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Access to water supply is still a problem in African cities. This has sparked discussions about how small-scale private actors could collaborate with the state to improve water supply. However, scholarly discussions on water supply have hardly examined the role of such actors in maintenance and repair. This paper shows how water infrastructures are maintained and repaired through hybrid labor relations between private and public actors where formal and informal practices are combined. These findings allow us to shift conceptualization in maintenance and repair beyond the state and explain how private actors enact and challenge the state’s power through maintenance and repair practices.

Over the last decade, the protection of urban infrastructures has become a focus in German security policies. These point not solely to the multiple external infrastructural threats (e.g. natural disasters, terrorist and cyber-attacks), but also to the endogenous risks of cascading failures across geographical and functional borders that arise from interlocking and often mutually dependent infrastructures. As geographical nodes in infrastructurally mediated flows, cities are considered to be particularly vulnerable to infrastructure breakdowns. Their capability to prevent and to prepare for infrastructural failures, and thus to manage infrastructural interdependencies, is seen as a major prerequisite for resilient societies. However, as our article demonstrates, the institutional capacity of the local authorities and utility companies for risk mitigation and preparedness is limited. Drawing on qualitative research in selected German cities, we argue that the governance of critical infrastructures involves considerable challenges: it overarches different, often fragmented, policy domains and territories and institutionally unbundled utility (sub-) domains. Moreover, risk mitigation and preparedness are usually not based on experience from past events, but on destructive scenarios. They involve considerable uncertainty and contestations among local decision-makers. Interviews with local experts indicate that effective governance of critical infrastructures requires more regulatory efforts by national policies. At the same time, they point to the need for identifying and assessing place-based vulnerabilities, for defining locally differentiated mitigation and preparedness strategies and for the training of local utility companies as well as crisis management.

The universalisation of access to electricity in Africa is widely seen as achievable through a form of technification, in which a regular supply of energy is guaranteed by an infrastructure that works quietly and reliably in the background. In most places, however, this promise has been fulfilled only for the wealthiest. This chapter looks at Nairobi to find out why this is the case and how exactly it is managed. It examines the everyday provision of electricity, focusing on two very different types of neighbourhoods within Nairobi’s fragmented electricity landscape. The first is in informal settlements, where local “cartels” connect cables to the national grid and run them to informal settlement residents in order to sell them electricity at a lower price than the public utility would. The second is in upmarket real estate projects, where developers set up their own licensed utilities to buy electricity in bulk from the national grid at a lower price and then sell it to their tenants at a higher price. Both the regulated and unregulated ways of getting electricity to end-users point to the importance of intermediaries, which is often overlooked in conventional studies. The chapter examines how the utility negotiates trade-offs with different types of intermediaries and considers the implications for local electricity supply.

Cities play a crucial role in addressing climate change, both as significant contributors and as victims of its impacts. In the Netherlands, the City Deal "Energieke Wijken" aims to enhance the effectiveness of local energy transitions by fostering collaboration among municipalities, national government bodies, and other organisations. Despite the increasing focus on transnational municipal networks (TMNs) in urban climate governance research, there remains a notable gap in understanding the effectiveness of national city networks, especially those involving mid-sized and smaller municipalities. This study addresses this gap by investigating the influence of the City Deal on the effectiveness of local energy transition governance in participating municipalities. The research examines three key areas: the supportive functions provided by the City Deal, its influence on multi-level governance dynamics, and areas for potential improvement. Findings indicate that the City Deal significantly enhances municipal governance capabilities through extensive knowledge exchange, fostering a dynamic learning environment, and promoting vertical, horizontal, and cross-sectoral collaboration. The City Deal helps municipalities overcome structural challenges they encounter regarding energy transition governance in the Netherlands, by facilitating a platform in which they can share best practices, innovative solutions and collectively advocate for change in policies and schemes to the national government. Vertically, it improves relationships between municipalities and higher administrative levels, ensuring alignment with national policies. Horizontally, it fosters city-to-city collaboration and cross-sectoral integration, promoting integrated approaches that link environmental goals with social benefits. However, challenges such as capacity for smaller municipalities and network inclusiveness were identified. To address these issues the study recommends clearer formulated end goals

This research is a response to current literature that highlights the socio-technical complexities of metropolitan governance influencing the integration between water and energy infrastructures. It has explored institutional fragmentation in aquathermal energy application in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam, which is recognized as a leading European region in the energy transition. Document analysis and expert interviews have been used in combination with a theoretical framework that incorporates leading values, institutional settings, and spatial characteristics. This has shown how these external factors shape the coordination between relevant stakeholders in aquathermal energy use. The findings demonstrate the willingness for integration among sectors, which is hindered by the presence of unsuitable institutional frameworks that complicate the coordination on regional application of aquathermal energy. Therefore, they suggest the need for an overarching organ bringing together disciplines and spatialities, stronger municipal instruments, and more clarity and clear direction for involved stakeholders.

