped key institutional dependencies such as the nearest office of the energy company Electriçidade de Moçambique and the markets of gas and charcoal. The linkages between charcoal and livelihoods were continuously emphasized, even with stories about residents becoming rich because “they sold a lot of charcoal and bought a big house.” What was rarely emphasized, however, even when prompted, was the shops to buy credit for electricity within the prepaid system (Credelec). This credit is now bought in local shops alongside other goods, and it is perceived as separated from the overall energy system, as though the capital flows were separated from those of electricity and the energy uses that they facilitate. Like household artifacts, such infrastructure artifacts are also embedded in complex social and institutional relationships. The walk, for example, constituted an opportunity to talk with individuals about issues that were not raised in the collective discussion. For example, one resident explained his concerns about people who lived in some houses temporarily, as “tenants,” and who might have different energy habits – for example, using plastic and waste as fuel. The walk also showed how infrastructure is embedded in physical relationships, for example, being integrated in the actual construction of houses. Overall, the analysis above points toward the complex social, spatial, and material relationships that structure the different uses of energy in Chamanculo C and contributes to an energy landscape that reflects community rhythms and artifacts. The analysis also shows the potential of focusing on energy landscapes, as the connective tissue that supports flows, artifacts, and regimes for understanding local energy cultures. The case provides different examples of how regimes of energy use are configured not only in relation to any preconceived ideas about how energy should be used, but also in relation to existing socio-spatial patterns of living and the artifacts that symbolize them – the house and the cookstove. Charcoal and stoves are inserted in daily routines that do not simply disappear with access to electricity. Forms of institutional innovation succeed because of their close fit with the existing energy landscape. The flows of energy resources through the neighborhood are also known to participants even when they do not fully understand the operation of the technologies involved. The flow of materials through the neighborhood makes local residents acutely aware of what is possible and of how things flow into, out of, and through their neighborhood. For example, flows of charcoal organize the local economy and the relationships of Chamanculo C with the wider

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city and other locales. Access to electricity structures ideas of local progress. Local residents have a heightened awareness of the landscape artifacts that facilitate such connections, from transmission towers to the local office of the energy company. The materiality of artifacts relates to the objects that are actually used by residents in their daily lives and other elements of the energy landscape that are visible, even when local residents do not take part in their management or regulation. Community residents engage with landscape artifacts even when they are not inserted in their daily routines of energy use. There is no need for the residents to know exactly what such components do or why they matter in energy provision. The artifacts are of great significance in their neighborhood, contributing to building a sense of shared ownership and of neighborhood improvement. 9.2.2 Bangalore’s Infrastructure Histories The spatial structure of the city reflects its history. Nair (2005) argues that the making of Bangalore as a colonial city, with its division between the privileged Civil and Military Station and the rest of the city, continues to explain today’s patterns of spatial inequality. This division marks, even today, central areas of privilege. Figure 9.3 provides a small snippet of the structure of the infrastructure landscapes, focusing on the center of the city and how the old division between the City and the Civil and Military Station remains visible today. Imagine Figure 9.3 divided into three columns of roughly the same width. On the right hand, there is a column framed by the green boundary of parks going down from Bangalore’s Palace, Cubbon Park until Lalbagh. To the right of this imaginary green boundary is today’s MG Road, which separates the old General Bazaar from Richmond Town and other colonial towns. In the central column, we continue to find remnants of the old city. Kempegowda Bus Station, also known as Majestic, is in the center of the map. South of the station is the Chickpet, Bangalore’s ancestral market. On the left hand, even today, we see how modernity dreams developed in the twentieth-century city. The extensions of Malleshwaram and Basavanagudi, the first deliberate extensions of the town, are distinguishable because of their organic development. Developing this map required examining the organic constitution of the city as a connective tissue. The emphasis was to delimit different areas of the city in which infrastructure landscapes might be considerably different. The process of drawing the structure of the city, however, was hindered by difficulties in identifying homogeneous sections. Instead, even at the former boundary between the dominant and dominated city, such patterns are difficult to discern, which speaks to the continuous overlap of radically different modes of habitation that construct a city of multiplicity. The political history of the city alone does not explain its historical

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Figure 9.3 A hand-drawn representation of Bangalore’s landscapes as connective tissue. Credit: Drawn by Bower Serfontein.

configuration. An alternative history of Bangalore’s infrastructure landscapes exists that cannot be explained away as a true reflection of the enforced colonial divisions and grand politics of the making of the developmental state. The landscape is shaped by multiple simultaneous projects, not only teleological but also accidental, contingent tasks and practices of going about life. As Nair

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(2005) lovingly writes, Bangalore’s citizens always display “practices that make new meaning of urban life in ways that exceed the technocratic imagination” (p. 15). Urban planning and infrastructural ideals make it possible to have forms of intervention in the urban fabric and the energy systems, but ultimately, urban energy landscapes have followed material and cultural developments rather than only political and economic interests. Two transects were done to examine the phenomenon of contiguous heterogeneity in Bangalore. The transects focused on the two extensions of Malleshwaram and Basavanagudi that inaugurated the development of modern Bangalore in 1901. The development of these and all of the other extensions that would follow represented urban planning achievements in Bangalore. They also constituted a means to physically bring into Bangalore colonial concerns of racial cleanliness with the hygiene concerns of urbanism models in the West. Gandy (2006), for example, associates public health and sanitation efforts with the constitution of new spaces of authority amenable to governmental intervention and the call for a “modern subject” that could be socially controlled. These ideas were strongly present in early twentieth-century Bangalore, both in the discourses of Mysore’s rulers and in the colonial establishment. A prominent example was M. Visvesvaraya (1861–1962), Dewan of Mysore from 1912 to 1918 and previously the State’s Chief Engineer. His travel overseas and constant interaction with overseas engineers (some of whom were employed by the Mysore administration) led him to praise what he saw as Western models of engineering urbanism to achieve an orderly urban society (Visvesvaraya 1951). In a 1910 speech, Visvesvaraya first celebrated the “awakening of town planning in the West” (with examples of “beautification” and sanitation from the United States, Italy, and Japan) and called for immediate action to calculate the infrastructure needs of Mysore’s cities (for which they needed “an epitome of statistics”) that would create a new Indian person free of “taint and slackness.” Visvesvaraya’s call was a call for modernization of both the means of government and the lives of those to be governed. Eventually, Visvesvaraya followed his beliefs to develop a vision of electricity-led industrialization for the whole of India (Kale 2014). The frustration expressed in the annual reports of the public administration of Mysore suggests that narratives of sanitation did not shape Bangalore immediately. The actual process occurred in inverse order; the spatial transformations that occurred at the turn of the twentieth century in Bangalore showed a pathway toward urban development that supported emerging discourses of urban sanitation. Although mentions of overcrowding appear in colonial administration accounts before 1900 (e.g., Anonymous 1873), that awareness translated into little effort to transform the fabric of the city. Water provision was a perennial concern for the Civil and Military Station, whose inhabitants occupied the top part of the city,

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where water was scarcest. Instead, sanitation efforts only began in earnest after the plague outbreak in 1899–1900. Hasan (1970, p. 187) describes how administrators followed what was occurring on the ground: The Plague swept a good part of the City’s population and posed for the first time the problem of adopting preventive measures, such as good sanitation, pure and abundant water supply and removal of congestion which are so vitally necessary for the protection of public health.

Temporary camps to host the population affected by the Plague beyond the City were transformed into the new extensions of Basavanagudi and Malleshwaram. Although sanitation budgets grew steadily after the Plague, Public Administration reports show that infrastructures of sanitation and drainage followed, rather than anticipated, urban growth. For example, new extensions in Malleshwaram had been constructed before the completion of drainage works. This model of ad-hoc urbanization continued, despite attempts at rationalizing it and protestations of the need to recognize Bangalore as an organic Indian city (e.g., Srinivasan and Moorty 1935).1 Let us examine, for example, a transect in Malleshwaram. The transect commences at the Sai Baba Temple, oozing people and flowers because religious celebrations are under way. Near the Temple, even today, there are some old huts, a style of housing that disappeared under the extensions. Walking continues among different tenements, always beautifully decorated and painted in multiple colors – yellow and blue, rose and green – with electricity cables hanging from the balconies and on the sides of the walls. The area buzzes with the sounds of everyday life – muffled conversations, the odd loud scream, and the hum of electrical appliances used in construction or woodcarving. On the side, three children are writing next to an old hut. They have arranged their seating (one in a plastic chair, two on the ground) to receive maximum heat from the sunlight. Their hut is made of corrugated metal and blue plastic. It appears out of place, but there it is, and my impression is that it has been like that for a while. The children appear happy and relaxed. They are oblivious to the construction work around them as much as the workers ignore their presence. A precariously laid cable joins the hut with the main electricity posts. Many such huts can be found across Malleshwaram, occasionally in isolation and occasionally in small groups. The Karnataka Slum Development Board has documented 28 slums in the ward, hosting over 34,000 residents. Electricity connections are not always visible. Instead, piles of firewood lie outside the huts. As we continue walking down the hill, we encounter apartment blocks that came to define the extensions in Bangalore, two or three floors with balconies, with electricity meters installed on the wall in the basement marking the actual number of households in the building. A sign shows that cooperative housing societies

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established during the colonial period remain operative. On the top of many roofs, alongside water tanks, solar water heaters are visible. As we reach a park near Dattatreya Temple, we encounter street food vendors, who use an LPG canister to cook on top of a wooden cart. In the southern part of the neighborhood, we meet household-based businesses, welding, woodcarving, tiling, and tailoring. Firewood is sold on the street. People in small trucks or even bicycles distribute LPG canisters. At the bottom of the hill, streets are decorated for religious celebrations and a street banquet. Metallic threads are laid out in-between poles with hanging oil lamps, separated by 20 centimeters or so. These oil lamps are simply made, having only a small metallic pocket. Arranged in rows, they make for a compelling display, even in daylight. On another street, the oil lamps have been substituted by rows of LED (light-emitting diode) lighting. As we leave Malleshwaram behind, walking toward the High Ground, we find a small truck parked behind the train lines. It carries a diesel generator in its trailer, with a phone number and the brand name alongside the slogan “power on hire” (Figure 9.4). Unlike other areas in Bangalore, Malleshwaram is easy to walk and navigate, even for a foreigner; the continuous overlap of uses is attractive, and the impression is one of diversity. Although the specific patterns were different, diversity was a characteristic of all transects conducted in Bangalore. Each transect is

Figure 9.4 A truck carrying a generator for hire in central Bangalore. Credit: Vanesa Castán Broto.

