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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2014

Super Downsize Me : shrinkage issues and the transformation of large urban technical systems in the Eastern part Germany

Résumé

Over the last twenty years, European Large Technical Systems such as water and sanitation networks have entered a manifold crisis. Large-scale processes, like de-industrialisation or market liberalisation, as well as small-scale processes such as behaviours change have jointly led to a largely unexpected phenomenon: the diminution of consumption levels of numerous Large Technical Systems, and especially water networks. In some areas deeply affected by these processes such as the former Eastern Europe, and especially the Eastern part of Germany, water consumption levels halved or dropped further in less than ten years. Such a process gave rise to new challenges for network operators, as they had to run these infrastructural systems with larger expenses but fewer incomes. This raised not only a technical question, but also a larger social and economic one, to preserve a certain quality and affordability of these urban services. Such a tremendous change forced systems operators to react and to adapt their systems to this new context. Realistically enough, these adaptations could not remain a small change at the margins of the networks, but imply a profound rethinking of the whole network system, be it the technical aspect as well as the management scheme or the scale of infrastructure provision. In a way, dramatic changes such as this shrinkage processes were used as triggers to adapt these technical networks and enhance their functioning and their sustainability. Based on an STS approach, we will depict these transformations towards smart shrinking networks through the lenses of two cases in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, Halle and Magdeburg (where we ran a 6-month fieldwork campaign working inside the water providers). This will reveal both the strategies of rescaling and resizing of the networks that have been adopted by network operators and their socio-economic and spatial effects, as, in both cases, operators tried to develop a form of renewed spatial solidarity, and thereby a potentially new management paradigm.
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Dates et versions

hal-01265945 , version 1 (01-02-2016)

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  • HAL Id : hal-01265945 , version 1

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Daniel Florentin. Super Downsize Me : shrinkage issues and the transformation of large urban technical systems in the Eastern part Germany. EURA Congress - City Futures III, EURA, Jun 2014, Champs-sur-Marne, France. ⟨hal-01265945⟩
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