A New Logic of Infrastructure Supply: The Commercialization of Water and the Transformation of Urban Governance in Germany

In: Social justice: a journal of crime, conflict and world order, Band 33, Heft 3, S. 20-37

Abstract

In the context of tensions between the logic of water as a public good & as a commodity, explored are how the privatization of water is implemented, modified, or contested, & the character of regional & local social processes & the national & supranational conditions under which these processes occur. David Harvey's (1999) concept of the "built environment" & Stephen Graham & Simon Marvin's (2001) "splintering urbanism" perspective provide the theoretical framework for discussion. Five recent interrelated shifts in the German water sector are described. Attention is given to the water supply & sewage disposal crisis in shrinking regions, focusing on Frankfurt, & the political dynamics, manifest in the privatization of urban governance, induced or at least strongly influenced by infrastructural commercialization. References. D. Edelman