Extending Infrastructures, Formalizing the Informal: Access to Public Water in Cities of the South

Extending Infrastructures, Formalizing the Informal: Access to Public Water in Cities of the South

Summer School

Location: Visaginas, Lithuania
Date: 24 August, 2018

CUW’s founder Marcela López is invited to take part of the Summer School “Mapping Visaginas: Re tooling Knowledge Infrastructures in a ‘Post-Nuclear’ Town” organized by the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism, European Humanities University, Vilnius. The lecture will discuss how inhabitants of informal settlements participate in the extension of the centralized water network. Drawing on case study conducted in Medellín, Colombia, this presentation unravels how households exceeding the urban perimeter actively participate in securing access to and control over water resources, while the city’s public utility company struggle to reduce the amount of water leakages in the distribution networks and to control accelerated urban growth. The presentation shows how water material properties allow us to better understand how certain participation practices to secure access to water are mobilized, constructed and consolidated and how district notions of “public” are being made.

The Summer School program is available here

In cooperation with the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism, European Humanities University, Vilnius