Daniel Florentin – Shrinking Networks?: New Economic and Territorial Models for Infrastructure Firms in the Face of Declining Consumption

For the past twenty years or so, most European cities have been facing an unprecedented and unforeseen phenomenon: a decline in consumption across various urban utility networks, particularly water systems. This phenomenon can be attributed to a variety of factors, ranging from technical improvements in household appliances to deindustrialization, as well as changes in user behavior and the development of policies aimed at promoting frugality and the moderate use of natural resources. However, this is a symptom rather than a process in and of itself. This decline in consumption is, in fact, indicative of the gradual erosion of the traditional model for managing (large) networks that has prevailed until now—a model based primarily on increasing demand and the continuous expansion of the network according to the logic of “always more and always further.” This erosion of the traditional model confronts operators of large networks with a new form of vulnerability—which we call “infrastructural vulnerability”—whose effects impact all components of the network, from the user to the pipeline to the operator. Our work is based on the strong hypothesis that this shift in context and consumption patterns is not merely a temporary phenomenon, but rather marks the emergence of a new approach to network management. It can be viewed as an infrastructural shift—that is, a radical and lasting transformation of network management practices to adapt them to this declining demand pattern. Faced with this new challenge, operators of urban technical networks have had to adapt, evolving their business models and local footprints. To understand the driving forces behind this, we chose to spend several months immersed within the teams of two local companies (one public and one semi-public) grappling with these issues of declining consumption to varying degrees: a multi-service operator in eastern Germany (Städtische Werke Magdeburg) and a water and wastewater operator in southern Spain (EMASESA in Seville). Our approach, combining Science and Technology Studies, urban political ecology, and studies on urban degrowth, allows us to demonstrate that the emerging model is still seeking stability but that common trends are observable across the various cases studied. The adaptation strategies implemented by the operators are not based solely on technical adjustments or rate increases aimed at offsetting losses related to unconsumed volumes. The shift in the management model thus revolves not only around significant technical transformations (downsizing, resizing, recentralization), but also around organizational transformations and major changes in the relationship between operators and users. Operators have thus adapted their role to become more than just suppliers of utilities: their business model has accompanied a shift in where value is generated for operators, who are now more focused on services and the downstream segment of the sector. This shift in the business model also has a spatial dimension, as we are seeing a transformation in the geographic scales at which operators manage their operations. The pursuit of new economies of scale is leading to an expansion of the geographic areas managed by these local operators and to potential conflicts with stakeholders in the territories that are gradually being integrated. A new geography of urban technical networks thus appears to be emerging, characterized by new forms of redistribution and new sources of conflict. These various developments complement theoretical work on local infrastructure firms and models of network evolution by incorporating the dimension of a declining demand regime.