Flux

Cities, telematics and utilities: towards convergence

Stephen Graham, Simon Marvin

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Graham Stephen, Marvin Simon. Cities, telematics and utilities: towards convergence. In: Flux, n°15, 1994. pp. 5-16;

doi : 10.3406/flux.1994.972

http://www.persee.fr/doc/flux_1154-2721_1994_num_10_15_972

Document généré le 15/06/2016

Résumé
Durant la dernière décennie, les principaux réseaux de services urbains du Royaume-Uni ont été
privatisés. C'est historiquement parlant une situation inédite dans l'évolution des services publics
urbains britanniques. Cet article s'attache en premier lieu à cette "révolution des réseaux
d'infrastructures urbains", en la replaçant dans une perspective historique. Trois dimensions-clés de ce
processus de transformation ont été mises en évidence : la privatisation et la libéralisation des services
urbains, les tensions entre deux types d'approches, l'une globalisante, l'autre plus localiste ; les
relations enfin entre les services et l'économie urbaine dans un contexte de profonde restructuration.
L'article examine en second lieu deux des plus importantes conséquences de ces changements. Il est
en effet apparu que les télécommunications et la télématique sont de plus en plus employées dans
tous les aspects du fonctionnement des réseaux de services urbains. Par ailleurs, les capacités de
contrôle offertes par la télématique encouragent une convergence et des participations croisées entre
des réseaux de services qui s'ignoraient jusque-là. Cette tendance n'est pas sans implications sur la
gestion et le développement des villes, ce que l'article aborde dans sa dernière partie.

Abstract
Firstly, telecommunications and telematics technologies are now being applied to all aspects of the
functioning of utility networks. Secondly, the control capabilities of telematics are helping to support a
convergence and cross-investment between previously-separate utility systems. These trends have
important implications for the management and development of cities which the paper explores in its
final section.

FLUX
n°15
January - March
1994
pp. 5-16
Stephen GRAHAM and Simon
MARVIN are lecturers in the
Department of Town and Country
Planning and researchers at the
Centre for Urban Technology (CUT)
at the University of Newcastle upon
Tyne. Stephen Graham trained as a
geographer at Southampton University
and a planner at Newcastle
University. He has worked as a
planner and an economic development
officer in Sheffield City Council,
developing urban telematics
strategies. Simon Marvin trained as a
social scientist at Hull University, a
town planner at Sheffield University,
and obtained his PhD on the politics
of Combined Heat and Power
networks from the Open University. Their
research agenda focuses on the
relations between cities, regions,
telematics and utility networks. They are
particularly interested on the
implications of utility privatisation for the
social, economic and environmental
development of British cities.
Cities, telematics and
utilities: towards
convergence
by STEPHEN GRAHAM & SIMON MARVIN
INTRODUCTION
The functioning and development of modern cities depends
fundamental y on highly developed and wide-ranging systems of urban
infrastructure. Virtually all activities in modern cities rely on a range of efficient and
effective conduit systems - transport networks, waste and water networks,
energy networks and telecommunications networks. Together, these support
the transmission, exchange and movement of people, goods, information,
energy and water within and between cities. These technological systems
developed with the economic, spatial and social processes that combined to
shape the development and evolution of cities.1
The cost, quality, availability and reliability of these network services;
the technologies that they use; how their development varies over space; how
their development is regulated: these are extremely important factors in the
development of modern cities.2 Transport, telecommunications, energy, water
and waste networks are, therefore, centrally involved in the changing nature
of the contemporary city. They are among the largest and most important
technological systems in modern urban society.3 Not surprisingly, then, the
development of these technological networks closely reflects the wider
evolution of society.4
This paper analyses the current revolutionary changes underway in the
development of these urban infrastructures in the UK. Since the early 1980s
the British experiment with utility privatisation, liberalisation and
deregulation has become an international model for increasing the role of the private
sector in urban infrastructure provision and management.5 But the model has
often been accepted uncritically with little assessment of the broader urban
policy implications of deregulation and privatisation. In this paper we
demonstrate how these contemporary changes link with the wider political
and technological restructuring of modern cities.
The paper has five parts. In the next section we describe how urban
infrastructure developed during the post-war period that shaped the development
of cities between the 1940s and mid 1970s. Then we map out how the radical
political and technological changes that have occurred since the early 1980s
are leading to a revolution in the orientation and development of urban
infrastructure. In the following two sections, we analyse two of the most important
aspects of this change in more detail: the application of telematics to urban
infrastructures and the convergence and cross-investment between previously
FLUX n°15 January -March 1994
separate urban infrastructures. Finally, in the conclusion,
we examine the implications of these two trends for the
development and planning of contemporary cities.
URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE: THE 1940S
TO THE MID 1970S
In the interwar period there was increasing criticism
of the organisation and performance of infrastructure
systems in the UK.6 The sector was highly fragmented
with a mixture of hundreds of small public and private
companies. There was a high degree of variation in
technical standards and tariff structures, and the performance
of the industry and levels of connection of the networks
was often unfavourably compared with that of our
closest industrial competitors. The new Labour government
responded by nationalising key aspects of the nation's
utilities
out" of massive
services systems
which were
of infrastructural
charged with the
support
"rolling
by
state infrastructure monopolies. Urban infrastructure
networks were built up to support intensive capital
accumulation, the extension of mass consumption of standardised
utility services towards a "universal" level, and the
integration of national space economies into coherent entities.
During this period there was relatively little urban
policy interest in the provision and management of
urban infrastructure networks (see figure 1). Three key
factors explain the exclusion of urban political interest
in infrastructure issues. First, infrastructure services
were now largely provided by publicly owned
nationalised corporations with a very strong national or regional
dimension. This model developed unevenly. The
telephone service was nationalised in 1911 while the water
industry went through a much slower process of
reorganisation until the creation of regional water authorities
in the early 1970s. The nationalisation of the highly
fragmented gas and electricity sectors in the late 1940s
was the epitome of the large centralised public
corporation providing utility services in the national interest.
The nationalised industries were supposed to act as
publicly owned corporations largely insulated from
central or local government interference. They aimed to
provide a more efficient standardised service, with
national tariffs and to extend the networks into domestic
markets and rural areas to support wider national
economic development objectives.
The second feature was the shift in the scale of the
networks away from relatively small, stand alone local
or regional networks with their own unique standards,
technologies and operating procedures. Instead, the
utilities developed national infrastructure systems based on
vertical integration, economies of scale, the
standardisation of technologies and the development of national
tariff structures with relatively little spatial variation in
the cost of infrastructure services. It became necessary
to ensure that the networks were expanded into the
domestic sector and into rural areas to ensure that the
networks integrated consumers and industry into the
national space economy. These national grids linked
together the isolated "islands" of local networks which
had typified previous stages of urban development.7 Out
of a complex patchwork of different local infrastructures
emerged enormous, centralised and monopolistic
infrastructure networks. These mass networks therefore
provided the foundation for the continued development of
national systems of inter-linked cities.
Finally, the utilities operated within a national
policy framework which attempted to provide a balance
between production and consumption-based politics.
Cross-subsidies from large to small consumers were
used to support universal service obligations by
extending levels of domestic connection and rural connection.
This provided new markets of consumers for
standardised products based on connection to the gas, electricity
and telephone systems. The infrastructure agencies were
also an extremely important source of orders for key
sectors of the economy, in particular the power
engineering industry and telecommunications. At a regional
level it was largely assumed that pre-infrastructure could
be provided ahead of demand and that new economic
development would follow behind.
The infrastructural "roll out" of the post war period
was necessary to support the development of the mass
communication, mass production, mass distribution and
mass consumption-based societies within which
Keyensianism was able to flourish. These distributive
networks for information, waste, water, energy and
transport were, in a very literal way, the "glue" that
allowed such enormous urban societies to be developed
and held together as functioning entities. They allowed
the tying together of firms into functioning mass
production economies; of households into functioning modern
mass-consumption societies; and of the whole to
develop into coherent modern nation states managed in a
Keynesian fashion.8
Consequently, it is not surprising that there was
little policy or research interest in urban management
implications of infrastructure provision. The whole
system had largely been designed to insulate infrastructure
 Graham & Marvin - Telematics & Utilities

