CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue on

Informal Space in the Urban Waterscape

With the financial support of UNESCO-IHE

Guest Editors:
Rhodante Ahlers (UNESCO-IHE, Delft)
Frances Cleaver (Bradford University, UK)
Klaas Schwartz (UNESCO-IHE, Delft)

Cities in developing countries have grown into heterogonous urban landscapes. These cities are perhaps best described as “a city of fragments” in which “physical environment, services, income, cultural values and institutional systems can vary markedly from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, often from street to street” (Balbo 1993). The fragmented urban landscape is reflected in the prevailing governance structures. The city encompasses multiple sites (or arenas) of governance, incorporating a variety of actors (varying from more formal to informal) who exert various modes of power (Lindell 2008). In these multiple arenas, which are strongly intertwined, an important role is played by the ‘informal’ sector. The ‘informal' sector is characterized by the "political bargaining and the social struggles involved in determining the changing and continuously contested boundary between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ spheres" (Hossain, 2011). Fragmentation and heterogeneity manifest themselves in the growth, coexistence and overlap of formal and informal institutions shaping urban life.

In African cities approximately 75% of basic services are provided by ‘informal’ providers (Simone, 2005) who utilize a wide variety of water sources and supply options, which in turn determine variegated infrastructural configurations. Far from being a ‘backward’ sector or a survival strategy of the poor, the ‘informal’ water services sector includes stable enterprises and dynamic businesses representing a variety of scales, business structures, levels of sophistication and capital intensity (Ahlers et al., 2011, Chen, 2007; Kariuki and Schwartz, 2005; Owusu, 2007, Sansom, 2006; Solo, 1999).

Water and sanitation provision in developing countries has been compared to archipelagos with formal provision consisting of “spatially separated but linked ‘islands’ of networked supply in the urban fabric” (Bakker, 2003). The urban waterscape is thus composed of highly diverse and often ’informal’ providers, adhering to different operational and service delivery models. This special issue seeks to explore the water and sanitation provision realities in ‘informal’ urban spaces unserved, or partially served, by formal utilities. Much of the literature on urban informal service provision falls under instrumental policy-focused analysis, while urban informality has more traction with critical scholars using Lefebvrian or political ecological approaches to analyze the mutually constitutive political and spatial practices of informality and their socio-technical manifestations. Hence we have identified the two following overarching questions:

• How is the spatial configuration of ‘informal’ service provision historically and socio-ecologically produced?
• What is the relation between service provision, technology and flows of power in these ‘informal’ urban spaces?

To this end we invite both empirically grounded and theoretical reflections on these issues from those with interest or involvement in informal provision of water and sanitation services in fragmented urban areas. Illustrative, but by no means exhaustive examples, of topics that can be addressed by submissions include:

• Urbanization, the development of informal spaces and provision of water services.
• The nature and evolution of hybrid economic, social and political arrangements of service provision in urban areas
• How are informal providers embedded in the wider social-political landscape and how has this embeddedness shaped the service provision modalities in a particular area?
• What are the policies and discourses of government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and donors regarding the role of informal operators in providing water and sanitation services? How do these policies impact these operators and the development of the sector? Given that this sector is far from homogenous (differing in size, technology, source of water, consumer –base, profit margins, etc.), policies are likely to have different impacts on different operators.
• What are the business strategies of different informal providers and what is the nature of the relationship of informal operators with their customers and how does this relationship influence service provision?

To develop this special issue, we will organize a 2.5 day workshop in Delft, the Netherlands. For this workshop the authors of the accepted abstracts will be invited (and their costs covered). Invited authors will have two tasks. Firstly, they will present their own paper (which they are to submit about 6 weeks before the workshop). Secondly, each author will be asked to comment on the paper of another author prior to the workshop. These comments will be shared following the presentation of that paper at the workshop. Both the presentation and peer-review comments will form the basis for a discussion amongst the participants. The peer-review and the discussion will then provide inputs to finalize the paper. The final paper will then be subject to the standard Water Alternatives review process.

Timeline

• Launch of the call by May 10, 2012
• Submission of abstracts by July 15, 2012
• Notification of authors by August 30, 2012
• Draft papers by October 30, 2012
• Delft Workshop, 4-5 December, 2012
• Final papers for review process by february 1st 2013
• Publication by October 2013

Contact the guest-editors

Rhodante Ahlers r.ahlers@unesco-ihe.org
Frances Cleaver f.d.cleaver@bradford.ac.uk
Klaas Schwartz k.schwartz@unesco-ihe.org

or send your abstract to: managing_editor@water-alternatives.org