Leipzig, Germany has been continuously shrinking since 1966, a phenomenon accelerated and transformed by the post-socialist transition since 1989. The term "perforated city" was created to describe a new era of cities characterized by simultaneous demographic decline and urban sprawl. Unlike other East German city authorities, such as Dresden's, Leipzig's decided to adapt to shrinkage and perforation at an early stage in an attempt to manage the shrinkage process and take advantage of change. City planners aimed to build the image of a dynamic, sustainable city serving as a model of urban shrinkage management. Three main axes can be identified in their planning strategy: preserving the architectural heritage, considered a trademark of the city, creating green spaces and open spaces to replace dilapidated housing estates, and supporting the creation of a micro-scale hierarchy of centres. In practice, these strategies were largely limited to a marketing campaign based on the traditional rhetoric of urban regeneration, as planners lacked the financial and legal tools to fully implement them. Some interventions lead to conflicts with land owners about land use and might further intensify social and spatial differentiations in a context of territorial competition and polarisation. This case study is based on empirical research, including interviews with actors involved in shrinkage management, and an analysis of statistical data. It concludes that Leipzig's image-based strategy could be, like Maya's veil, a decoy aimed at hiding lack of influence and financial power to achieve the aim of managed shrinkage.

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This short commentary starts from the observation that, until recently, most research addressing infrastructures within urban studies has largely downplayed crucial environmental resource issues. While urban and broader inequalities in and through the distribution of resource flows have been examined, especially within an urban political ecology perspective, other issues, fundamentally associated with resource qualitative and quantitative limitations, largely haven't. We therefore argue in this paper that resource issues, broadly construed, can and indeed should be explicitly addressed within an extended conceptualization of (urban) metabolisms. This leads us to re-envisage the frameworks through which urban infrastructures and the provision of essential services should be analysed. We thus advocate for an update of the urban political ecology agenda that brings resource issues, in their material, political and spatial dimensions, to the centre of scientific attention. * KeywordsInfrastructure, essential services, resources, metabolism, splintering urbanism * We wish to thank JUT's two anonymous referees for their constructive comments, which helped us clarify the core argument of this short 'commentary'.

A large crisis is affecting some European Large Technical Systems such as water networks. Drastic diminutions in water consumption levels are challenging a system mainly based on continual growth. This leads to manifold technical and management issues such as oversized infrastructures, and creates a form of infrastructural vulnerability. The analysis of a German case, in the Magdeburg area, will help us deconstructing the different features of this infrastructural vulnerability. We will also present its various social and spatial effects and the innovative answers, may they be technical or spatial, that have been developed by the different utilities to diminish the scope of such vulnerability.