FIG 1 PHASES OF URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT

1940S-1970S 1980S-?

INFRASTRUCTURE GENERALLY NATIONAL, LOCAL, REGIONAL, NATIONAL

PROVIDERS PUBLIC CORPORATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL PRIVATE
COMPANIES

ORIENTATION OF NATIONAL ECONOMIC RATE OF RETURN 'CHERRY-

INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT, SUPPLY - PICKING' PREMIUM
PROVIDERS DRIVEN, CROSS-SUBSIDY MARKETS, DEMAND-DRIVEN
LINKING AND EXTENDING LOCAL "UTILITY PATCHWORK' -
SCALE OF NETWORKS INTO SINGLE NATIONAL REPLICATING NETWORKS IN
NETWORKS GRIDS COVERING NATIONAL URBAN LUCRATIVE AREAS LIBERALISING
SYSTEMS ACCESS TO OLD NETWORKS

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
TYPE OF DIRECTION AND INTERNAL REGULATED LIBERALISED
REGULATION MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC MARKETS
CORPORATIONS
INTERNATIONAL
OBJECTIVES OF UNIVERSAL SERVICE AT COMPETITIVENESS OF NATIONAL
REGULATORS STANDARD TARIFFS. SPACE ECONOMY AND CITIES
STANDARDISED TECHNOLOGIES WITHIN IT

PRODUCTION- NATIONAL ECONOMIC REBALANCING OF TARIFFS,

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, REGIONAL RECOMMODIFICATION, LOCAL AND
DIMENSIONS EQUALISATION AND REGIONAL GROWTH PROMOTION,
ECONOMISE OF SCALE CROSS-INVESTMENT

