Papers by Jochen Monstadt
Cities, 2024
Social media has recently become a networked public sphere for social interactions and power stru... more Social media has recently become a networked public sphere for social interactions and power struggles in planning practice. However, little research has been done to understand the impact of social media on power relations in collaborative planning. This study uses the Bell and Drum Tower planning practice in Beijing as a case study to elaborate on whether and how social media empowers citizens, experts, and third parties to influence decision-making and promote a communicative planning process. It develops a mixed-methods approach that combines web scraping, social network analysis, and interviews to examine networked power generated by social media. It applies the three dimensions of a network (structure, symmetry, and strength) to measure new forms of power imbalances. The findings show that experts and journalists hold a significant amount of networked power and that social actors can enhance their influence by managing and controlling information flows. Power inequalities exist in the networked public sphere but shift away from governments to other actors, yet without jeopardizing the ultimate decision-making on the ground by the government. This study bridges the gap between network power theory and network science, turning the metaphor of network power into an evidencebased analysis based on a quantitative approach.
Geoforum, 2024
Heritage district (re)development usually involves conflict, especially when the local community ... more Heritage district (re)development usually involves conflict, especially when the local community challenges existing preservation policy arrangements, and conflicts involve the framing of competing positions in the public sphere. While framing strategy aids in understanding conflict dynamics, further theoretical exploration is necessary. This paper emphasizes the role of contextual influence and how opportunity structures can enhance framing analysis's explanatory power in tracing the evolution of heritage district redevelopment conflicts. We perceive opportunity structures as emerging properties of interactive relationships between contending actors' framing strategies (agency) and the contextual systems where they assert their claims (structure). Through an analysis of the media frames, policy documents and interviews with 50 relevant actors, we investigate two heritage conflicts in China. The results show that conflict is shaped by diverse heritage values and competing interests as well as the presence of short-lived or long-lived opportunities. Opportunities may be missed even when conditions are conducive to achieving actors' goals. Visibility, resonance, and legitimacy are three key aspects of opportunity structures that provide advantages or disadvantages to contending actors. Policymakers benefit from consonance, which refers to positive resonance, and legitimacy within opportunity structures, which substantiates their heritage redevelopment initiatives. For policy challengers seeking to influence heritagerelated policy, the visibility, resonance, and legitimacy aspects within opportunity structures stand as pivotal.
World Development, 2024
In many African countries, international donor funding schemes contribute significantly to financ... more In many African countries, international donor funding schemes contribute significantly to financing water infrastructures, especially for constructing new networks and water plants and upgrading existing ones. However, little is known about how these financial arrangements shape infrastructure maintenance and repair. This article explores the politics of tied water aid to show how international donors' technology transfer schemes and their associated funding conditionalities shape water infrastructure maintenance and repair. Empirically, this study builds on a qualitative study of the cities of Accra (Ghana) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), where the maintenance and repair of water infrastructures have been a persistent challenge. The article shows that the compulsory adoption of foreign technologies embedded in donors' funding schemes limits local capacity to properly maintain and repair water infrastructure. As maintenance and repair increasingly depend on imported expert knowledge, spare parts, and engineering services, donors' funding schemes undermine effective maintenance and repair in both cities. We argue that to make transferred water technologies work sustainably in recipient countries, funding schemes need to anticipate maintenance and repair by incorporating local capacity building and knowledge transfer to reduce import dependence.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Jun 2, 2021
The research for this article was funded by the German Hans-Boeckler-Foundation (grant #394952) a... more The research for this article was funded by the German Hans-Boeckler-Foundation (grant #394952) and by Utrecht University. The empirical fieldwork was co-financed by Utrecht University's Ronald van Kempen Urban Geography Fund and was conducted during several research stays of both authors. We thank all interviewees for their time, dedication and candor. We are grateful to Stephanie Pincetl, who hosted Valentin Meilinger at the California Center for Sustainable Communities at the University of California. In addition, we thank her and Jonathan Rutherford as well as three anonymous IJURR reviewers for their constructive feedback and insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Our thanks to Ana Lúcia Britto for kindly hosting Valentin Meilinger at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where this article was presented and discussed. Finally, we are grateful to Joy Burrough for her professional language editing of a near-final draft of this article. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Journal of Urban Technology, Jan 2, 2022
ABSTRACT To date, urban research has paid little attention to the role of urban infrastructures i... more ABSTRACT To date, urban research has paid little attention to the role of urban infrastructures in shaping and ordering urban temporalities. I contend that the study of infrastructures offers a powerful lens for understanding the reciprocal relationship changing infrastructural and urban temporalities as well as the power-driven processes of temporal alignment and realignment. Approaching time through the empirical study of infrastructures, I argue, reveals how contemporary infrastructural change is entangled with—often conflicting—orientations to the past, present, and future. At the same time, it uncovers how temporal ordering and reordering processes by socio-technical systems not merely reflect, but also enable, constrain, and preconfigure contemporary and future urbanism. Specifically, periods of infrastructural change, crisis, and failure reveal various temporalities, asynchronisms, and misalignments that are otherwise invisible or neglected but are crucial for the broader understanding of urban change and its governance.
