Karen Bakker has characterized the scattered islands of networked water supply that are common in the cities of the global South as 'archipelagos'. Those living outside of archipelagos utilize a variety of interventions, collectively referred to here as tendrils, to access water by informal means. Neoliberal imperatives driving infrastructure transformation aim to alter the paradigm of water-supply provision to diminish its plural composition and effectively transform tendrils into archipelagos. In this article, developing a conceptual and methodological synthesis between Science and Technology Studies (STS) and political ecology, I study the emergence of public-private partnerships in India as laboratories in the marketization of water-supply provision. These partnerships, initiated at local scales, aim to enroll informal water users into standardized modes of water-supply provision and effectively expand the archipelagos of modernity. I draw upon empirical research of a water-supply partnership in the city of Bengaluru, describing some of the characteristics of the experimental processes, and argue that they simultaneously forward the marketization of water-supply services while inadvertently providing opportunities for residents, local associations and activists to form networks of counter-experimentation. The description of these political acts, this article concludes, provokes re-examination of the efficacy of an instrumental understanding of water partnerships, but requires closer policy engagement with 'governance failures' that are rife in water-supply provision.

Despite decades of effort, deficiencies in access and quality of infrastructure persist in cities of the developing world. One common response to the infrastructure problem is to reorganize the structure of metropolitan areas in the hopes that infrastructure provision, management, and quality will improve. What is not clear globally, however, is how the reorganization of metropolitan areas comes to be, and how infrastructure deficiencies function as a rationale for reform in conjunction with other dominant reasons or drivers of metropolitan reorganization. Building on the demand for increased cross-regional comparison in urban studies generally, this article explores and compares the relationship between infrastructure quality and political and social pressures in four cities-two in India and two in East Africa. The comparison is intended to be exploratory; it shows how city and national government efforts to improve infrastructure quality are shaped by political and social pressures. The results provide a foundation for future cross-regional comparison and theory building.The rapid spatial and demographic growth of cities in developing countries has brought into focus the dismal quality of and access to essential infrastructure service delivery. 1 It is common knowledge that infrastructure provision is marked by wide disparities within cities. But, as cities physically grow beyond formal city boundaries, the challenge of infrastructure provision across multiple jurisdictions is exacerbated. One dominant response to this acute challenge has been to reorganize and restructure metropolitan areas and/or administration in an effort to create new and novel arrangements for service delivery. 2 While metropolitan reorganization has often been launched with an explicit infrastructural motivation and rationale, other factors or drivers also play a significant role in motivating reorganization. A question that remains underexamined comparatively, particularly in relation to cities in the Global South, is how these technical imperatives interact with social and political factors to drive the reorganization of urban areas and governments.In this article we investigate the interaction of three drivers of metropolitan reorganization in four cities: two in East Africa and two in India. These factors, we argue, are typical drivers of metropolitan reorganization in developing countries: technical deficiencies (in the form of hard infrastructure), political goals, and social pressure. As we explain in more detail below, a technical motivation for reorganization emerges when a goal of improving infrastructure quality is an explicit and dominant aim or reason underpinning a reform effort. A political motivation arises from an inclination on the part of local, state, or national actors to restructure metropolitan areas to further their interests. Social motivators for reorganization emerge when nongovernment members of urban

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-In 2009 the Canadian EngineeringAccreditation Board (CEAB)

Decentralized technologies and city-based governance are being actively promoted for urban sanitation in low-income countries. At the same time, municipal agencies in developing countries have little technical or financial capacity for sanitation planning. This paper develops an approach to sanitation planning that leverages citizen engagement and fosters local capacities. It presents an empirical study from two small towns in India, where collaborations among the research team, local academics and students, and the municipal government, produced planning-oriented sanitary maps of each town. The maps were built upon a social and spatial understanding of the diverse sanitation practices that already exist, coupled with Google Earth and free GIS software. The 'waste watersheds' and 'sanitation zones' identified through the mapping process provide a basis on which sanitation interventions can be assessed and weighed, so that sustainable solutions can be prioritized. The paper identifies three features for system interventions: first, making local municipal government the locus of sanitation interventions; second, engaging community-based organizations and academic institutions to develop local capacity; and finally, recognizing the fragmented nature of cities by developing a socio-spatial approach to sanitation zoning.