SOCIAL POLARISATION AND

SOCIAL- UNIVERSAL SOCIAL, ACCESS TO
CONSUMPTION STANDARD SERVICES - MASS FRAGMENTATION,
REVOLUTION' AND 'PAY-PER
SOCIAL
DIMENSIONS DOMESTIC MARKETS DUMPING

planning and management from local political processes.
The national networks were meant to iron away spatial
variations in infrastructure provision unencumbered by
local demands for particular types of technology,
network and tariffs. Urban managers could assume that
the infrastructure agencies would provide a reliable
and standardised level of service in all cities without
variations in tariffs or technical standards. With
plenty of finance and expanding markets for the networks,
there were not major problems with this strategy.
However, beginning in the early 1970s, all this
began to change. Increasing economic difficulties
meant that infrastructure agencies could no longer
simply keep providing services unless there was a
clear market to cover the costs of meeting supply.
There was increasing pressure to introduce cost-based
pricing as treasury pressure called for improvements
in the sectors performance. During this period there
was increasing public resistance to large scale, capital
intensive utility developments such as power stations,
nuclear reprocessing and power cables. There were
indications that utilities were starting to emerge as an
important issue on the local policy agenda as levels of
fuel poverty increased in the mid 1970s following
energy price rises and there were concerns about the
increasing costs of the provision of utility services to
new development.
FLUX n°15 January - March 1994
THE URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE
REVOLUTION IN THE 1990S
Urban infrastructural systems are currently involved
in a wide range of complex political, social,
environmental, economic and spatial forces of change.
Globalising economic forces and a political neo-liberal-
ism are forcing radical changes in the economic makeup
of cities and how their infrastructure systems are
regulated. Figure 1 contrasts the emerging dynamics in the
relationship between cities and infrastructure in the
1990s with the relatively stable picture that existed
between the 1940s and 1970s.
There are three key dimensions of these
revolutionary changes: political, spatial and economic. Each has
different sets of implications for cities.
PRIVATISATIONAND LIBERALISATION
In the UK all state monopolies were privatised
during the 1980s. There is some degree of competition
in telecommunications, gas, electricity, waste and water
and public transport. The privatised infrastructure
providers are now some of the largest private companies
and biggest employers in the regions and cities of
Britain.9 This movement from monopolies to
marketplaces is being directly supported by the European
Commission as part of its preparation for the Single
European Market in goods and services.10
National regulatory approaches to urban
infrastructures have radically changed under the twin pressures of
a globalising economy and national fiscal constraints. In
the post-Keynesian political world, maintaining state
infrastructure monopolies is increasingly being seen as
wasteful. Such organisations are cast as self-serving
monoliths who act as a brake on innovation and an
impediment to the global competitiveness of the nation
in attracting inward investment. Liberalisation and the
benefits of free enterprise in infrastructure development
are being widely heralded as the dynamic and innovative
regime to replace state monopolies. Liberalisation is
bringing in marketplaces for infrastructure in which
private firms invest for profit.
These processes are not being managed territorially,
but they have profound spatial implications. In this
process, national monopolies are being replaced by complex
mixtures of local, regional, national and international
private markets. As state controlled monopolies offering
standard infrastructural services subside, increasingly,
urban infrastructural development is driven by private
capital investment competing in wide ranges of niche
infrastructure markets. This is leading to a growth in the
unevenness of development of utility networks within
and between cities. The goal of universal social access is
being replaced by the drive to "cherry pick" lucrative
infrastructure markets.11 This is happening on an
increasingly global basis to parallel the globalisation of
the economy. As a consequence, state utility monopolies
are being broken down and private utility market places
are replacing them.
GLOBALISATION AND LOCALISATION
There are therefore major spatial tensions in these
trends between the processes of globalisation and those
of localisation.12 Globalisation means that the national
level of regulation and control is becoming less
important in the new infrastructural era. Indeed, there is some
evidence that the national level is being transcended to
some extent. National and international systems of cities
are being tied together as truly global "infrastructure
marketplaces" in which many competing service
providers attempt to catch lucrative market share. Developing
transnational and trans-European utility networks are
thus a major focus of concern as utilities are increasingly
involved in international direct investments. For
example, in the UK, 95% of all investment in new cable
infrastructures derives form North American and European
telecommunications, cable and water companies.
In fact, urban infrastructures are both supporting the
emergence of global networks of service-based cities
and are in turn being remodelled by this trend.
Transnational transport, broadcasting and
telecommunications networks have already been widely noted as
being central supportive infrastructures to the new
global era of urban development.13 But international gas,
electricity, water and waste networks are also growing
quickly.14 And behind the networks themselves is a
complex pattern of global investment flows into intraurban
and interurban infrastructures. Moreover, the global trend
towards liberalisation of urban infrastructures and utilities
is allowing an unprecedented degree of diversification
and new cross-investment between previously separate
markets as investors search for the maximum profits.
On the other hand, liberalisation and privatisation
are leading to a strengthening of relations between utili-