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a succession of multiple encounters, and insights can be shaped by the specific moment in which an encounter occurs. For example, on one transect in Chickpet, around mid-day, we observed how an individual was trying to connect to the electricity network by carefully drawing the cable across a mesh of pre-existing wires. Cues such as the lack of uniformity and how the connection was drawn (throwing the cable across the other wires) suggested that this engineering was being done informally. Looking toward the sky, a tangle of wires shadowed the street; this activity was a common occurrence. The populous crowd took no notice. This approach is a mere coping mechanism in a context in which a majority of people pay additional costs for connections mediated by intermediaries (Prabhakar and Nair 2013). However, when I stopped to observe the process, I was immediately told to move on. This action was not one to be “observed.” This encounter reveals an area of friction between an action that is normalized in an everyday context but with the awareness that the action does not meet the expectations of the overall institutional system. People’s concerns about this type of casual connection (which, for example, is ubiquitous practice during religious festivals) have increased since energy companies have taken regulatory steps to reduce power theft and meet transmission loss targets. What are the transect observations relevant to understanding the urban energy landscape of the city as a whole? Many of them: the heterogeneity and changing nature of the landscape; the precarious appearance of electricity connections; the multiple uses of fuels such as firewood; the significance of lighting practices for religious purposes; the mobile energy sources of street food vendors; the proliferation of solar water heaters in the roofs of the buildings; the random encounters with instances of housing, occasionally only a hut or group of huts; the importance of household-based industries and trade, and the ubiquitous presence of diesel generators and “power for hire.” In Bangalore, walking transects reveal a multiform landscape in constant change directly redefined by situated practices of energy use. 9.2.3 Hong Kong Housing Estates In Hong Kong, urban design focuses on building walkable areas that relate to the nodes of transport in the city. How can we characterize the urban energy landscape in such a large city? Kowloon hosts a variety of residences, from modern developments to subdivided units (SDUs). Figure 9.5 shows the organization of the Kowloon Peninsula. The first thing that jumps out is the organization of the city around topographic features – Victoria Bay and the hills of the emblematic Lion Rock Country Park. The densest parts of the city – and the areas with the most frequent presence of SDUs – are the neighborhoods of Mong Kok and Sham Shui Po.

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Figure 9.5 A hand-drawn representation of Hong Kong’s landscapes as connective tissue. Credit: Drawn by Bower Serfontein.

Walking Hong Kong is a strange experience. Most often, everything appears as walkable and accessible (unlike, for example, in Bangalore). However, the hilly topography and the interruption of large transport infrastructures can make walking daunting. This challenge is reflected in the hand-drawn map, in which the densely inhabited areas are interrupted by communication arteries. For example, the first walk I undertook in Kowloon attempted to follow a straight line from the south of the peninsula, starting in Hum-Hong and continuing straight through Ho Man Tin to the Housing Authority building in Fat Kwong Street (which I was supposed to visit later in the week) and further through the area East of Mong Kok until reaching Kowloon Tong. This walk was impossible, starting with the complex networks of elevated walkways to go across the complex node of roads that surrounds Hum-Hong, to the busy road of Fat Kwong Street, which at the time had several sites under construction. The roads connect further spaces but separate functionally similar spaces. Exhausted, I abandoned the transect after reaching the Ko Fai House, one of the buildings of the Housing Authority. However, this initial walk was a revelation in terms of the persistence of similar configurations of the energy landscape in spatially disconnected areas.

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Given the history of Kowloon’s energy landscapes, I decided to design three walks around major housing estates and focus on their integration within the surrounding area. First, I visited Shek Kip Mei, the neighborhood in which the first public housing buildings were constructed. This example is at the center of the famous example of the “Shek Kip Mei” syndrome, which revealed the government’s role in promoting social programs in spite of the global image of Hong Kong as a “laissez-faire economy” (Castells, Goh et al. 1990). Smart (2006) has explained that the public housing program was not the product of a momentous decision after the Shek Kip Mei fire on Christmas in 1953; no public housing program other than a temporary response to the disaster was in place by 1954. However, Shek Kip Mei has endured as the foundational myth that inspires housing policy. I started my walk at the tube station of Shek Kip Mei, then crossed Nam Cheong Street to reach Pak Wan Street and down to the busy Tai Po Road, another artery that crosses the Kowloon peninsula from north to south. My objective was reaching Mei Ho House, the only building in the estate dating back to the 1950s. Mei Ho House has been preserved as a historic building and as a record of the city’s history of public housing because it is one of the few remaining “Mark I” buildings, initially built with minimum building standards. Today, it operates as a museum and hostel. The restoration of the house followed an ideas competition that aimed to open up the process of deciding heritage futures together. Walking across Shek Kip Mei beyond Mei Ho House, however, there is little sense of heritage because the area is occupied by different buildings. The walk across the Pak Tin Estate suggests that the estate remains relatively independent and evokes the 1970s philosophy of building self-contained communities. On the right, there are several “old slab” blocks built in the 1970s in pastel colors (mostly yellow but also pink and green), standing against the hill. Their design is simple, but they appear as a mosaic of windows, as concerns about ventilation and space became more prominent in the designs. On the left, there are several much higher towers belonging to the block type called “Harmony,” which emphasized the standardization of modular, prefabricated components but at the same time provided more flexibility for households to do their own partitioning and collective landscaping measures (Deng, Chan et al. 2016). A fascinating contrast exists between the old slab blocks, in which there is an intuition of the internal structure, and the harmonious designs that emerge as repetitions of modular components. The air conditioning units, for example, appear to be ad-hoc additions in the older blocks, but they are fully integrated in the more modern towers. The buildings stand proud, with their names written on the wall in both Cantonese and English, announcing their importance in the city’s heritage. Public housing heritage is increasingly celebrated as a unique sign of identity in Hong Kong. What I find most surprising, however, is the complete absence of

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Figure 9.6 A woman cooking on the street in Hong Kong. Credit: Vanesa Castán Broto.

people. In contrast to the busy streets of Mong Kok (Figure 9.6), a short walk from the Pak Tin Estate, there is nobody in these streets alongside a group of buildings that collectively houses 22,000 people. Another walk followed my visit to the Public Housing Authority. An interviewee had recommended a visit to the housing developments in Ngau Tau Kok, built in the early 2000s, which became an example of health-oriented building. My interviewee explained that several health-oriented innovations developed after the neighborhood was badly affected by the 2003 outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus. The first blocks in Upper Ngau Tau Kok were completed that year, with the remainder being built in the later 2000s. According to this interviewee, this timing had been a major factor in developing new models of sustainable architecture. From 2004, numerous sustainability innovations were progressively incorporated, from energy efficiency to waste management (Deng, Chan et al. 2016). As on previous walks, the estate appeared to be self-contained but emptied of people (according to the 2016 By-Census, over 15,000 people lived there). Any sustainability aspects present, however, were invisible from the street level. One a Saturday morning, I decided to do this walk after a chance visit to the Hum Hong mall, in which I went through the International Commerce Center in West Kowloon. Hundreds of people loitered in the mall, sitting in any available chair or

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on the floor, patiently sipping their drinks. They congregated around TV screens that only displayed a list of numbers. After some inquiries, I found that such numbers were lottery numbers. The prize of the raffle? Being able to buy a flat in the new exclusive development of Lohas Park. Groups of people congregated around the TV screens and wait impatiently for the numbers to come out. Each new number was met with a few screams of happiness amidst a wider sigh of resignation. A few informal interviews suggested that the raffle was for twobedroom flats, each of 60 square meters, costing HK$ 10 million. Unfortunately, I was unable to confirm these details outside the event. Lohas Park offered “value for money,” as one hopeful buyer told me in an encounter in Hum Hong. A few people explained that they had already paid the holding fee and had the finances in place to buy the property. Only when you have all of the paperwork ready can you go to the Hum Hong mall and wait for your number to be called, they said. I found this event fascinating and decided to visit Lohas Park, which has been developed by the MRT Corporation, Hong Kong’s railway company. Lohas Park is an example of transport-oriented development. It sits on a landfill site and is often presented as an example of Hong Kong’s tradition of land reclamation. Conversely, it is also presented as a new model of sustainable, integrated living. According to the 2016 By-Census, 25,000 people lived in Lohas Park, but there are further developments planned that might double that figure. Lohas Park, however, can barely be walked. The metro station opens up to a series of covered gangways that reminds me of a holiday camp rather than a housing development. The foundations stand on the reclaimed site, large infrastructures on display. The Bay extends ahead, on the right. Towers of glass open above. However, the walk concludes quickly. The gangways connect the towers, but these gangways are accessed through elevators. The towers reach over 60 or 70 floors. This model of living is different, with private collective spaces in the basement and vertical movements to reach the flats. In fact, it is a radically different model of living; hence, it builds upon a different landscape. As I stand there under the tower, I realize that I have not even started imagining the full potential of Hong Kong’s multiple urban futures. 9.2.4 Concepción’s Large Infrastructures As argued before, the spatial structure of Gran Concepción reflects both the dominance of the industrial facilities in shaping the flows of energy within the city and the choreographies of energy use. One limitation here is that the fieldwork design overlooked the actual quotidian practices of energy use in industry. However, there are sufficient elements of analysis to identify the structuration of the urban energy landscape alongside industrial corridors that are primarily