The study examines the introduction of fare-free public transport in Luxembourg, which attracted worldwide attention. The central objective is to analyse the extent to which fare-free public transport can contribute to a modal shift from motorised private transport to public transport. It is examined whether the Luxembourg context offers a suitable environment for this purpose, taking into account both favourable conditions and persistent obstacles. The findings, drawn from qualitative research, particularly expert interviews, unveil a nuanced landscape. While promising aspects signal readiness for change, spatial deficits, cultural reliance on cars, and insufficient supporting measures that restrict the car present obstacles. The multifaceted nature of these challenges and their intricate interplay suggest that achieving a substantial modal shift may face substantial hurdles. In essence, while fare-free public transport does not prove to be a miracle cure, it does, however, offer additional benefits that can make it a meaningful component of a holistic approach to achieving more sustainable mobility.

Purpose Cyber resilience has emerged as an approach for seaports to deal with cyberattacks; it emphasizes ports’ ability to prepare for an attack and to keep operating and recover quickly. However, little research has been undertaken on the challenges of governing cyber risks in seaports. This study aims to address this gap. Design/methodology/approach Governing cyber resilience is shaped by distributed responsibilities, uncertainties and ambiguities. The authors use this conceptualization to explore the governance of cyber risks in seaports, taking the Port of Rotterdam as a case study and analyzing semistructured interviews with stakeholders, participatory observation and policy documents and legislation. Findings The authors found that many strategies for governing cyber risks remain dedicated to protecting computer systems against cyberattacks. Nevertheless, port stakeholders have also developed strategies in anticipation of disruptions. However, these strategies appear informal and uncoordinated due to a lack of information exchange, insufficient knowledge regarding cyber risks and disagreement about how to make the Port of Rotterdam cyber resilient. What mainly hampers the cyber resilience of the port is the lack of a comprehensive regulatory framework and economic incentives. The authors conclude that resilience is merely an ideal at the Port of Rotterdam, meaning related governance strategies remain incremental and await institutionalization. Originality/value This paper offers insights into the cyber resilience of critical socio-technical systems, which have been underexposed in cyber resilience debates, but, when exploited, can manifest in large-scale disruptions.

Electricity is essential for the functioning of contemporary cities. However, despite its overarching criticality, residents of Southern cities like Accra are challenged by splintered access and limited reliability of electricity services. To maintain access, and creatively maneuver blackout situations, residents in Southern cities employ many alternative socio-technical configurations and adaptive strategies. Using the lenses of urban resilience, vulnerability, and social practice theory, we explore the everyday energy practices of residents and businesses in different settlements across Accra, particularly in response to electricity service disruptions. Here, we interrogate electricity as an enabler of practices as well as the consequences of electricity disruption, and the technologies and adaptive strategies employed to maintain those practices. Our goal is to assess the potential for ensuring urban resilience in the face of electricity blackouts through adaptive energy access and user practices. Empirically, we employ primary data gathered from expert interviews with utility providers and local government officials, neighborhood visits, observations, interviews with urban residents and businesses, and document analyses. By examining the everyday energy practices of urban residents, we argue that we can better understand urban/critical infrastructure resilience and the alternative pathways to it. We further contend that the relationship between resilience and practices is predicated on—and necessitated by—systemic socio-economic and socio-spatial inequalities. We therefore advocate for a stronger engagement with electricity user perspectives and everyday energy practices in mainstream resilience and vulnerability discourses related to critical infrastructure disruption.

Seaports, infrastructural nodes in global supply chains and production processes, are vulnerable to flood risks: they are crisis-prone critical infrastructure (CI) systems. However, the governance of their flood resilience involves many different private and public actors in a complex institutional environment and there is no scholarly consensus about how resilience can be successfully governed. We investigate the governance of flood resilience at the Port of Rotterdam (PoR) from an institutional perspective, by studying institutional arrangements for flood resilience within and across vertical, horizontal and territorial dimensions to elucidate the strengths and ongoing challenges of shaping the port’s flood resilience. We conducted semi-structured expert interviews (n = 17) and an analysis of policy documents and legislation (n = 33) relating to flood risk management and CI protection. We find that the institutional design for flood resilience in the Netherlands consists of a complex matrix of responsibilities, capacities and plans. While coordination is visible in the shared visions and strategies for flood resilience developed at different policy levels and domains, we find fragmentation and persisting institutional challenges, including siloed governance approaches, knowledge gaps and blurred distribution of responsibilities; these are significant barriers to enhancing flood resilience for CIs and port–city relationships.

The task of developing regional greenbelts poses multidimensional challenges to policymakers. Unlike their early 20th-century predecessors, these greenspaces incorporate multiple functions including growth management, farmland and environmental protection, and increasing economic competitiveness. This regional and multifunctional approach to greenbelt management involves considerable governance complexities, as an increasing number of policy fields such as economic growth, agriculture, housing, nature conservation, different policy levels and various territorial jurisdictions become involved in policy implementation. However, institutional dimensions of contemporary greenbelt governance are hardly reflected within the literature. This is also the case for the Greater Golden Horseshoe region in Southern Ontario, Canada, where a regional Greenbelt Plan was implemented in 2005. By engaging with institutional perspectives on regional governance, we analyse how the governance of regional greenbelts and smart growth have been influenced by vertical, horizontal and territorial coordination challenges and politics at the provincial and local levels. We conclude that despite provincial government intervention in regional planning, the impact of market pressures, growth coalitions and institutional coordination problems prevent growth management policies from delivering the significant changes promised by the Ontario government.

