Lost in transition? Comparing strategies of electricity companies in Delhi

Introduction to the special issue – Urban energy governance: Local actions, capacities and politics

“…Verdeil et al (2015), Hannon and Bolton (2015) and Webb (2015) focus on the subsidies, finance and economic arrangements that also constitute an important resource in the construction of local capacity to act and effect change. This also demonstrates that energy issues have, in many cases, become a conduit through which authorities, political actors and energy companies seek to actually govern urban areas and populations more generally, shaping access to and affordability of energy flows in particular ways for particular purposes (compare, for example, Criqui and Zérah (2015), Mouton (2015), Blanchet (2015), Webb (2015)). …”

“…Gabillet, 2015), and the relations and partnerships developed between different actors (Mattes et al, 2015) in the production of collective energy governance on a local or urban scale. This fine-grained analysis of the daily coordination and intermediation work (or indeed the improvisation and 'bricolage': Webb, 2015) involved in the governing of urban energy sheds light on the knowledge and expertise used by different actors, whether corporate cultures and management styles (Criqui and Zérah, 2015) or 'grassroots' community groups (Blanchet, 2015). It also elaborates on the policy learning process contributing to broader socio-technical change within and between cities.…”

“…Policy responses may thus be constructed through intervention in a number of energy-related 'local development' (Nadai et al, 2015) areas such as urban planning, mobility, infrastructure, housing, etc. Criqui and Zérah (2015) demonstrate how energy utility strategies in Delhi have to be constructed to deal with the specific urban challenge of weaving an infrastructure and a service into informal neighborhoods and communities with different socio-spatial and material forms and fabrics. This highlights that, even within the confines of multi-level governance arrangements, there is indeed a significant and growing role for urban actors (widely defined) in energy transition processes underway in various forms in different countries of the North and South, especially if those actors are able to translate 'energy transition' into meaningful local requirements and needs.…”

Infrastructure urbanism: Roadmaps for servicing unplanned urbanisation in emerging cities

“…Abiding by the call for new comparative imaginations (McFarlane & Robinson, 2012), the confrontation of Delhi and Lima's experiments builds on a methodology of 'unpacking' utility sectors (Criqui & Z erah, 2015): the geographical, social and institutional challenges that utilities face and their sociotechnical responses are systematically analysed. Nevertheless, the latter combine different tools and approaches which are not directly comparable.…”

Making a smart city for the smart grid? The urban material politics of actualising smart electricity networks

“…Rather it was actualised through the iteration and negotiation of the material assemblage of particular urban landscapes, the localised political and social context and the ways in which such interventions come into proximity to a wide range of other urban concerns (see Rutherford 2014). SGSC was shaped by particular urban challenges related to the socio-spatial, politico-legal and material make-up of the urban fabric (see Criqui and Zerah 2015). The materiality of the urban, its properties and behaviours, are not incidental to but are active constituents of the practical negotiations through which what SGSC could become in the city took shape.…”