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incorporated in an economy that transcends the region, and the energy landscape of most inhabitants of Concepción, which is linked to meeting the demands of a placebased economy and culture. Figure 9.7 demonstrates the spread of the city alongside communication corridors. The figure represents as connective tissue the urban energy landscape of the city of Concepción and its linkages with other centers of the metropolitan area, San Pedro to the west and Talcahuano to the north. In the west, the Bio Bio River becomes an articulating presence that separates Concepción from San Pedro. In the north, the transition between Concepción and Hualpén/Talcahuano demonstrates the transformation of the urban landscape from the city-based to an industrial urban landscape. Although the city of Concepción is arranged around its historical center and structured around a relatively homogeneous grid only shaped by the topography of the area, the suburban area of Hualpén is structured in relation to the petrochemical compound that includes ENAP’s refinery and to the northern area of Talcahuano. Those industrial areas, as shown in Figure 9.7, are divided in large patches that include groups of single-family houses. Although the electricity network reaches all of the urbanized area, there are differences in terms of access to different fuels. The industrial landscape dominates everyday living, configuring the landscape as one of energy and industrial production. Hualpén presents an urban energy landscape in which industrial installations dominate. The transect through the area started in the ENAP chemical complex, a modular industrial installation. The oil smell dominates the landscape. The petrochemical complex extends toward the beach in between a low-income residential area and a natural sanctuary that extends alongside the mouth of the Bio Bio River. The complex includes multiple facilities including a refinery (called PETROX, a subsidiary of the state oil company ENAP), liquefaction facilities and a gasification plant from which a network extends made up of pipelines, substations, storage facilities, and roads. The contrast between the petrochemical complex and the natural area is particularly visible from the beach. The low-income neighborhoods contiguous to PETROX are called Emergencia and El Triángulo. The closer the houses are to the industrial facilities, the more degraded the landscape appears, with abandoned squares and other public spaces. However, all around there are signs of an active community such as a group of children playing in an abandoned lot. A transect across the landscape of Talcahuano, north of Hualpén, reveals the close relationship between the oil industry and the sea. Talcahuano grew along the coast, following the growth of trade in the port of San Vicente and the development of an industrial complex around the steel works of Huachipato. Standing at the coast, the landscape is dominated by signs of its active transformation, from the use of coal, its emissions, and the density and size of the high-tension towers and

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Figure 9.7 A hand-drawn representation of Concepción’s landscapes as connective tissue. Credit: Drawn by Bower Serfontein.

substations suggesting high consumption of electricity. Moving toward the port, the landscape becomes dominated by storage facilities and the visibility of the oil trade. The surrounding landscape is barren and degraded, with a beach covered by containers. A little community of artisanal fishermen subsists in a small beach,

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Caleta Infernillo, but one never loses sight of the industrial port and the stinky, dirty water around it. A block away starts an old residential area, appearing poor and deteriorated despite having been provisioned with good infrastructure (ample paved roads, pavements, and electricity connection). The precariousness of dwelling units increases up in the hills, some even built with discarded wood or metal sheets. Everything is dominated by the high-tension towers and the smell of the port. There is a sense of desolation and abandonment in the neighborhood until one turns a corner and a vibrant market emerges within the streets. At the south side of the Bio Bio River is the prosperous settlement of San Pedro, one that exemplifies the gross inequalities that emerge in this industrial landscape. The transect moves from La Candelaria, one of the poorest sectors of the metropolitan area, to the high-income settlement of el Venado, whose houses are distributed on the tops of the hills. In Candelaria, there is a settlement that originated with social housing waves in the 1980s, where now single houses with extensions predominate, transforming the original uniformity of housing. Here in Candelaria, symbols exist of the industrial vocation of the overall metropolitan area (the communication infrastructure and high-voltage electricity installations). However, there are also signs of changing energy landscapes because gas cylinders are ubiquitous. This ubiquity changes toward the center of the settlement, Villa San Pedro, an old model neighborhood built in the 1960s for Talcahuano workers that underwent gentrification from the 1990s onwards. The neighborhood became attractive because of the abundance of greenspace, wide roads, and the concentration of small businesses in the center. There are signs of a piped supply of gas from GasSur. The relative openness of Villa San Pedro contrasts with the exclusiveness of El Venado, recently constituted as a high-income enclave – a form of urbanization common in Chile (Sanzana Calvet 2016). The services areas concentrate at the bottom of the hill, whereas the luxury mansions extend up the hill. As one walks the top of the hill, one can observe that the manicured space matches equally manicured views because all signs of industrial development remain invisible from this vantage point. The final two transects characterize the landscape of Coronel, the distant settlement originally emerging around the coal mining industry that today hosts two coal-fired generation plants. This landscape is also an industrial but very fragmented one. The thermo-electric plan Santa María, operated by COLBUN, appears separated from the rest of the urban landscape by visibly dirty marshes. Similarly, the port is completely separated from the rest of the settlements, occupying the beach. Viewed from the settlement, the port is only a great wall. The facilities are bordered by low-income houses, many of them also hosting small businesses such as welding workshops or small transport companies. Firewood is used ubiquitously; there are several locations selling it and signs

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of its distribution everywhere. The landscape is like a compendium of isolated units linked through infrastructures – cables, pipelines, and roads. In the second transect, walking south, the settlement of Coronel exhibits the coexistence of the two economies mentioned above, the coal and energy generation industry, and the traditional, small businesses that operate a parallel, local, economy are represented in the contrast between the industrial port (which includes large fishing companies and the energy industry) and the artisanal port. Both landscapes are permeated by the foul smell derived from fish processing and the hum generated by the operation of the second thermo-electric plant in Coronel, namely Bocamina. Nevertheless, small businesses appear to thrive under the shadow of the industry. For example, the small settlement of Lo Rojas, immersed in the industrial sector, has its own dynamics – the markets, the small fishing industries, bakeries, numerous shops, and small bars. The streets are narrower and less furnished than in the center of Coronel, but the streets are lively, the houses are open, and the artisanal history of the settlement is on display. Fish dries outdoors (Figure 9.8), fishermen walk around, they greet each other, they know each other, and they belong; they shape the landscape. Amidst fragmentation and industrial dominance, life continues. 9.3 Reassembling Urban Infrastructure Landscapes One thing that one notices when walking these landscapes is that, as persuasively argued by Ingold (2000), they are constructed around daily tasks. Those tasks shape landscapes into different units of action, creating different forms of transition that are only perceptible through careful circumspection. As people go about their business, the urban energy landscape reveals how diverse forms of energy are embedded in the lives of citizens. In Maputo, the city appears to be divided in two: the city that has mostly modern infrastructure (the former colonial city) and the bairros that depend upon charcoal. Bangalore is much more fragmented: alongside the privilege spaces in which energy is securitized, there is a service city in which blackouts and accidents are common. In addition, anywhere, one encounters pockets of deprivation with no electricity connection, which are dependant upon fuelwood and waste to meet basic energy needs. It is a holed landscape, including both holes of privilege and holes of deprivation. Hong Kong is most often understood as a single functional unit, with universal provision of electricity and gas from fossil fuels. Concepción is divided in functional units across channels of communication, reflecting the city’s relationship with the broader national economy. Distinct tasks exist that become more visible in some cities than in others. Cooking is very visible in Maputo. Cooking is something that occurs in the street, from grinding the coconut to frying cakes. Cooking is part of the work of street vendors

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Figure 9.8 Fish drying outdoors in a fisherman community in Greater Concepción. Credit: Martin Sanzana Calvet.

in all four cities. They might use charcoal in Maputo and LPG in Hong Kong, but every city has a host of food vendors that animate the streets of each city and show what type of energy flows shape the city. However, only in Maputo is residential cooking visible, as it occurs in patios and street doors. In Bangalore, the one thing that jumped out at me on my walks was the centrality of different forms of energy to support small household industries. In Bangalore, I spoke with tailors, woodcarvers, metalworkers, and constructors. They all appeared oblivious to the growth of the information and communications technology (ICT)-powered city, conjuring images instead of a city of making, a city in which people constantly produce things. Business is also very central to Hong Kong, where neon and LED lighting constantly reinforce the image of the city as open for business. Trade is the key activity in the streets of Hong Kong, on which the physical markets are on display. Yet there is a physical separation between solitary residential areas and commercial streets. In Concepción, the large industries constitute a constant reminder of the extractive landscapes of the city. Nevertheless, Concepción citizens surprise in their manner of appropriation of different spaces – playing football in an abandoned plot or drying fish on the shore. For each city, the walks enable an observation of those