ties and the economic development of the cities and
regions that they service. This is because the companies
have often become more dependent on the economic
health of their territories. In the UK, for example, newly
regionalised water and electricity companies are
increasingly supportive of the development of urban economic
development strategies. In the Northeast of England the
local water, electricity and national gas company are the
three largest funders of the regions inward investment
agency — the Northern Development Company. This
may signify the reemergence of intense utility
involvement in urban economic politics. As Alan Bruce argues:
"It is easy to see why the utilities should again
develop such a role. Most are engaged on development
programmes that will show a poor return unless their areas
expand. Some have significant PR problems. [...] Many
are also engaged in large scale job shedding [...]. For all
these reasons the utilities promise to be at the heart of
many local economic development intiatives at the local
and regional levels."15
In addition to this, genuinely new urban infrastruc-
tural innovations such as cable networks, combined heat
and power and light rapid transit networks are
developing as the latest generation of urban infrastructures.16
The operators of these networks are again profoundly
reliant upon the economic fortunes of their cities.
Evidence suggests that these private operators are also
emerging as significant actors in urban economic
development initiatives.17
URBAN ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING
These political and spatial changes are related to
changes in the economic arena. The restructuring of city
economies is placing new logistical and service demands
on infrastructure systems. The manufacturing-based
urban areas of the postwar period are now being
restructured into service-dominated cities. All economic
activities are becoming increasingly information-intensive to
reflect the rise of the "information economy". Trends
towards the computerisation and automation of
households, firms and government organisations are emerging,
leading to a dramatic increase in demand for
telecommunications.18 Retailing, leisure, producer services and
high-technology manufacturing are the new growth
industries. Protracted economic crisis is forcing the
downsizing of large firms into flexible, networked
organisations who rely fundamentally on network infrastructures -
especially transport and telecommunications - to compete.
Graham & Marvin - Telematics & Utilities
The infrastructural needs of Western cities are
altering radically to reflect this economic restructuring. A
complex range of new interurban transport and
telecommunications infrastructures are burgeoning to support
the movement towards global urban networks. The
geography and nature of urban demands for waste, water
and energy are also changing rapidly to reflect the
movement towards high-technology based "information
cities".19 In older industrial areas, there is an urgent
need to renew and extend the capacity of industrial-era
infrastructures to meet the needs of decentralising,
service-oriented cities with a greater emphasis on
environmental quality.
THE URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE
REVOLUTION
These processes are leading to a convergence and
integration between transport, telecommunications and
utility networks. Together, these forces are
revolutionising the nature and development of urban
infrastructures in modern Western cities. These changes are
interwoven and extraordinarily complex. This makes
generalisation across all infrastructures in all cities
decidedly hazardous. Whilst these pressures are to some
extent pervasive, the infrastructural make-up of cities
remains extremely diverse.
Two trends, however, can be highlighted as being of
general importance in the current "urban infrastructure
revolution". The first is the pervasive application of new
computing and telecommunications technologies
(known together as "telematics") to the development and
operation of urban infrastructure networks. The second
is the convergence and "interpénétration" of previously
separate infrastructure networks into complex webs of
cross-woven infrastructural systems. These two trends
themselves are interrelated - it is largely through the
application telematics technologies that the convergence
and inter-penetration of urban infrastructure systems
becomes possible and attractive. In combination, these
trends have important implications for the development
and planning of contemporary cities which are only just
beginning to be explored. These trends, which are
particularly marked in the UK, are increasingly central to
current transformations in the technological and socio-
economic makeup of urban areas.
FLUX n°15 January -March 1994
THE APPLICATION OF TELEMATICS
TO URBAN INFRASTRUCTURES
The management of large infrastructure networks
has always been based on systems of information,
monitoring, control, supervision and communications. First
paper flows, then telegraph networks and later telephone
systems were used intensively in order to maintain a
degree of control on the development and use of such
enormous technological systems.20 The telephone, in
particular, was essential in making the "roll out" of mass
infrastructure systems possible.21 The coordination of
all parts of the networks, the communication between
suppliers and consumers, and the monitoring of
networks performance were all essentially based on
telephones until the mid 1960s.
Currently a new generation of control technologies
is being harnessed by infrastructure managers in the
shape of microelectronics based computer networks or
"telematics" systems.22 The previously-separate
technologies of telecommunication, computing and
broadcasting are now converging into an integrated set of
"telematics" technologies and services — based on a core
group of "digital technologies". Central to these are
communications, information and transactions flows
between microcomputers and computerised equipment.
The new capabilities of telematics are helping to support
the liberalisation and globalisation of utility markets by
making possible a revolution in the degree to which
global infrastructure networks and their management can be
controlled in detail. Telematics help to undermine the
"natural monopoly" characteristics of urban
infrastructures, so allowing private firms to operate them
profitably.23 What were previously public goods - because it
was difficult to monitor and measure the exact
consumption of specialised services — are now made private
because of the new control techniques of telematics. So,
combined with the political movement towards
liberalisation, the movement from public monopoly to private
marketplace can be seen to have both a technological
and a political dimension.
In the search for higher profits in newly competitive
markets, telematics provide essential tools when dealing
with the massive and complex nature of infrastructure
networks. A technological revolution in urban
infrastructures is therefore parallelling the political,
economic and spatial revolution outlined above.
The new capabilities of converging sets of computer
and telecommunications technologies for supporting
10
information processing and communications are being
applied pervasively across the urban utilities. All aspects
of the management, development and control of urban
infrastructure networks are becoming increasingly
reliant on parallel systems of computer networks.24
Telematics can be used to help keep energy and water
production more in line with demand; they allow much a
more sophisticated control of plant to occur; they
support the automation of meter-reading through telemetry;
and they support faster and more responsive customer
services - particularly to large, lucrative customers.25
As Gabriel Dupuy argues, because of these capabilities,
"virtual" systems of computer networks are now
beginning to match very closely the "real" hard networks
upon which transport, information, energy and water
flow.26 The result is a movement toward the "real time"
management and development of urban infrastructure
networks: decisions can be made on up-to-the-second
information based on the real demands, flows and
supply operating on a network. This can be used to support
revolutionary changes in the management of
infrastructures. Already, real-time passenger information systems
are a major area in which public transport operators are
improving their competitiveness with cars.27 In short,
the application of telematics is turning urban
infrastructures and utilities themselves into highly information-
intensive enterprises to reflect their central involvement
in the wider "information economy".
Figure 2 gives a range of examples of the
application of telematics across the range of urban
infrastructures in the UK. In the UK, newly privatised utilities are
expecting telematics systems to give them a competitive
edge and so maintain profitability in increasingly
competitive and uncertain markets.28 Telematics are being
used to cut costs, improve the speed and responsiveness
of large organisations and, above all, improve the degree
to which enormous networks infrastructures can be
controlled and organised in competitive ways. They are
also being used to extend the capacity of urban
infrastructures by allowing the more efficient use of network
space. A good example of this is the application of
telematics to road transport in such areas as electronic
guidance, real time road monitoring and electronic road
pricing. Importantly, these technologies bring pressures for
further privatisation of transport systems because they
make possible the transference of road space, network
information and telematics services themselves into
private goods to be offered by firms in a marketplace for
profit. Through telematics it becomes possible to
exclude non-payers from networks much more easily and
to monitor exactly the use of services to allow precise
payment from individual consumers. And the informa-

