Market-network transitions in middle-income cities: coordinating the transition to on-site sanitation in Bengaluru

Keywords: geography of sustainability transitions, middle-income cities, alternative transition approach, sanitation, India
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

The Geography of Sustainability Transitions (GeoST) literature provide limited guidance for understanding infrastructure transitions in middle-income cities (MICs). MICs can exhibit favourable structural conditions for ‘leapfrogging’ past conventional (centralised/large-scale) infrastructure solutions into modular/context-sensitive ones. However, state actors often lack the resources to coordinate complex transition trajectories in MICs. Many cities have therefore turned to market-based transition approaches, shifting the responsibility for basic service provision to private actors. Purely market-driven implementation strategies may enable rapid technology diffusion, but often fails to deliver on promises of social and environmental sustainability. In this paper, we outline a hybrid ‘market-network’ transition trajectory that progress relatively independent from state-actors, utilizes market forces, but rely on networked modes of coordination at the local system level to maintain accountability and incentivise sustainable practices. Drawing on insights from transition studies and economic geography, we outline two processes that can develop relatively independent from state coordination and shape the context for embedded actors’ transition activities: “market formation” (market segments, transactions, user profiles) and local “system formation” (organisational/institutional structures). We apply the framework to a case study of an ongoing transition in the sanitation sector in Bengaluru (India), where over 3500 small-scale sanitation systems have been constructed over the past 15 years. Results show how the process of market formation progressed much more rapidly than system formation and how it is only recently that networked forms of system coordination has begun to target persistent socio-technical challenges associated with the shift to small-scale sanitation, particularly in relation to wastewater reuse.