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activities and tasks that are most often overlooked in development projects to make global cities. In the street, there is little evidence of Maputo’s international development networks, Bangalore’s offshoring and ICT industries, or Hong Kong’s financial center. Only in Concepción does the walker encounters signs of the state-making projects; the energy industry is constantly visible, but its presence does not speak of a common urban future. Rather, industrial facilities appear to be menacing. Energy landscapes point toward the unseen, the unimportant, and the accidental. Energy calls in every single corner of unseen, unimportant, and accidental tasks because there are few tasks in which there is not some form of energy being engaged. The history of the urban fabric is also written in the infrastructure landscapes, although it can only be read with a degree of interpretation. Both Maputo and Bangalore remain divided along boundaries established in colonial times. The transects in those cities explore these transition spaces, in which the city appears to mutate into a different landscape. Because histories are drawn in the infrastructure landscape, the historical memory remains visible. Such boundaries are constantly challenged, but never fully redefined. In both cities, there are new forms of colonization at work. Regeneration plans, securitized compounds, and large infrastructures are creating new spaces of privilege. For example, the new developments alongside Avenida Marginal in Maputo or the peri-urban gated communities in Bangalore are making new urban boundaries. Urban energy landscapes do not immediately change to meet regeneration plans. For those seeking to establish new modes of relating to energy, transforming the surrounding landscape can be a struggle. There is a need to rearrange the connective tissue, or adjust the change ambitions to fit the existing situation. Nevertheless, in Maputo and Bangalore, a transition is looming. Multiple forms of low carbon innovation are ubiquitous, from solar technologies to new forms of organizing waste management services. In contrast, in Hong Kong and Concepción, change appears to be impossible. The question of land in Hong Kong and the position of Concepción in the regional economy make change inconceivable among those who live in those landscapes. Heidegger’s example of the hydropower plant lamented the utilitarian capture of valleys and mountains. Development projects such as building complexes in Hong Kong and industrial infrastructures in Concepción appear indeed to dominate life in both cities. They only do so, however, insofar as they are built on a long history of spatial domination. Even in Concepción and Hong Kong, deliberate projects of governance are not quite complete. The four cases have one aspect in common: deliberate attempts to capture the energy landscape for a single strategic project never fully succeed. For example, discourses of privatization are prevalent in the governance of energy in all four cities. Privatization means diametrically different things in each context. The discourse is perhaps at its weakest in Maputo, in which the

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public utility EDM operates under a strong “social mandate.” International development discourses of energy are increasingly directed toward “making markets work”; thus, hopes for increasing marketization of energy remain. There is of course little attention given to the markets that supply most Mozambicans – those that provide charcoal and firewood. In Maputo, for example, a disconnection exists between people’s practices in the bairros and the understanding of the utility company of the service they are providing. Governing in the bairros appears a means for people’s self-actualization, becoming the “new man” of the post-independence period. Attempts to construct new, responsible consumers take precedence over any other discourse of governance. In Bangalore, privatization looms large with calls to emulate other Indian cities. Fragmentation has not aided the woes of state-based power distributors. Now, we are seeing the reverse of the concentration of energy assets in the state as a means for nation building. However, the rationalist obsession inherited by an engineeringled administration simply overlooks anything it considers temporary – although the whole city has always grown out of temporary infrastructures. In Hong Kong, the discourse of privatization permeates all activities. In the energy sector, the private suppliers operate, however, in close agreement with the government. Government-led energy consultations focus on the inclusion of new providers in the energy sector, but there are few new entrants. The duopoly that dominates the electricity sector appears unchallenged. Discourses of reliability and safety prevent major physical and institutional changes. In Concepción, the private companies appear to have been lifted up and dropped randomly over that landscape, with little integration in the surrounding area. They operate beyond the urban scale. Privatization is a fait accompli. However, beyond the discourses of national significance, the city lives with its back turned toward the large energy and industrial infrastructures. The ongoing conflict is visible in the energy landscape. Walking the four cities generates doubts about the extent to which streamlined understandings of how to manage the energy system, however adapted to the context of governance in each city, can really be accomplished. Any new infrastructure regime will need readjustment not only to the specific situation of a city, but also to its ongoing dynamics emerging through the centuries and apprehended through living in urban infrastructure landscapes. 9.4 Extraordinary Ordinariness Walking is an act of continuous repetition. It is through repetition that walking leads to enchantment with the ordinary object. It was when walking through Hong Kong, noting the ubiquitous presence of the air conditioning unit, filling up

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facades and ventilating corridors, that I first experienced the enchantment with the object. Other objects emerged through their repeated presence in the walks – the cookstove in Maputo, the diesel generator in Bangalore, and the omnipresent coalfired power plants in Concepción. Through walking, those objects become invariable presences in the energy landscape. They generate further questions. What sustains such objects there? In the case of Maputo’s cookstoves, the question is how do they reproduce the cycle of charcoal. Among policymakers and academics, a change to LPG is always imminent. Cookstoves, however, are sustained by a series of relationships. The supply chain of charcoal explained in Chapter 5 and how charcoal is integrated in local livelihoods partly explains its persistence, but not entirely. What other backward linkages sustain the cookstove? The designs of cookstoves are developed by local metalworkers, who recycle spare parts from cars and other metals. They are specifically suited to the cooking practices common in households, namely heating water and cooking two dishes simultaneously. They are tolerable within households because of the common practice of cooking outside. These practices are starting to change. Partial processes of gentrification are occurring in many of the bairros. House improvements might not be compatible with the use of charcoal. However, charcoal cookstoves are perceived as being safer than LPG ones (although children’s accidents around charcoal cookstoves are common). In its familiarity, the charcoal cookstove articulates numerous aspects of the urban energy landscapes in Maputo. In the case of Bangalore’s diesel generators, their proliferation responds to a paradoxical situation in which interruptions of service are common, but uses are not adapted to them. Initially, I thought that diesel generators were mostly installed in shops that could not afford to lose business and in large, high-income compounds whose residents were anxious to securitize the supply of energy. However, the transects reveal that diesel generators are a usual element of the energy landscape, overlooked in its ordinariness. What are the backward linkages that make diesel generators an element of the urban energy landscape in Bangalore? The generator responds to the predominance of private strategies of supply, alongside acceptance of the fragmentation and intermittency of services in the city. In terms of forward linkages, the diesel generator points toward two trends in the energy landscape of Bangalore. First, the tendency toward private strategies for service provision creates an environment in which experimentation and innovation are common. Second, the same fragmentation enables the continuation of systems of provision with the coexistence of multiple forms of energy supply and use in a single city. The air conditioning system in Hong Kong becomes another example of an appliance that appears to be shaping the urban energy landscape of the city.

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According to Hong Kong Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD), 80 percent of households rely on air conditioning, and in warmer periods, air conditioning alone can account for 50 percent of the energy bill (EMSD Undated). Air conditioning units are everywhere; it is a constant presence in the landscape because of its millions of replications across the street landscape. In contrast, in Concepción there is the overall presence of large industrial infrastructures that configure the separation between the national economic system and everyday landscapes. In every case, the different objects – cookstoves, generators, air conditioning systems, and large infrastructures – articulate different configurations of the urban energy landscape. Material culture structures the overall landscape. Engaging with more detailed analyses of these objects, following the forward and backward linkages within a given landscape, can be a means to reveal the extraordinary ordinariness of urban energy landscapes.

10 Imagining Urban Energy Futures

10.1 Introduction The global energy challenge is an existential challenge that requires profound changes to contemporary ways of living. Minor cosmetic changes to the fabric of our cities and shifting lifestyles do not even scratch the surface of the transformation required. Moreover, the nature of that change will vary in different cities and different moments within their historical trajectory. The urban energy transition cannot happen without recognizing the heterogeneous conditions in which people access and use energy in urban environments. The question of what action can deliver just energy transitions in urban energy landscapes will have different answers depending on the options open for action. From new buildings to retrofitting, decentralized energy provision or walkable cities, there are many avenues to intervene in an urban energy transition. If the global energy challenge is an existential one, addressing it will require a different response from the ones tried so far. In an urban context, action must go beyond strategy, planning, and governance. Formulating “why” and “how” questions is not sufficient. The transition does not depend only on purposeful action. Instead, the notion of urban energy landscapes recognizes that multiple everyday actions shape the urban energy transition. Transitions happen as urban citizens go about their lives in all their glorious “average everydayness.” Paying attention to the average everydayness of transitions (a concern already implicit in many studies within transitions research) is a strategy to take seriously the assertion that energy is part of our being. Alongside this book, I have proposed three ideas to engage with transitions in urban energy landscapes. First, if we understand urban energy landscapes as taskscapes (Ingold 2000), then transformations relate to ongoing “tasks” that take place in that landscape. 198

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Those tasks involve multiple animate and inanimate objects that inhabit the landscape. Transitions depend on those tasks and the extent to which they enable landscape shifts that over time are perceived as transformations. Purposive attempts to change urban energy landscapes are relevant in so far as they are part of such taskscapes. Second, those tasks do not belong to one single actor. The act of fixing an electricity connection or buying credit, of turning on the air conditioning, or of connecting the diesel generator in a blackout are all tasks that involve multiple agents within a collective landscape. For example, the task of turning on the generator requires various elements integrated into a dynamic relationship that makes the task possible. The task includes narrative elements (the suitability relationship between the generator and the blackout), material ones (the suitability of the generator or the mastery of a human agent to install it and operate it), and accidental ones (the availability of a generator in a particular place and in good working order). In Heidegger’s terms, tasks require equipment. Equipment is not a collection of separate objects that can be used at will, but instead, equipment refers to the overall surrounding configuration that makes a task possible. In summary, landscape tasks are what Barad (2007) has called “intra-actions,” that is, events that depend on the mutual co-constitution and interdependence of multiple objects. Third, making change possible requires accessing the landscape without relying on cognitive accounts that presuppose independence of observation. Heidegger was interested in the moment of insight that precedes direct engagement of the world, what he called circumspection. This is a way to access the world that enables tasks, and that precedes any conscious account of those tasks. Circumspection is not an intellectual reading of present-at-hand equipment and how to change it. Circumspection, instead, relates to dwelling practices that enable a constructive engagement with urban transitions which are already taking place. The empirical chapters 5–8 provide a partial storyline of a century of transformations in Maputo, Bangalore, Hong Kong, and Concepción. These storylines demonstrate the dynamic relationships that shape urban trajectories in urban energy landscapes. Rather than ready-made proposals for the future, the cases show how people inhabit particular situations. The cases help in understanding why charcoal is central to Maputo’s energy landscapes, how disconnection generates innovation in Bangalore, while a reliable network is not sufficient to guarantee quality energy access in Hong Kong or how inequality in energy access is constantly reproduced in Concepción. In this chapter, I would like to open up four avenues for further inquiries into urban energy landscapes. First, the idea of landscape breaks any illusion of homogeneity of urban infrastructure regimes. What does it mean that urban energy landscapes are heterogeneous? Second, the existential challenge of energy