tion gleaned from all of this monitoring and processing
itself becomes a valuable commodity in the burgeoning
information services markets.29
To reflect the centrality of telematics to the urban
infrastructure revolution, the budgets devoted by UK
utilities to telematics went up by 147% in one year
between 1989 and 1990 - five times the average for all
economic sectors.30 This makes utilities the fastest
growing sector for telematics investment in the UK. Dave
Madden highlights "the vast scale of IT investments in
the newly privatised water and electricity industries -
and the pivotal role that investment is playing in creating
a competing, and competitive, utilities sector".31
Typically, the fragmented IT "islands" inherited from
public utility monopolies are being transformed into
sophisticated and integrated computer network
infrastructures. These are emerging as the basis for all
information, communications and transactions flows within
the organisation and for supporting its relations with
customers and suppliers. For example, National Power,
FIG 2 THE APPLICATION OF TELEMATICS TO URBAN
UTILITIES IN THE U.K.
demand
smart
technologies
networks,
GIS, telemetry,
Corporate telematics
demandnetworks,
management, remote
environmental monitoring
WASTE AND
SEWERAGE
Water and Waste
Infrastructures
Graham & Marvin - Telematics & Utilities
the UK's largest electricity generator, is developing one
of the largest computing and telecommunication projects
ever undertaken by a European company. Eventually
3000 personal computers will have "single screen
access" to all company information via this private,
integrated telematics network. This will be used to improve
customer service, flexibility, control and as the basis for
developing the "creative service products and complex
tariffs"32 now necessary to maintain competitiveness
after the urban utility revolution. The view behind the
investment was that it "would transform the generators'
business by improving efficiency, changing the way it
worked with customers and providing revenues in its
own right".33
Integrated with the development of these telematics
networks are Geographical Information Systems (GISs),
which support much more sophisticated management of
work and maintenance on networks. And when
telematics networks are linked to telemetry systems, the actual
flows of information, transport, energy and water on
ELECTRICITY ^
NETWORKS ijjji
metering
management,
GIS, telemetry, i
GAS NETWORKS ijiij
Energy
Infrastructures
WATER
NETWORKS
и
FLUX n°15 January - March 1994

FIG 3 THE CONVERGENCE OF URBAN UTILITIES IN THE U.K.

and
télécoms
electricity
Energis,
Scottish
Yorkshire
networks,
cableHydro-Electric
investments
Electric
S Wales
ELECTRICITY
NETWORKS
Electricity companies
considering offering gas
services
Compagnie Généraux des Eau and GAS NETWORKS
Yorkshire Water investment in
cable and telecommunications;
Cable through sewers; Mercury
telecommunications in London Energy
Hydraulic ducts Infrastructures

:::::ГГЧ::::::-::
WASTE AND WATER
SEWERAGE NETWORKS

Water and Waste

Infrastructures

whole networks can be monitored in "real time" for the
first time. This allows a revolution in the degree to
which these networks can be controlled for maximum
profitability, competitiveness and efficiency. This
principle applies whether it be to the management of urban
water systems34 or the application of a whole suite of
Road Transport Informatics (RTI) technologies to
expand the capacity of urban transport systems.35 Cable
networks, in particular, offer great potential as the bases
for urban telemetry to allow remote metering of water
and energy consumption - so reducing the costs
involved in billing customers.
THE CONVERGENCE OF URBAN
INFRASTRUCTURE
A second, more neglected, trend within the urban
infrastructure revolution is the convergence between
previously-separated infrastructure operators and
networks. In the emerging infrastructure and utility
12
places, cross-investment between utility and
infrastructure operators is burgeoning. The new pressure to secure
profitability is leading investors to investigate new
complementary arrangements between infrastructures that
previously were completely divorced in their
development within separate public monopolies. This cross-
investment is part of a wider trend toward diversification
away from core businesses, a process driven by the aim
to improve and/or stabilize financial performance in
utility and infrastructure companies.36
Once again, telecommunications and telematics are
playing a dominant role in this trend. With all
infrastructure operators now developing such strong interests in
telecommunications and telematics to secure
competitiveness, many energy, water and transport
operators are going a step further. In the post-liberalisation
world of British telecommunications, energy, transport
and water utilities are amongst the first to invest in new
public telecommunications systems to compete for
customers with the established operators such as British
Telecom and Mercury. The market for advance telecom-

