Energy infrastructures in divided cities

Abstract

Within the rich literature on politically divided cities, infrastructure has rarely featured as a medium of urban contestation. Only transportation infrastructure has merited attention of late. This paper presents an in-depth investigation of energy infrastructures as instruments of separation, control and collaboration in three iconic divided cities: Berlin, Jerusalem and Nicosia. The purpose of the paper is threefold: 1) to identify the multiple ways in which geopolitical division and unification have manifested themselves in the cities’ electricity (and gas) supply systems; 2) to analyse the strategic responses of service providers, politicians and users to their divided and united energy systems over time and 3) to use the cases to generate insight into energy infrastructures as conduits of separation, control and collaboration in politically contested cities. The research approach is distinctive for being socio-material (exploring the politics and agency of infrastructures), relational (appreciating the co-shaping of cities and infrastructures) and historical (covering 75 years of shifting responses to division and unification). The findings from this long-term analysis challenge simplistic distinctions between separation, control and collaboration. They point, rather, to the co-existence and even hybridisation of these three strategies at any one time and place, as well as to the limitations facing ideal types, as expressed in our terminology ‘seductive separation’, ‘constrained control’ and ‘conditional collaboration’. The paper emphasises the need to see beyond and within a city to comprehend the contested geographies around energy in divided cities. It also highlights the politicised indeterminacy of infrastructures in volatile urban environments, countering popular images of them as bulwarks of stability.