THE LIMITS OF INFRASTRUCTURE: Public Transport in a Post‐colonial City

Abstract

Since the 1940s, the people of the neighbourhoods (kampungs) around Surabaya's derelict Ngagel industrial estate have made a living by repurposing the remains of what was once one of Asia's most modern road, rail and industry networks. The remains--in the form of leftover fuel, labour and factory parts--are used to rebuild and repair improvised transport vehicles like bicycle-taxis (becak), minibuses (bemo) and motorbike-taxis (ojek). The repurposing happens at the limits of a capital-intensive heavy infrastructure of factories, trams and buses. The limits are those points where such infrastructure fails and a household-funded mosquito-fleet of light vehicles succeeds. Repurposing gives those who do it a right to infrastructure by providing the city with much-needed public transport. In Surabaya, public transport begins at its limits through the improvisations of people who live in the productive remains of capital-intensive heavy infrastructure. These people live in Surabaya's deindustrialized urban core, where life is made in the ruins of infrastructure through the breaking-down of it, the reworking of it, the right to it, and the leakage of it--the means through which rank-and-file people rather than states and corporations forge infrastructure. FIGURE 1 Scrap picker searching the gutted Iglas factory for parts (photo by the