munications and telematics services is growing at
between 20-30% per annum, and a proliferating range of
technologies allows niche markets to be entered: cable,
personal communication, trunk networks, value added
services, mobile communications, and satellite services.
Existing utility and transport companies are ideally
placed to cross-invest into these new markets. They
possess the necessary large amounts of capital. They already
own or control strips of land, ducts and leeways between
the most lucrative business centres that can be used
quickly and cheaply to construct new
telecommunications networks. In many cases - such as the example of
National Power mentioned above - their own
sophisticated internal telecommunications networks already have
spare capacity that can now be simply resold to
outsiders. Finally, they also posses established computer
systems to handle billing and customer service as well as
expertise in the construction of networks within urban
areas. As we saw above, as liberalisation spreads to be a
global phenomenon, this process of cross-investment is
taking on a global scale. For example, the current
building of urban cable networks in Britain is fuelled
overwhelmingly by investment from North American cable
and telecommunications investors and French municipal
service companies. Increasingly, privatised infrastructure
companies are facing competition at home as well as
engaging in competition abroad.
The British Government is directly supporting the
convergence and cross-investment of British
infrastructures. The recent entry of both the National Grid
Electricity Company and Scottish Hydro-Electric into
the telecommunications market was described recently
by the British
proposals" from
Technology
companiesMinister
who already
as a pair
"have
of "exciting
installed
electricity infrastructure which will enable them to roll
out networks much faster than would otherwise be the
case".37 Cross-investment is seen to support the
movement towards competitive infrastructure markets in the
UK with efficiency and maximum speed, so supporting
the competitive position of the UK as an international
business location.
The complex ways in which this dual process of
cross-investment and involvement of non-telecoms
infrastructures in telecommunications is developing in the
UK is summarised in figure 3. This shows graphically
how the boundaries between infrastructures are blurring,
with the involvement of energy, water and transport
companies in telecommunications markets growing
particularly quickly. As can be seen from figure 3, this cross
investment and convergence is being paralleled by rapid
Graham & Marvin - Telematics & Utilities
convergence between computer, telecommunications and
broadcasting companies, as the industrial repercussions
of technological convergence between these technologies
gather pace.
CONCLUSIONS: IMPLICATIONS FOR
URBAN MANAGEMENT
What are the implications of this rapid and complex
urban infrastructure revolution for the management and
development of Western cities? In a post-Keynesian
world where infrastructural monopolies are increasingly
being turned into globalising infrastructure marketplaces,
what issues arise for urban planners and city managers?
With global corporations increasingly powerful, is there
much genuine scope for securing local political power
over these important forces of change?
The first point to emphasise is the remarkable
complexity of the emerging "urban infrastructure landscape".
The old certainties of slow-moving, national public
monopolies developing the range of standardised
services through and between urban areas are gone (or at
least going). Instead, an extraordinarily dynamic and
uncertain world of rapid technological and political
change is emerging into which the infrastructural
fortunes of cites are now inextricably wedded. As with all
stages of urban infrastructure development, this situation
closely reflects wider changes in society. The new neo-
liberal political orthodoxy; the wave of privatisation and
liberalisation; the increasing stress placed on "market
forces"; the new patterns of local-global dynamics in
investment flows and multinational organisations; the
trend towards global systems of interlinked cities - this
is the backcloth against which the urban infrastructure
revolution must be understood.
The second point to emphasise is that this revolution
represents a fundamental and important shift towards pri-
vatism within these previously public infrastructures that
many commentators find extremely worrying38.
Increasingly, the development of urban infrastructures is
controlled entirely by forces beyond the control of urban,
and even national, governments. City governments had
varying degrees of control over these infrastructures
during the Keynesian period because of the different
levels of dominance of national public enterprises. But in
all systems there was at least an element of political
accountability and social and geographical protection.
13
FLUX n°15 January -March 1994
Distant corporate boardrooms now hold increasing
power as they try to construct the intra-urban and inter-
urban infrastructure networks most suited to the needs of
corporate global forces, and, hence most profitable to
them. Moreover, as we have seen, these lines of control
increasingly cross the boundaries between separate
infrastructure systems and separate nation states. This
trend towards global infrastructure markets must again
be seen to reflect the wider globalisation of the
economy. It is woven into the movement away from what
Manuel Castells calls a "space of places" towards "the
space of flows", where telematics and other urban
infrastructures are being used to support the emergence of
global networks of interlinked cities.39
Finally, it is instructive to consider the central role
of telematics technologies within the urban utility
revolution. Telematics and telecommunications represent the
urban infrastructure currently experiencing the fastest
rate of innovation and the fastest growth of global
markets.40 They are central infrastructures in the
restructuring of capitalist society and economy into an
information economy.41 But they also represent the main
technological tools which allow urban infrastructure
companies to gear themselves up for the new
competitive era based on competing in private niche markets.
Telematics provide the level of control and efficiency
necessary to manage massive infrastructural networks in
a competitive environment of innovation and
development. However, the emerging marketplace for
telecommunications and telematics services is also providing the
central attraction for cross-investment and convergence
between previously separate infrastructure networks.
Given their existing networks, knowledge and rights, the
lucrative marketplaces in this area are very attractive to
investors in search of diversified profits.
Cities are caught up, seemingly almost helpless, in
these trends. The economic, environmental, social and
spatial effects of the new utility landscape are all too
real, but city authorities seem to be equipped with fewer
and fewer means to effect them. The invisibility and
intangibility of many of the telematics-based changes in
urban infrastructures precludes local political
intervention in these changes. This is part of a wider problem
relating to understanding the relationships between
telematics and urban development more broadly.42
Globalisation and the invisibility of these trends
increasingly means that the providers of infrastructure
services are emerging as "new urban managers". How
these companies plan and configure their networks, the
parameters against which they manage the network and
14
the basis on which customers are allowed to connect,
have profound implications for the social, economic and
environmental performance of cities. Unfortunately, the
potential for cities to influence these processes and
patterns appears to be extremely limited. Urban policy has
had little connection with the provision and management
of large technical networks as policy makers have been
able to assume that the systems would be provided at the
right time in the right place by nationalised
infrastructure agencies. Restructuring of the sector has
undermined these assumptions but policy makers are poorly
equipped to develop a response and seem to be
increasingly marginalised from the radical changes taking
place in urban infrastructure management.
But there is potential for policy development.
Perhaps the key feature of the new context is the huge
diversity of the new infrastructure patchworks. The
social, economic and environmental impacts are cast
very unevenly between cities and different infrastructure
sectors. Although it is difficult to predict how a
particular city will be affected by these changes the issue for
policy makers is the degree of fit between public and
private urban management strategies. How far do the
strategies of infrastructure companies coincide with and
potentially strengthen public policy, or do they conflict
with and undermine public strategies?
Telematics are being used to manage many different
aspects of life in modern cities. It is possible to develop
an ideal type model of two modes of development.
"Regressive innovation" refers to those practices which
increase social polarisation by pricing out marginal
groups' access to basic and new services, the use of
telematics to increase the effective capacity of transport and
energy networks with little consideration of the
environmental impacts, and strategies which offer their benefits
to large corporate users of the services while exporting
profits out of the locality and region.
On the other hand "progressive innovation" refers to
companies which attempt to develop methods for
providing a minimum level of service to low income
customers, use telematics to optimise the environmental
performance of energy and transport networks, and
consider the wider impact of their strategies on the
indigenous economy of the region. We are not suggesting
that these two ideal types are mutually exclusive.
Elements of both modes will exist in a particular city
over different sectors. The key challenge for public
policy is to find ways of linking the new urban
management strategies with those of broader public policy
objectives.