There is a remarkable growth in the appearance of city rankings and indexes. City rankings and indexes are frequently used to evaluate cities’ performance in achieving sustainability and health. However, there is a dominant concern in urban studies that the impact of city rankings and indexes is under-examined. Consequently, this study explores the impact of city rankings and indexes on the planning of healthy cities. The main research question guiding this study is: “How do city rankings and indexes impact the planning of healthy cities?”. To answer the research question, qualitative research methods were used. Specifically, a case study approach involving semi-structured interviews. The case used was the Healthy City Index developed by the consulting and engineering firm Arcadis. In total, 24 experts were interviewed. The experts included experts employed in municipalities included in the Healthy City Index, an expert from Arcadis, the initiator of the index, and one expert with profound knowledge on the topic of healthy cities. The study concludes that a city ranking or index, specifically the Healthy City Index, has limited impact on the planning of healthy cities. The limited impact is derived from various findings. Firstly, the Healthy City Index has limited usefulness in addressing the main challenges of planning healthy cities. Secondly, the increased awareness of the topic, due to the Healthy City Index, is short-lived and diminishes over time. Thirdly, municipalities do not actively focus on increasing performance on the Healthy City Index to plan a healthy city. Fourthly, considering the limitations, the suitableness of using the Healthy City Index for the planning of healthy cities by municipalities is limited. Lastly, the Healthy City Index is not actively used as a strategic steering tool, limiting its impact. The main impact of the Healthy City Index currently lies in highlighting the topic’s urgency, providing evidence for reaffirming existing proble

The mitigation of the effects of climate change is an increasingly urgent matter. To that effect, many cities aim to decarbonise their heating and cooling infrastructure, as the heating and cooling of the built environment requires a significant amount of the city’s energy demand. As this is a long-term development, cities usually use strategic frameworks to guide the transition process of decarbonising these infrastructures. However, this transition faces many significant challenges in both the social and the technical domains. These challenges severely limit cities in their capabilities to implement strategic frameworks and, therefore, the ability to enable and guide the transition in urban areas. This research aims to chart these challenges and explore how cities can address them to move forward with the transition. To explore these challenges and assess their impact on the transition, this research examines the transitory development of decarbonising heating and cooling infrastructures through a multi-case study on Bilbao and Bratislava. The socio-technical transition of the decarbonisation of heating and cooling infrastructures in both cases is analysed using the four-track approach proposed by Strategic Spatial Planning theory and literary criteria for strategic frameworks. Furthermore, the extent to which the projectification phenomenon impacts the transition is assessed. The research concludes by identifying the uncertainty resulting from socio-technical heterogeneity as the major challenge to the transition, resulting in unclarity in long-term visions and in short-term and long-term actions. A further consequence of this uncertainty is identified as the paradoxical dependency of authorities on regime actors to facilitate the socio-technical regime change necessary to enable the transition. The projectification phenomenon is identified as a challenge to the transition and a possible pragmatic solution to the implications of the uncertainty-related challenges

Data centers, which power the digital economy and advanced digital services, and serve as the “backbone” of smart cities, have an expanding spatial and environmental footprint. As the capabilities of the internet and advanced technology (such as AI and VR) become more prevalent, the data center industry is expected to grow. Despite the opportunities afforded by digital infrastructure, data centers are reported to also have notable spatial and environmental impacts —including significant energy usage. These consequences are apparent in Amsterdam which has become a leading European hub for colocation data centers. In the social sciences, notably in the field of smart cities and critical data studies, there has been limited empirical research on data centers. Existing research has examined the social and the environmental implications of data centers but there has been less examination of the impact these facilities have on urban infrastructure and how they are governed. Using Amsterdam as a case study, this research uses a sociotechnical analysis of networked infrastructure and examination of smart urbanization as well as cloud geographies and ecologies to explore the impacts of data centers on spatial planning and energy grids and how they are governed. The research concludes that data centers have benefitted from the reliability of energy grid and influenced the local governance of energy grid development. However, there continues to be challenges in governing a nontransparent but rapidly evolving industry.

This thesis explores the alignment between two topic policy goals: densifying the city to fulfill the enormous demand for affordable housing and making the city climate-resilient to respond to possible future (climate-related) shocks and stresses. This study pictures both the already implemented governance mechanisms and the governance mechanisms that could improve the alignment of densification and climate resilience goals. With multiple conflicts between the two policy goals being identified, the research shows that the currently implemented governance mechanisms lack the impact to foster the alignment between densification and climate resilience as the climate resilience paradigm is undervalued. To improve the alignment, this thesis suggests creating integral visions that structurally map the climatic strengths and weaknesses of an area before shaping the densification plans.