Politicised nexus thinking in practice: Integrating urban wastewater utilities into regional energy markets

an article by Timothy Moss (Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany) and Frank Hüesker (Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany) published in Urban Studies Volume 56 Issue 11 (August 2019)

Abstract

Infrastructures are key interfaces of urban resource use, connecting production to consumption, cities to their hinterland and energy to water and land use. They have, however, received scant attention in debates on nexus thinking in general, and the urban nexus in particular.

Drawing on an emergent critical literature on the nexus in urban studies and science and technology studies, this article examines practices of (attempted) inter-sectoral infrastructure integration at the interface of urban wastewater treatment and regional energy provision in Germany.

It analyses the nexus approaches and experiences of eight German cities / city-regions as so-called ‘flexibility providers’ in regional energy markets for electricity, gas and heating.

It demonstrates how the practices of wastewater utilities operating in energy markets involve far more than technical adaptation, requiring in addition a major reordering of existing material, spatial and institutional configurations to both wastewater and energy systems.

This is proving a deeply political process with important implications for our understanding of socio-technical transitions at the water-energy nexus.

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‘Deal or no deal?’ Governing urban infrastructure funding and financing in the UK City Deals

an article by Peter O’Brien and Andy Pike (Newcastle University, UK) published in Urban Studies Volume 56 Issue 7 (May 2019)

Abstract

How urban infrastructure is funded, financed and governed is a central issue for states at the national, city-regional and city scales. Urban infrastructure is being financialised by financial and state actors and transformed into an asset in the international investment landscape.

Local governments are being compelled by national state and financial institutions to be more entrepreneurial in their infrastructure funding and financing and to reorganise their governance arrangements.

This article explains the socially and spatially uneven unfolding and implications of urban infrastructure financialisation and local government attempts to implement more entrepreneurial practices and governance forms.

The empirical focus is the City Deals in the UK: a new form of urban governance and infrastructure investment based upon negotiated central–local government agreements on decentralised powers, responsibilities and resources.

The continued authority of the highly centralised UK national state, its managerialist institutions and conservative/risk-averse administrative culture have constrained urban infrastructure financialisation and entrepreneurial urban governance in the UK City Deals. Situated in their particular spatial, temporal, political-economic and institutional settings, financialisation is understood as a socially and spatially variegated process and urban governance is interpreted as the articulation and mixing of new entrepreneurial and enduring managerialist forms.

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