Article by Romeo Dipura, Jochen Monstadt, Sybille Frank and Shaun Smith.
In: Urban Research & Practice, 2026 (1), S. 1-29, London, Taylor & Francis.
Heterogeneous infrastructures, combining networked and non-networked socio-technical arrangements, are increasingly legitimised as responses to service delivery challenges in Southern cities. However, their emergence in non-poor neighbourhoods and the challenges of governing them remain underexplored. Drawing on document review and 31 interviews across five neighbourhoods in Cape Town, this paper identifies three key governance challenges: 1) the disruption of institutional arrangements, 2) mismatches between actor capacities and 3) regulatory challenges. We argue that the governance of infrastructure heterogeneity is ambivalent, facilitating service access while fragmenting service provision, undermining existing institutional arrangements, shifting responsibilities to nonstate actors, and creating regulatory blind spots.
English
29 pages
Urban Research & Practice, 2026 (1), p. 1-29,
London, Taylor & Francis
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2026.2662863