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transitions requires recognizing the significance of Being-in-the-World, and how the world makes itself manifest as a precondition to consider existing transition practices. Third, further theoretical advancement of transition theory is possible via a renewed engagement with the radical contingency of objects in different locations. A focus on re-signifying objects within dynamic relations supports emergent currents of co-design in engineering, architecture, and development planning. Fourth, agency is central to any collective project of a future under climate change. The question is how agency can be mobilized in-between, in intra-actions, and within dynamic relationalities. Openness to opportunities in unexpected spaces leads to experimental strategies that recognize the shared and situated character of agency. 10.2 Beyond Homogeneous Models of Service Delivery Lawhon and colleagues (2018, p. 722) have written about heterogeneous infrastructures as “configurations which involve many different technologies, relations, capacities, and operations, entailing different risks and power relationships.” This perspective, they argue, moves away from a traditional emphasis on service provision by various urban actors (public, private, communities) and modes of provision (formal, informal) towards an understanding of the conditions of possibility that enable incremental change in each location. This move toward thinking heterogeneity, they argue, responds to the dismissal of “the modern infrastructure ideal” that extolled models of a universal system of provision based on uniform, networked models of urbanism (Graham and Marvin 2001, and for a recent assessment see Coutard and Rutherford 2015). Simultaneously, scholars of development planning have long observed the potential of infrastructure interventions that respond to situated accounts of urban problems (Joshi and Moore 2004, Mitlin 2008). I find particularly compelling those that emerge in communities, where interventions over long periods – spanning decades – have had a direct influence on the urban fabric and people’s lives (Hasan 2006). These debates, however, have had limited influence on current thinking on urban energy and low carbon cities. The reasons for this are varied and deserve further investigation. The dominance of technological and financial approaches to energy access in international development has promoted bidimensional models of development with limited consideration of the complex contexts of implementation where those projects take place (Rolffs, Ockwell et al. 2015). In urban areas, the assumption that urbanization enables access to the electricity network has limited interventions to reach energy-poor households in urban areas (Castán Broto, Stevens et al. 2017). An urban energy landscape perspective calls attention to these blind spots in current thinking on urban energy.

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For example, in Maputo, urban energy landscapes draw attention to the dependence on charcoal, a fuel embedded in historically -configured spatial relations (housing, local markets, supply chains). Incremental interventions to co-design stoves appear to respond better to people’s needs than complex programs to switch to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) (see Chapter 5). The extent to which a transition away from charcoal is possible depends on gradual shifts that make the gas available and that help people in Maputo’s neighborhoods to develop familiarity with gas and gas cookstoves. A transition requires a myriad of changes in the everyday provision and use of gas and charcoal. In Bangalore, different sources of energy used in the city maintain diverse economies and meet the energy requirements of small businesses, household-based industries, and street vendors (see Chapter 6). Urban energy landscapes also help in reconsidering the idea of “heterogeneity” when we speak of “infrastructure heterogeneity.” Infrastructure heterogeneity does not speak only of diverse modes of infrastructure provision, but also of the insertion of infrastructures in varied contexts with differentiated outcomes. Infrastructure heterogeneity is not limited to urban areas in the global south (Monstadt and Schramm 2017, Lawhon, Nilsson et al. 2018). Heterogeneity is prevalent everywhere, even when it is masked under dominant networked systems. In the metropolitan area of Concepción, a well-functioning centralized system of electricity and gas provision exists but remains limited to the areas of the city which participate actively in the national economy (see Chapter 8). Those networked areas stand in contrast with impoverished neighborhoods that live under the menace of refineries and electricity generation plants but rely on firewood for the majority of their energy needs. Hong Kong is the case that presents a most uniform energy landscape (see Chapter 7). Nevertheless, the energy landscapes of Hong Kong are heterogeneous because energy needs are configured in an unequal built environment. This has practical implications, such as the need to redefine energy poverty in terms of the extent to which acceptable levels of comfort are attained, regardless of whether or not households have access to energy resources. Heterogeneity is an inherent characteristic of urban energy landscapes. The implications of living with heterogeneous infrastructures for an urban energy transition, however, are not fully understood and require further research. 10.3 The Existential Challenge As Being-With Energy Urban energy landscapes direct attention to humanity’s Being-with energy. In doing so, the argument engages with a science and technology studies tradition that examines the infrastructures of everyday life (Star 1999). This perspective is a corrective to classical views of energy infrastructures as inserted on nation-

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building projects (Kale 2014) or as hegemonic projects of imposition in urban transformation (Luque-Ayala and Silver 2016). Ethnographies of infrastructure, instead, emphasize the embeddedness of infrastructures in everyday life (see also Hommels 2005b). Activating infrastructure politics requires making them visible because the infrastructure of everyday life recedes from view to the point that it may appear to be invisible (Star 1999, Graham 2010). Unlike strategic infrastructure projects, the infrastructures of everyday life are integrated into nonintentional, even pre-intentional modes of dwelling, characteristic of our Being-inthe-world. In this book, I have highlighted Heidegger’s insights on what he calls “the worldhood of the world.” The world is something else than an external entity ready for humans to discover. This insight reminds me always of Louis-Ernest Barrias’ Art Nouveau sculpture La Nature se Dévoilant à la Science (Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science), one of the most memorable images of Carolyn Merchant’s feminist classic Death of Nature. Merchant argued that of all the fantasies of modernity, that of the human (male) gaze upon the world is the most persuasive and enduring one. Made in 1899, Barrias’ sculpture represents Nature (the world) as a woman who, in Merchant’s (1981, pp. 189–190) own words, is “coyly removing her own veil” to denude her “mindless, submissive body” to the presumably male, fully clothed scientist. Urban energy infrastructures models of development forged around the turn of the twentieth century embraced the search for a male-led, rational, abundant, engineered, efficient, and rational city. In the face of the global energy crisis, alternative models of energy infrastructure are desperately needed, particularly those which recognize the impossibility to separate humans from the world and Nature. Urban energy landscapes represent urban worlds made through dwelling practices. While the ultimate ontological existence of the world may be inaccessible to our comprehension, dwelling practices that happen-with help apprehending the worldhood of the world. Heidegger explains that the most common ontic and ontological conceptions of the world misunderstand its existence. First, ideas of urban energy systems underscore ontic perspectives of urban energy infrastructure, describing their components as flows, machines, purposes, institutions, and uses (e.g., Keirstead and Shah 2013). In this perspective, the world is a container whose elements will be revealed, like nature’s body, to make them amenable to scientific analysis. Second, an ontological understanding of the world brackets scientific realities to understand the underlying relations that confer meaning to an object. The perspectives on urban transitions that started this book highlight ontological relations. For example, urban energy regimes, as an alternative metaphor to urban energy systems, capture an ontological perspective on the world (e.g., Monstadt 2009). According to Heidegger, however, both ontic and ontological perspectives

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lack access to the inhabited world, that is, the landscapes of dwelling that change in a transition. Following this critique, my analysis of empirical cases attempts to aprehend the “average everydayness” of urban energy landscapes within particular urban histories. The concept of “connective tissue” reflects dynamic relationalities that characterize urban energy landscapes (Chapter 9). In urban energy landscapes, walking is a means for circumspection. The walks show that the systems of signification and announcement in each urban energy landscape are different. Harman (2016, p. 187) explains “When an item of equipment fails, it is said to become visible to us for the first time. But this claim is not sufficiently exact. It is not the hammer itself that becomes visible when it shatters in our hands. Rather, we become explicitly aware of its various qualities, though the nature of the hammer itself remains somewhat inscrutable given the shock it has just subjected us.” Accepting this inscrutability means that we cannot fully understand the entire object at once. The landscape perspective is undoubtedly privy to that. The objective is not to follow the whole landscape, but to build an interpretation that provides an insight into its complexity through situated engagements. Heidegger explains that the world makes itself manifest in different ways related to its equipment in modes of dwelling. As explained in Chapter 4, equipment announces itself when it is conspicuous, obtrusive, or obstinate. The definition of each term is very precise. Conspicuous equipment is visible but unusable; for example, if it is broken. Obtrusive equipment is just not available. Obstinacy refers to equipment which is ready-at-hand but not in the right orientation so that it is not serviceable. These precise definitions refer to different ways in which energy infrastructures are inserted in the urban fabric and how they announce themselves within different modes of habitation. Conspicuousness, for example, is more evident in a context such as Hong Kong, where reliability is a priority, than in the settings of Maputo and Bangalore, where interruption and disruption are accepted as part of ongoing relationships with energy infrastructure. In Hong Kong, conspicuousness relates, for example, to the experience of energy poverty in subdivided units (SDUs), in which access to cheap electricity and gas is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of provision. In contrast, in Maputo, for example, different discarded objects are repurposed in alternative contexts making conspicuousness an opportunity. The way car wheels are recycled into charcoal cookstoves, for example, reveals that conspicuousness, in that context, may not be sufficient to make present the ready-to-hand relationships that sustain dwelling practices. Note that equipment is not a single object – the cookstove – but instead, the whole set of relations that sustain the stove and make it part of the landscapes of Maputo.