In this situation, we would argue that new policy
approaches are necessary at the urban level through
which this new "utility landscape" can be influenced in
ways conducive to the development of socially
equitable, economically efficient and environmentally
sustainable urban areas. Urban governments need to
monitor closely the infrastructural developments within
their territories, and the technological and political
foundations for them. They need to use whatever influence
they can muster to try and reshape market forces into
regimes which meet their local needs rather than simply
the profit margins of infrastructure developers.
Innovative ways of using "sticks" - wayleave rights,
land ownership and planning powers - and "carrots" -
financial subsidies and local government infrastructure
markets - need to be explored. The protection of
marginal social consumers from "social dumping" is a major
concern that needs to be addressed by city governments
working with political and consumer action groups. At
1. J.A.Tarr, 1984, "The Evolution of Urban Infrastructure
in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," in R. Hanson, (éd.),
Perspectives on Urban Infrastructure, Washington, D.C.,
National Academy Pr., pp. 4 - 66. J.A.Tarr and G. Dupuy
(eds.), 1988, Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in
Europe and America, Philadelphia, Temple U. Pr.
2. J.H. Ausubel & R. Herman, (eds.), 1988, Cities and their
Vital Systems: Infrastructure Past, Present, and Future,
Washington, D.C., National Academy Pr.
3. I. Gokalp, 1988, "Global Networks: Space and Time," in
G. Muskens and J. Gruppelaar (eds.), Global
Telecommunications: Strategic Considerations, Dordecht, Kluewer, pp. 186-210.
4. T.P. Hughes, 1987, "The Evolution of Large
Technol gical Systems," in W.E. Bijker, T.P. Hughes, & T. Pinch (eds.),
The Social Construction of Technological Systems, Cambridge,
Mass., MIT Pr., pp. 51 - 82. P. Preston, 1990, "History
Lesson 2: Some Themes in the History of Technology Systems
and Networks", PICT Paper, 1st - 2nd March.
5. B. Houlihan (éd.), 1992, The Challenge of Public Works
Management: A Comparative Study of North America, Japan and
Europe, HAS, Brussels. OECD, 1991, Urban Infrastructure:
Finance and Management, Paris, OECD.
6. M. DiMCOCK, 1933, British Public Utilities and National
Development, London, Allen and Unwin.
7. H. Sawhney, 1992, "The Public Telephone Network:
Stages in Infrastructure Development," Telecommunications
Policy, September, pp. 538 - 552.
8. See J. Beninger, 1986, The Control Revolution:
Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society,
Cambridge Mass., Harvard U. P.
9. A. Bruce, 1993, "Prospects for Local Economic
Development: A Practioners' View," Local Government Studies,
vol. 19,no. 3,pp. 319 - 340.
Graham & Marvin - Telematics & Utilities
the same time, the physical issues having to do with the
laying of competing networks, the physical convergence
of networks, and the supply of infrastructure to
economically disadvantaged areas is also a pressing concern.
Ultimately, the broadest infrastructural needs of a
competitive urban location competing within European and
global markets need to be in place. For this to happen,
however, new institutional innovations are necessary so
that the concerns of city authorities may be brought
together with the profit-seeking concerns of
infrastructure developers, rather than local politics being simply
ignored. Efforts need to be made to collapse the
institutional boundaries which tend to exist between urban
policy makers and those who increasingly control the
destiny of infrastructure networks within cities. One
final area of potential is joint action between networks
of cities to push for more consideration of urban issues
by infrastructure regulators at the national, and
increasingly, supranational levels.
Notes
10. Commission of the European Communities, 1992,
"Europe 2000: Outlook for the Development of the Community's
Territory," Luxembourg, CEC.
11. See S. Graham and S. Marvin, 1994, "Cherry picking
and Social Dumping - Utilities in the 1990s," Utilities Policy,
April, (forthcoming).
12. S. Marvin & J. Cornford, 1993, "Regional Policy
Implications of Utility Regionalization," Regional Policy, Vol.
27, No. 2, pp. 159- 165.
13. J. Brotchie, M. Batty, P. Hall & P. Newton (eds.),
1991, Cities of the 21st Century: New Technologies and Spatial
Systems, Halsted Pr.
14. Commission of the European Communities, 1992,
op .cit., N10.
15. Bruce, 1993, op.cit., pp. 329 - 330, N9.
16. S. Marvin, 1992, "Urban Policy and Infrastructure
Networks," Local Economy, Vol.17, No.3, pp. 225-247.
17. J. Cornford and A. Gillespie, 1992, "The Coming of
the Wired City? - The Recent Development of Cable in Britain,"
Town Planning Review, Vol. 63, Part 3, pp. 243 - 264.
18. M. Hepworth & S. Marvin, 1991, "Information
Technology and Urban Infrastructure: New Markets & New
Policies," Mimeo.
19. M. Hepworth, 1989, Geography of the Information
Economy, London, Belhaven.
20. Tarr & Dupuy, 1988, op.cit., N1; Beniger, 1986 op.cit.,
N8.
21. G. Dupuy, 1992, "New Information Technologies and
Utility Management," in OECD, Cities and New Technologies,
Paris, OECD, pp. 51-76.
22. I. Miles, H. Rush, K. Turner & J. Bessant, 1988,
Information Horizon: The Long Term Social Implications of New
Information Technology, Aldershot, Elgar.
15
FLUX n°15 January -March 1994

