Infrastructure and Metropolitan Reorganization: An Exploration of the Relationship in Africa and India

Abstract

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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