Using the results of a comparative three-year research project in five metropolitan areas, this article reviews a range of practices in accessing water and sanitation by peri-urban poor residents and producers. It starts from the observation that neither centralized supply policies nor the market through, for example, large-scale profit-making enterprises are able to meet their needs. Although they are consumers insofar as they have no option but to pay market prices for water (and often for sanitation), the peri-urban poor are, in practice, sometimes regarded as citizens with basic entitlements such as the right to water. This article outlines a conceptual distinction between “policy-driven” and “needs-driven” practices in the access to peri-urban water and sanitation services. The case studies show that this access is mainly needs-driven and informal rather than the result of formal policies. The key to structural improvements in water and sanitation lies in the recognition of these practices and their articulation to the formal system under new governance regimes.

of Great Britain and Northern IrelandFor many urbanites, infrastructural uncertainty refers to 'predictable shocks' rather than constituting a quotidian experience. By contrast, for the peri-urban poor, the sources of uncertainty underpinning water and sanitation services are endless: uncertainty about cost, about being evicted and indeed about ever becoming connected to networked systems.Drawing on a number of case studies, we argue that across the urban global south, the future is not one of networked systems but rather one of 'infrastructural archipelagos' that need to be thoroughly understood in order to bridge the growing gap between everyday and large infrastructural planning practices.Keywords: urban WASH; peri-urbanisation; urban services governance; service coproduction; decentralised infrastructure; urban global south Introduction For many urban dwellers, infrastructural uncertainty refers to 'predictable shocks' (such as increasing water tariffs or lower pressure during certain days of the week), rather than constituting a quotidian experience. The picture is significantly different when it comes to considering the meaning and experience of water uncertainty by the peri-urban poor in the global south. In such context, the sources of uncertainty underpinning access to services are endless: uncertainty about cost, about being evicted, about ever becoming connected (or networked). Indeed, about 60% of the new urbanites expected to live across the global south over the next 25 years, will be exposed to all these uncertainties on a daily basis, without networked infrastructure to access essential basic services such as water and sanitation. In this context, the future is not one of networked systems but rather one of -paraphrasing Karen Bakker (2003) -'infrastructural archipelagos', shaped by misrecognised practices of everyday planning.Everyday planning practices are those adopted on the ground by ordinary women and men to access water and sanitation, and they range from 'needs-driven practices', which are based on some form of collective action -whether within communities or between communities and the state -and those that are undertaken individually and might rely either on solidarity among

This paper identifies opportunities from targeted and integrated sanitation action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is contextualised to the case of Brazil through a systematic approach applied to the sanitation sector that considers the range of infrastructure, management services and people involved in different phases of the service chain, from municipal wastewater containment to safe disposal or re-use. Articulating the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sanitation, this study analyses their links with each of the 169 SDG targets. We demonstrate that 87 targets across 16 goals require action in Brazil's sanitation sector to achieve the SDGs. Furthermore, we identify synergies between sanitation and 124 targets in four domains: basic services for resilience building, equity and

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While existing datasets and statistics provide a useful indication of progress towards meeting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, they are far from accurate and sufficient. There is a need for new and more disaggregated data to shed light on unequal service provision patterns, particularly for many informal urban settlements. This paper aims to address this need through a granular space and time-based examination of the diverse everyday practices in two lower-income settlements of Dar es Salaam. The findings reveal spatial and temporal variations at the inter- and intra-settlement scale while tracing differential and changing practices among poor women and men. The in-depth case study exposes important blind spots in policy and planning, provides wider lessons for achieving more equal and sustainable access to services and developing more responsive policy and planning approaches, and emphasizes the value of local data collection.