23. K. Robins & M. Hepworth, 1988, "Electronic Space:
New Technologies and the Future of Cities," Futures, April, pp.
155 - 176.
24. D. Madden, 1992, "Light at the end of the tunnel,"
Financial Times, 30th January. Dupuy, 1992, op. cit., N16.
25. Miles et al, 1988, op.cit., N22.
26. Dupuy, 1992, p. 67, op.cit. , N21.
27. M . Hepworth & K. Ducatel, 1992, Transport in the
Information Age: Wheels and Wires, London, Transnet,
Belhaven.
28. Madden, 1992, op.cit., N24.
29. Hepworth & Ducatel, 1992, op.cit., N27.
30. Madden, 1992, op.cit., N24.
31. ibid.
32. ibid.
33. R. Wilson, 1992, " Communications and Power
Struggle," Financial Times, 30th January.
34. Dupuy, 1992, op.cit., N21.
35. Hepworth and Ducatel, 1992, op.cit., N27.
36. H. Brewer, 1989, "Diversification attempts by electric
utilities: A comparison of potential vs. acheived diversification,"
Energy Policy, June, pp. 228 - 234.
37. DTI, 1993, "Edward Leigh Announces entry of
electricity companies into télécoms", Press Release, 25th May.
38. op.cit., 23.
39. M . Castells, 1989, The Informational City, Oxford,
Blackwell.
40. Financial Times, 1991, "World Telecommunications
Survey", October 7th.
41. Hepworth, 1989, op.cit., N19.
42. M. Batty, 1990, "Invisible Cities," Environment and
Planning В - Planning and Design, Vol. 17, pp. 127 - 130.

Authors' Addresses

Roberto CAMAGNI : Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Scienze del Territorio, 20133 Milano, via Bonardi 3,
Italia

Giuseppe DEMATTEIS : Politecnico e Universita di Torino, Dipartimento Interateneo Territorio, Castello del
Valentino, Viale Mattioli 39, 10125 Torino, Italia

Lidia DIAPPI : Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Scienze del Territorio, 20133 Milano, via Bonardi 3, Italia

Stephen GRAHAM : Center for Urban Technology (CUT), Department of Town and Country Planning, University of
Newcastle, Newcastle upon Ту ne NEl 7RU, United Kingdom

Simon MARVIN : Center for Urban Technology (CUT), Department of Town and Country Planning, University of
Newcastle, Newcastle upon Ту ne NEl 7RU, United Kingdom

Tobias ROBISCHON : Max-Planck Institut, Lothringer Strasse 78, D-5000 Kôln 1 , Deutschland

Stefano STABILINI : Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Scienze del Territorio, 20133 Milano, via Bonardi 3,
Italia
16