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Obtrusiveness, or lack of equipment, may be a more appropriate means of experiencing Being-with in that context. The experience of lacking energy, for example, relates to expectations that result from either previous or vicarious experiences of energy infrastructure, such as the second-hand storylines about air conditioning explained by the inhabitants of Chamanculo C in Maputo (see Chapter 5). Practices of governance of scarcity, for example, may be also part of the urban the energy landscape. For instance, in Bangalore, blackouts are a governance tool for energy services company BESCOM (see Chapter 6). Obtrusiveness of equipment may also be a marker of deeply entrenched relations of urban inequality, such as in Concepción, where a history of class struggles inscribes the use of firewood in some neighborhoods and not others (see Chapter 8). Obstinacy relates to the difficulties to reproduce present-at-hand models of infrastructure in specific contexts of action. The gap between rhetoric and action is a real concern in local energy policy everywhere. However the greatest gap may exist between imagined alternatives and the possibility to transform those alternatives into actual, serviceable equipment. For example, innovation is ubiquitous in Hong Kong. However, the homogeneous landscape of fossil fuel provision appears to be immutable (see Chapter 7). Shifts such as the switch from neon to LED lighting only reinforce the existing material and governance structures that constitute the urban energy regime. There are many present-at-hand alternatives (from renewables to alternatives to the air conditioning unit) which never become integrated into the dynamics of everyday life in Hong Kong. This is a landscape of obstinacy, where alternatives do not find material expression and change is lacking. The empirical chapters provide accounts of the formation and structure of urban energy landscapes because the world of dwelling is never entirely apprehended without recourse to both ontic and ontological perspectives. Walking accounts of connective tissues explain the significance of experience-memories in urban energy landscapes and the disruptions whereby the world makes itself noticeable. 10.4 Investigating Being-With through the Lives of Artifacts One running theme through the book has been the extent to which specific objects offer an insight into the constitution of urban energy landscapes. Knowles (2011), for example, focuses on shoes as an object that represents immigrant journeys. Are there specific objects that represent urban energy landscapes to enable a methodological focus in each city? Recent Heidegger-inspired writing suggests that object-analysis provides access to urban energy landscapes (Harman 2002, Harman 2005, Harman 2010, Harman 2011). Harman describes objects as entities which have unitary coherence. Following the discussions on landscape above, objects are embedded in

10.4 Investigating Being-With through Artifacts

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a dynamic and contingent set of relations (physical/representational, material/ semiotic, and ontic/ontological), which also constitutes them. However, Harman warns against reducing objects to sets of relations. A relation between objects (humans, animals, plants, minerals, and made-up artifacts) requires for any object within that relation to establish a partial relationship with the other object. Limiting the object to a set of relations, Harman argues, is simplifying the object because there are no relations that capture the object in its entirety. For example, the hot coals may touch a woman while she cooks over a stove, but the touching of the charcoal and the burned skin are simplifications of the totality of being a woman. The removal of relations, however, never exhausts an object. For example, a non-governmental organization (NGO) seeking to roll out an improved cookstove program in a remote rural area without energy access will need to develop a set of relations around the cookstove for people to use it. There is a process whereby the cookstove is integrated into people’s lives, to the extent that it can become familiar enough to become a mundane part of equipment. Using a modified model of stove based upon previously used models is a means to build upon existing relations to introduce innovation. Incrementalism follows on from the need to use existing relations to advance innovation. If we think of a single cookstove, for example, it could be reimagined for another use, or forged again, or dumped as waste which eventually becomes collected somewhere. The single cookstove does not vanish into thin air. Moreover, the idea of the cookstove becomes part of daily material encounters in which an expectation of having a cookstove exists. Once you extract the object from all relations, it continues to be inexhaustible. The cookstove was particularly relevant to understanding the urban energy landscapes of Maputo. However, in other cities, other artifacts may provide a better insight into such landscapes. In Hong Kong, both the dynamic relationships around air conditioning and neon lighting provide a unique window into understanding the history of energy use. In Bangalore, the artifacts that characterize the urban energy landscape are continually shifting, which is a testament to the continuous processes of innovation. The solar water heater and the diesel generator are candidates that reflect the constant search for autonomy among Bangalore’s households. In Concepción the facilities of the big refineries become themselves the symbols of a menacing landscape and the way it has been fragmented because of the city’s economic history. Harman distinguishes four aspects of the object, which mirror Heidegger’s four perspectives on the world and its worldhood (see section above and Chapter 4). First, there is an ontic perspective that reduces objects to their qualities. For example, in energy landscapes, this refers to the correlation between energy appliances and the extent to which they provide light, heat, and

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connectivity. Second, that same object is part of a dynamic of relations, in line with ontological perspectives. Energy is part of social relations, institutions, political struggles, and multiple ways of imagining urban futures. Third, the object always emerges in a particular contingent situation: objects are accidental in the sense that they manifest specific qualities and relations in every particular moment, a concrete manifestation of both ontic qualities and ontological relations. Urban energy landscapes aim to capture this perspective by focusing on the concrete manifestation of dwelling practices in delimited locations and moments. Finally, Harman argues, there is the inaccessible object itself. The fact that the object is inexhaustible refers to the fundamental underlying structure of the world (Figure 10.1). It provides a window to understanding the incomprehensible and recognizing that part of the enchantment of the world, its extraordinary ordinariness, relates to the human’s incapacity to know it in its totality. The urban energy transition is a challenge with temporal and spatial dimensions. The object includes the successive accidentals translated into experience-memories (time) and the dynamic transformations of relations (space). Heidegger described a three-fold structure of life, constituted by past, present, and future – not as a succession of events, but as a simultaneous occurrence in a given moment. We are “thrown” into a given configuration (past), but equally, we are not slaves of the situation because we can actualize different possibilities (future).

Accidentals

Relations

Qualities

Object

Figure 10.1 Schematic representation of the “fourthfold object.”

10.5 Intra-Actions in Urban Energy Landscapes

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The landscape is connective tissue, the matrix that makes those experiencesmemories possible and also vanishes into the background as soon as the experience-memory passes. At a given moment, multiple possibilities for landscape change emerge out of a sense of re-enchantment with the particularities of energy provision and use in everyday life. A focus on a single object and its articulation within a dynamic assemblage of relations may enable a deeper understanding of the spatial and temporal dimensions of urban energy landscapes. 10.5 Intra-Actions in Urban Energy Landscapes The question of agency is central to the study of urban energy transitions. In urban energy landscapes there are no independent, objective actors who have agency to transform the landscape. Landscape transformations result from multiple tasks, each of which involves a diverse set of dynamic relationships rather than one single agent. There may well be actors with the capacity to act at certain moments, but this is not akin to say that their interventions will have a lasting influence in the formation of urban energy landscapes. Moreover, this is not a question of the whereabouts of agency, which implies that there are places where such agency can be found, such as, for example, smaller-scale niches separated from a broader landscape (cf. Elzen et al. 2004). Small tasks in the landscape, whether it is turning on the air conditioning, connecting your shop to the electricity network without permission, finding the appropriate firewood for a party roast or using micro solar panels to charge a mobile phone are all actions that transform or maintain the urban energy landscape. Feminist neo-materialism, here accessed fundamentally through the work of Karen Barad, conceptualizes agency not as a discrete property, but rather, as a fluid process (see Chapter 4). Agency is constantly reformed and reconstituted in intraactions. In urban energy landscapes such intra-actions are the multiple landscape tasks whereby the landscape is transformed. Windows of opportunity may open in those dynamic sets of relations, but the agency for change does not belong to any single actor or place. Neither humans nor non-humans can possess agency in a strict sense. Agency belongs, instead, to the realm of intra-action. Intra-actions between people and the world that surrounds them emerge from relations but also generate new relations so that equipment changes happen. Take, for example, the transition from charcoal to LPG in Maputo. Lower LPG prices and promotional programs led by the municipal government are not sufficient to start a transition but they are part of a web of intra-actions that seem to be slowly shifting the urban energy landscape. An urban energy transition requires a deliberate engagement with alternative means of circumspection. Increasing interest on experimentation as a form of

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energy governance, for example, is motivated by the need to shake and remake the dynamic rationalities that enable low-carbon action. Co-design and collective prototyping of material objects can foster new imaginations of urban futures and construct alternative possibilities for intra-action. However, the most revolutionary aspect of urban energy landscapes may simply be to recognize how ongoing dwelling practices, in all their average everydayness, are already changing humans’ relationship with energy and our collective sense of Being-in-the-World.

Notes

1 Introduction 1.

2.

Transport is an important part of urban energy systems (Grubler, Bai et al. 2012, pp. 1307–1400). However, traditionally, much of the interest in energy and urbanization has focused on transport (Breheny 1995, pp. 81–101; Banister, Watson et al. 1997, pp. 125–144) to the detriment of other areas of study in which spatial aspects may also play an important role. Removing the focus from transport illuminates alternatives to conceive the urban energy transition in relation to how people use energy in their everyday lives for lighting, cooking, thermal comfort, or accessing communication networks. The research builds on a collection of qualitative data from fieldwork conducted between 2013 and 2016 to characterize the urban energy landscape in each city, which involves semi-structured interviews and participatory workshops with 161 participants. In each city, the research focused on understanding the narratives of energy provision, use, and governance from key actors intervening in the energy system including government officials, business developers, infrastructure technicians and managers, representatives of NGOs, activists, and community leaders. The collection includes 30 semi-structured interviews with 33 people in Hong Kong; 8 individual and 7 collective semi-structured interviews in Bangalore, with 25 people in total; 17 individual interviews and 2 workshops with 26 participants in Concepción; and 30 interviews with 35 participants and a community workshop with 25 participants in Maputo. Interviews were conducted in English, Portuguese, or Spanish, and they lasted from 20 minutes to over two hours. The themes discussed in the interviews moved from the citywide organization of the energy system to the everyday practices of energy use. The three workshops (two in Concepción and one in Maputo) each lasted one day and included discussions of different elements of the energy landscape using photographs and timelines and walking transects. The analysis also included a review of the development 209

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Notes to Pages 16–148

of the energy system in each city and an assessment of current data on energy access. In Maputo, in which data were limited, a survey of household energy uses was conducted (n = 40). In Bangalore, 12 profiles of informal settlements were compiled to characterize the energy uses among communities whose practices remain invisible in the city’s data. Further details of all this research may be found at: Cástan Broto, V. (2017). Mapping urban energy landscapes – Four case studies. [data collection] UK Data Service. SN: 852588, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-852588 2 Energy Transitions and Urban Infrastructure 1.

