Beyond technological flexibility: Unpacking citywide inclusive sanitation through the territorial political economy framework

Decentralisation and the flexible combination of infrastructures and technologies are advocated to expand access to safe sanitation amid rapid urbanization, worsening water scarcity, resource depletion, and climate change. Yet, narrowly technical approaches such as the citywide inclusive sanitation approach tend to underestimate social and political bargaining and the role of structural power in shaping access to basic urban services. Building on international political economy, this article develops the territorial political economy framework to explore specific sanitation systems’ distribution of structural power in security, production, and finance. Utilizing this framework, the study constructs a typology of five sanitation bargains, derived from theoretical insights, expert interviews, scientific case studies, and key policy documents. Each bargain represents an ideal typical combination of technology, organisation, and finance, with the corresponding spatial and social distribution of costs, benefits, risks, and opportunities. Together, this enables a political economy analysis of sanitation systems in cities that is sensitive to both multiscalar negotiations and distributional outcomes associated with sanitation provision in the city. When expanding sanitation services to so-far unserved areas in the cities, the paper shows how the limitations of the citywide inclusive sanitation approach in its current form can be overcome. It enables to explicitly consider the implications of embedded structural power on households when assessing and selecting technological options and organizational models for providing access to safe sanitation inclusively across the city.