Energy research and social science, Jul 1, 2018
Abstract The development of universal electricity networks remains a challenge for public authori... more Abstract The development of universal electricity networks remains a challenge for public authorities and energy utilities in many African cities characterized by rapid urbanization and high poverty levels. This article looks beyond the technicalities of recent electrification programs to explore the politics of introducing new socio-technical rules and practices in unplanned settlements. Our empirical study investigates the implementation of the Kenya Slum Electrification Project in Kibera, one of the most deprived areas of Nairobi, and the regularization of electricity services promoted under the scheme. Approached through a political perspective at a local micro-scale, attempts to control and regulate electricity supply and use in the slum appear to be highly conflictual and reveal considerable power struggles over this marginalized territory. The analysis confronts the socio-technical strategies of the Kenya Power and Lighting Company with the everyday tactics and resistance of subaltern actors. It allows for an in-depth understanding of electricity networks as political terrains and conflict zones, and as junctions that mediate particular socio-spatial relations. Based on our exploratory study on the negotiations surrounding the project and the circumventions by slum dwellers we suggest perspectives for addressing the local politics of slum electrification and malfunctions in their design.
Environmental Science & Technology, Dec 13, 2005
Uncertainties about the long-term prospects of urban water management systems have increased subs... more Uncertainties about the long-term prospects of urban water management systems have increased substantially over the past decade due to an increasing variety of regulations, technologies, and demand structures. In Switzerland, this uncertainty is mirrored by growing difficulties of utility managers and (waste)water scientists to agree on shared strategies: Water professionals demand support for pressing management problems, while researchers fundamentally question the longer-term sustainability of the established water management system. To reestablish shared orientation, we conducted a foresight study for the Swiss (waste)water sector in 2004. Based on interviews with 29 experts from Swiss water management and research to collect 56 drivers of change, a team of 17 experts developed three scenarios: (A) regional mergers of water utilities leading to enhanced professionalism in the sector, (B) consequent material flows management leading to a radically restructured urban water management system, and (C) generalized financial crisis leading to a breakdown of centralized utility services. These scenarios helped identifying shared research priorities. We conclude that scenario analysis is a powerful tool for framing longterm strategies, defining priorities, and integrating different interests in the multidisciplinary contexts of sustainability science, which are marked by high uncertainties and concern a wide range of stakeholder groups.
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Apr 1, 2022
Geoforum, Dec 1, 2020
Despite the burgeoning popularity of resilience as an urban policy narrative, we know little abou... more Despite the burgeoning popularity of resilience as an urban policy narrative, we know little about how policymakers and planners approach the challenge of operationalising urban resilience or what problems they face. Although their ultimate goal is presumably to integrate resilience goals into sectoral policy and decision-making as well as to dissolve policy silos, the concept of mainstreaming has received relatively little attention in urban resilience literature so far. To address this void, we use the concept of mainstreaming to analyse the two cities of Christchurch and Rotterdam, both participants in the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities Programme. We identify three main challenges that are apparent in both cities despite their contextual differences. The first is to make resilience a top priority for policymaking and planning because it competes with other urban development agendas for political commitment. Secondly, institutionalising cross-sector governance constitutes a challenge because participation in 100 Resilient Cities brings few incentives for institutional reforms. The third challenge-to actively engage decision-makers from public and private sectors-arises because urban policymakers and planners are not sufficiently equipped to convince them to invest additional resources in terms of personnel, time and money and to dissolve conflicts of interest between them. In the light of these challenges, we argue that participating in 100 Resilient Cities is a relevant but not sufficient first step towards mainstreaming urban resilience in Christchurch and Rotterdam. In addition to developing a resilience strategy and appointing a Chief Resilience Officer, formal changes (for instance in procedural law and national policymaking) are required, to address the challenges identified.
Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, Jul 13, 2020
During recent decades, awareness of urban vulnerabilities to technical infrastructure failures ha... more During recent decades, awareness of urban vulnerabilities to technical infrastructure failures has steadily increased (Graham, 2010; Linkov & Palma-Oliveira, 2017). In this context, critical infrastructures are often conceptualized as interdependent socio-technical systems where physical artefacts such as sewers and power generators interact with organizational and institutional arrangements (Guy et al., 2012). Critical infrastructures are usually defined as assets or systems that are essential for the
City, Sep 3, 2019
Low carbon transitions of urban energy systems have been on urban research and policy agendas for... more Low carbon transitions of urban energy systems have been on urban research and policy agendas for several years now. While the spatialities of infrastructure transitions have been widely discussed, their temporalities have attracted much less attention. This is surprising, since the transition of urban infrastructures in the course of system integration and decarbonisation reveal strong temporal dynamics: new temporalities or temporal requirements not only emerge as a result of technological change (e.g. by integrating fluctuating renewables or storage technologies) but also of changing social practices (e.g. in urban load management or energy use). We argue that aligning urban and infrastructure temporalities involves negotiations between the various energy providers, regulators and users involved and is a highly political process. As we know little about such temporal dynamics so far, this study uses an explorative methodology to elaborate on a conceptual framework of urban and infrastructural temporalities. This framework has been developed in an iterative way by going back and forth between conceptual contributions and empirical findings drawn from expert interviews regarding low carbon transitions in Rotterdam. Our case study of Rotterdam indicates that unsolved challenges in aligning urban and infrastructural temporalities can be seen as a major restriction to realise low carbon energy solutions.
European Planning Studies, Feb 12, 2020
Legally protected by its own constitution since 1991, the greenbelt (or 'GrünGürtel') forms a rin... more Legally protected by its own constitution since 1991, the greenbelt (or 'GrünGürtel') forms a ring of greenspace around Frankfurt, Germany and has been considered an effective reaction to municipal development pressures. As a response to Frankfurt's embeddedness within a highly interconnected suburbanized region under extensive growth pressures, the Regionalpark RheinMain was established to upscale the greenbelt to the regional level. In this article, we explore the institutional complexities of upscaling a localized greenbelt to the regional scale in the Frankfurt Rhine-Main region, which is known for its fragmented institutional environment formed by numerous planning authorities and special purpose agencies with overlapping jurisdictions. Engaging with the literature on the governance of greenbelts from an institutional perspective, we analyse how the development of the Regionalpark RheinMain is shaped by horizontal, vertical and territorial coordination problems. We conclude that that the Regionalpark RheinMain is not appropriately institutionalized to serve as an effective regional greenbelt, resulting in localized initiatives and the delegation of greenbelt planning to municipalities.
Land Use Policy, Feb 1, 2020
This paper explores the case of peripheral settlement growth in the Greater Frankfurt (Main) regi... more This paper explores the case of peripheral settlement growth in the Greater Frankfurt (Main) region within current debates on global suburbanization. Within Germany's sophisticated spatial planning regime, Greater Frankfurt's system of regionalized land-use planning marks an ambitious initiative to contain urban sprawl. Nonetheless, expansive peripheral settlement growth, and socio-spatial polarization remain distinct characteristics of the booming region. Analyzing state regulation vis-à-vis dynamics of capitalist urbanization and private authoritarianism, we decipher the complex governance arrangements producing this, at first sight, contradictory simultaneity. We uncover the rationales of local growth politics of autonomous municipalities and the region's multiplied institutional fragmentation that undermine planning ambitions to contain suburban growth. We conclude by critically assessing the political economies of suburbanization in Greater Frankfurt and point to prospects for regional reform.
Water intelligence online, Dec 30, 2015
VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften eBooks, 2004
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Aug 3, 2022
Urban Research & Practice, Feb 21, 2023
Access to water supply is still a problem in African cities. This has sparked discussions about h... more 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.
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Papers by Jochen Monstadt