This academic community can be joined via their website (https://transitions network.org/).

5 Modernity Promises and the Quest for Autonomy: Urban Energy Landscapes in Maputo, Mozambique 1.

2.

“Today we have a different conception of cities, because our outlook on development is not based on the base of the exploitation of men by men. On the contrary, we reject the city as a center of wellbeing for a small minority, as a center of unemployment, of racial discrimination, as a zone for prostitution and thugs, as a center for the practice and diffusion of the values of the colonial-capitalist system” (Translated by the author). AVSI foundation is an Italian non-governmental organization that operates in Maputo since 2010, and implements projects in education, urban development, and energy access. For more information visit https://www.avsi.org/

6 Contiguous Heterogeneity and Private Strategies for Energy Provision: Urban Energy Landscapes in Bangalore, India 1.

Created in 1975, the Karnataka Slum Development Board works to improve the living conditions of the needy, according to the description on their website. This board is the government organization in charge of compiling slum statistics in Bangalore.

7 When Equal Access to Energy Causes Injustice: Urban Energy Landscapes in Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China 1.

Exhibition available at http://www.neonsigns.hk/?lang=en

Notes to Pages 150–182

211

8 Industrial Legacy and Governance through Activism: Urban Energy Landscapes in Concepción, Chile 1.

2.

“all mixed in the Enlightenment, where you Work as a torch, of paraffin, of gas light Poor where you walk, tricked and with naked legs Releasing cheap smoke” (translated by the author). Thanks to Martin Sanzana Calvet for identifying this set of variables.

9 Exploring Connective Tissues through Walking Different Urban Energy Landscapes 1.

And to reflect the long-lasting influence of Patrick Geddes on Indian urbanism.

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Index

Acordo de Lusaka, 79 actor-network theory, 57, 65 and planning, 67 Administração da Propriedade Imobiliária do Estado, Mozambique (APIE), 80 agency and actor-network theory, 65 and assemblage theory, 67 and feminist neo-materialism, 68–69 agential realism, 68–69 air conditioning, 197 as a relational object, 196 in Hong Kong, 136, 149, 186 in Maputo, 87 Aiuba Cuerencia, 83 Alcalde, Alfonso, 150–151 Anshu Bharadwaj, 120 appliances and energy poverty, 141 and living habits, 109 and types of housing, 136 as coping devices, 111 as markers of modernity, 87 Arkavati River, 106, 117 assemblage theory, 67, 207 average everydayness, 61, 71, 172, 198, 203 and agency, 66 and Dasein, 57 and tool-being theory, 58 Bangalore Chickpet, 179, 184 Civil and Military Station, 100, 102, 112, 179, 181 Cubbon Park, 179 disparities in electricity consumption, 107 industrial development, 102 installed capacity, 104 Kempegowda Bus Station, 179 Malleshwaram, 98, 179, 181–183 MG Road, 118 Nehru Colony, 116

Rajajinagar Industrial Estate, 103 slums and informal settlements, 108 Soldenavanhalli, 104 Vidana Souda, 118 Yelahanka, 120 Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), 103 Bangalore Energy Services Company (BESCOM), 111–115, 117, 119, 204 Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA), 103 Barad, Karen, 66, 68, 207 Barrias, Louis-Ernest, 202 Being-in-the-World, 38, 56–62, 65, 67–71 Bellary Thermal Power Station, 102 Bengaluru see Bangalore Bennet, Jane, 65 Bharadwaj, Anshu, 121 billboards, 147–148 Bio Bio region, 151–152, 154–155, 166 energy resources, 154 Regional Development Strategy, 161 Bio Bio river, 150, 152, 189, 191 biofuels and land grabbing, 83 blackouts, 114, 118, 144 as a governance mechanism, 99 as routine occurrence, 119 blackout in India in 2012, 118 Bocamina Themal Power Plant, 192 Braidotti, Rosy, 68–69 Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), 103 Cabo Delgado, 83 Cahora Bassa, 84 Cauvery River, 100, 105 Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP), 107, 117, 119–120 Central Electricity Authority (CEA) of India, 112, 119 charcoal and fuel transitions, 86 and gentrification, 196

237

238 charcoal (cont.) and livelihoods, 86, 94 cycle of charcoal, 92, 94–95, 196 insertion of charcoal in the urban space, 82, 92, 177–178 Cheng, Boey Kim, 1 Chile (Republic of) Central Interconnected System, 154 Energy 2050 Plan, 154, 161 neoliberal ideologies, 151 Pinochet’s dictatorship, 152 China Light and Power Co Ltd, 128 Chor Yuen, 123 choreographies of energy use, 36 and cooking, 92 and land tenure, 178 and situated practices, 184 and the home, 177 in Bangalore, 106 in Concepción, 155 in Hong Kong, 131 in Maputo, 85, 93 City Improvement Trust Board, Bangalore (CITB), 102 Civic Exchange, 144 climate change governance and cities, 3 climate change as an existential crisis, 3 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, 2 coevolution, 33, 35 and connective tissue, 171 historical trajectories, 198 comparative urbanism, 171 Concepción Coronel, 192 decline of mining, 152 El Venado, 191 energy resources, 154 Environmental De-contamination Plan (PDA), 163 Hualpén, 189 La Candelaria, 191 Lo Rojas, 192 Metropolitan Regulation Plan, 162 spatial inequality, 191 Talcahuano, 152–153, 156, 164, 189, 191 Villa San Pedro, 191 connective tissue and relational theory, 51 and walking, 12 as a biological metaphor, 49–50 components of connective tissue, 51 definition, 10, 39, 41, 203 empirical examples, 171–172 consumption and convenience, 112 and settlement patterns, 135 and subjectification, 91

Index industrial VS residential consumers, 154 responsible consumers, 88 contiguous heterogeneity, 108, 111, 181 cook stove, 92–95, 178, 203, 205 as a relational object, 196 cook stove design, 196 improved cook stoves, 93 cooking and the built environment, 32 as a shared practice, 158 health risks and accidents, 92 preferred appliances, 158 roast (asado) in Chile, 158 corporate social responsibility, 160, 168 Cosgrove, Denis E., 43, 45 Couto, Mia, 76–77, 96 Credelec, 92, 178 Daya Bay Nuclear Station in Guangdong, 129 Deccan Herald, 119 decentralized energy, 99, 198 DeLanda, Manuel, 67 density, 123, 125 and energy poverty, 140 high-density urbanization, 125 deserving subjects, 79, 88 developmental state, 102, 114, 180 diesel generators, 108, 111, 118, 184, 196 digital divide, 159 dwelling, landscapes of, 17, 46, 61 Edelstein, Michael R., 166 Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM), 89, 178 social mission, 90 Electricity and Mechanical Services Department, Hong Kong, 129 electricity tariffs, 114 Bhagya Jyothi category, 117 electrification, 81, 90, 98–99 and industrial development, 101 and international development, 90 and urban development, 109 as a modernity-making project, 118 rationing and priority access, 91 enchantment, 12, 61, 70, 172, 195, 206–207 energy access and autonomy, 86 and conditions of habitation, 109 and gender, 94 and household budgets, 94 and international development models, 95, 200 and poverty reduction strategies, 90 and socio-spatial structures, 107, 109, 140 and urban planning, 90 overlapping means of access, 108 energy efficiency, 159 energy governance see governance energy justice see environmental justice

Index energy landscapes analytical perspectives, 41 and assemblage theory, 44 and environmental justice, 43 and Geographical Information Systems (GIS), 43 and phenomenology, 45 and place-based stigma, 44 and place-making, 39 and post-humanism, 45 as a geographical concept, 39 as a way of seeing, 43 as dead labor, 44 energy planning at the national level, 116 forecasts, 119 integration with spatial planning, 161 justice and recognition, 152 energy poverty, 24, 139 and housing, 136, 140 as a discourse, 140, 142, 201 as an experience, 203 baseline surveys, 85 societal notions of a good life, 40 energy services as public goods, 88 overlapping, 7 energy sovereignty, 87 engineering and urban planning, 115 Environment Bureau, Hong Kong, 124, 143, 145 environmental conflicts, 166, 168 environmental justice, 116, 164, 168 and energy planning, 152 and landscape governance, 43 and low-carbon transformations, 3 justice as recognition, 166 equipment, 61 failure, 139, 203 ESKOM (South African electricity public utility), 84 ethnographies of infrastructure, 202 extractive landscapes, 81, 190, 193 extraordinary ordinariness, 12, 38, 172, 197, 206 feminism, 35 and agency, 68 and dwelling practices, 68 and knowledge fantasies, 202 feminist neo-materialism, 66 Ferrante, Elena, 54, 70 firewood, 94, 157–158, 191 and family cohesion, 158 dependence on, 157 First, Ruth, 78 flows, 6, 36 global flows, 30 maintenance of, 6 material flow analysis, 27 materiality of, 20 political ecology of, 26

239 fossil fuel dependency, 128, 130 Foucault, Michel, 29 fourthfold object, 204, 206 Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO), 75, 79, 83 energy politics, 83, 90 political decline, 81 fuel stacking, 107, 159 fuel switch, 141, 145, 149 Fundo Nacional de Energía of Mozambique (FUNAE), 90 General Electricity Company of Chile (CDECSIC), 161 global energy challenge, 57, 198 Goffman, Ervin, 32 governance and autarky, 142 and external dependence, 142 and national centralization, 161 and urban life, 95 as an assemblage, 195 as an incomplete project, 96, 104, 194 comparative analysis of energy governance, 194 hybrid model of privatization and state regulation, 113 privatization, 194–195 through activism, 164–165, 167–168 Haraway, Donna, 68 Harman, Graham, 65–66, 71, 203–206 Hasan, M. Fazlul, 104, 182 Heidegger, Martin and environmentalism, 69 besorgen, 55 Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 46–47 circumspection, 62–63, 65, 199 Dasein, 57–61, 64–66, 68 dwelling, 46 factuality and facticity, 59 present-at-hand and ready-to-hand, 49, 58–64, 66–70, 199, 204 The question concerning technology, 47 throwness, 55 time and the three-fold structure of life, 55, 206 tool-being theory, see present-at-hand and ready-to-hand worldhood of the world, 202 heterogeneous infrastructures, 5, 8, 200 and intermittency, 99 and material politics, 22 and urban memory, 194 as part of the urban condition, 201 homogeneous energy landscapes, 125, 149 Hong Kong Blue House in Wan Chai, 148 Climate Change Action Plan, 130 energy governance, 143

240

Index

Hong Kong (cont.) housing crisis, 139 housing types, 132, 135 Kowloon, 125–128, 143, 146, 148, 184–187 Lamma Island, 130, 143 Lei Yue Mun, 148 Lohas Park, 188 Mei Ho House, 186 Mong Kok, 184–185, 187 New Territories, 125–127, 143 Pak Tin Estate, 186–187 renewable potential, 129 Scheme of Control Agreements, 143 Shek Kip Mei, 127, 135, 186 Upper Ngau Tau Kok, 187 Victoria Bay, 126 visual identtiy, 123 Hong Kong Electric Company, 127, 129, 143 Housing Authority, Hong Kong, 127, 133, 137, 185 Hughes, Thomas P., 3–4, 25, 35 hydropower, 42, 81–82, 100–106, 119, 155, 194

land reclamation, 123, 188 landscape appropriation, 171 landscape artifacts, 46, 179 and material culture, 48, 197 landscapes of dwelling, 46 dwell alongside, 58–59 landscapes of energy see energy landscapes Latour, Bruno, 57, 65–66 lighting, 146 as a political practice, 146 kerosene lamps, 107–108 neon lights and nostalgia, 148 neon to LED transition, 142, 145, 147, 204 Lion Rock Country Park, 184 Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), 107 in Indonesia, 23 incomplete transitions, 86 low-carbon transitions, 6 as mainstream thinking, 15 in postcolonial contexts, 7 transition pathways (definition), 6, 34

industrial ecology, 26 circular metabolism, 27 industrial landscapes, 168, 189, 191, 197 infrastructure and everyday life, 31 contiguity, 109 extraordinary ordinariness, 24 infrastructure inversion, 22 landscape dominance, 189 visibility, 63, 177, 191 Ingold, Tim, 38, 46–47, 51, 56, 192, 198 intermediaries, 167 intermittency as a form of governance, 99 coping strategies, 196 International Energy Agency, 82, 106 intra-action, 68–70, 199–200, 207–208 irrigation pumps, 117 Ismail, Sir Mirza, 102

Mapuches, 150 Maputo Avenida da Marginal, 176 bairro governance, 91 carbon emissions per capita, 76 Chamanculo C, 51, 85–88, 92–94, 177–178, 204 Costa Do Sol, 175 Grupos Dinamizadores, 79 KaMpfumo, 50, 80–81, 175–177 Mafalala, 94 Mercado do Peixe, 50, 176 Polana Caniço, 94 urban history, 78 Xipaminine, 94 Massey, Doreen, 5, 20 Merchant, Carolyn, 202 metropolitan areas of Greater Concepción see Concepción mining and local livelihoods, 83 Ministry of Energy (Regional Secretary of Bio Bio, SEREMI), 161 Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy of Mozambique (MIREME), 89 Mirza Ismail, 106, 112, 117 Moatize coal deposit, 82 mobile phones, 87 modern infrastructural ideal, 106, 200 modern subject, 92, 181 Mozambique 2010 riots, 81 Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty, 83 decentralization, 91 energy access rates, 82 energy production, 82 General Peace Agreement of 1992, 80

just energy transitions, 3, 9, 43, 164, 198 K. Seshadri Iyer, 100 Karnataka definition of electricity access, 106 discourses of electrification, 106 growth of renewable energy, 105 Karnataka Electricity Reforms Act, 113 Karnataka Power Corporation Ltd. (KPCL), 113 Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd. (KPTCL), 114 Karnataka Slum Development Board, 108, 182 Karnataka State Electricity Board, 113–114, 117 kerosene, 107 Kolar Gold Fields, 100

Index independence, 79 Operação produção, 80 Structural Adjustment Programme, 80 Mozambique Resistance Movement (RENAMO), 80 multi-sensorial landscape experiences, 189 Mysore Engineers Association, 115 Nair, Janaki, 99 Narayan, R.K., 97–98, 121 National Company of Oil of Chile (ENAP), 161 neon lights, 78, 146–147, 149 New Public Management, 102 nexus between water and energy, 105 nexus, water-electricity, 104 Niassa province, 80 normalization of sub-standard conditions, 111 Nothofagus pumilio, 158 obduracy, 34, 171 object-oriented ontology (OOO) fourthfold object, 204 inexhaustible objects, 205 ontic qualities VS ontological relations, 205 Owens, Susan, 24–25, 31, 33, 40, 42 participatory planning, 152 Pearl River Delta, 123 Pemba, 83 petrochemical complex, 152, 189 Petromoc (Mozambique), 90 planner’s dilemma, 116 pockets of wonder, 96 politico-industrial ecology, 26–27 pollution sources, 163 postcolonial theory, 4 and embodied knowledge, 68 power on hire, 183 power purchase agreements, 113–114, 119 open access model, 120 Practical Action, 85 practice theory, 16, 31–32 choreographies of energy use, 32 lost practices, 108 prepaid systems of energy provision, 178 Princely Mysore, 99–100, 112 productive uses of energy, 109, 160 Proust, Marcel, 1 public housing heritage, 186 public housing architecture, 186 public lighting see street lighting quadruple object see fourthfold object radical incrementalism, 5, 201 Raichur Thermal Power Station, 102 relational space and energy studies, 5 and sustainability transitions, 20

241 critique of Euclidean notions of space, 5 reliability, 88, 108, 128, 141–142, 145, 149 renewable energy, barriers to, 130–131 rentier colonialism, 78 residential enclaves, 108 resource securitization, 108 retrofitting, 198 Rovuma Basin gas deposits, 83 Santa María thermal power plant, 154, 191 Sauer, Carl, 43, 46 scarcity, 55, 111, 116–120, 129, 138, 149, 204 social construction of energy scarcity, 116 Shaw Brothers’ Hong Kong studios, 123 Shivanasamudra hydropower plant, 100, 105, 112 smart cities, 121 solar water heaters, 106, 109, 136, 183–184 spatial fragmentation, 98, 151, 192 spatial inequality, 191 boundaries of energy flows, 156 colonial boundaries, 177 splintering urbanism, 113, 200 Star, Susan Leigh, 22–24, 30, 38, 61, 201–202 State Electricity Boards in India, 112 street lighting, 88, 177 and the built environment, 88 street vendors, 94, 192 subdivided units in Hong Kong, 124, 139 subjectification, 91 sustainability innovation in public housing, 187 sustainability transitions multi-level perspective (MLP), 18 technological innovation systems (TIS), 18 transitions management (TM), 18 Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN), 16 taskscapes, 46–47, 51, 58, 192, 198 technocratic imagination, 104, 181 technoscapes, 28–30 territorialization, 81 thermal comfort, 87, 157 thermal energy, 120 Total Energy Access survey, 86 town gas, 42, 129–130 ungovernable, the, 77, 95–96 United Nations, 109 urban energy landscapes and daily tasks, 192 and urban history, 194 as connective tissue, 49, 52, 56 conceptual framework, 36 definition, 2, 7, 36 urban energy transitions, 18, 198 and everyday actions, 198 and experimentation, 207 and infrastructure heterogeneity, 201

242 urban energy transitions (cont.) and multiple actors, 21 and time, 206 urban heat island, 137 urban infrastructure regimes, 21 urban political ecology, 25 and actor-network theory, 31 and feminism, 30 and postcolonial theory, 30 and practice theory, 32 and resource scarcity, 116 urbanization as an incomplete project, 175 vertical VS horizontal mobility, 188 vetriyver root, 108 Visvesvaraya, Sir M, 100, 106, 112–117, 181

Index walkable cities, 198 walking as a methodology, 10, 36, 172 and connective tissue, 204 collective walks, 177 transects, 10, 172, 184 water pump, 104 Whiterehead, Rachel, 48 wind power, 47, 130 Winner, Langdon, 65 World Bank, 76, 80 World Green Organization, Hong Kong (WGO), 140 World Resources Institute, 120 World Urbanization Prospects, 80 Xilunguini, 76