Divided City, Divided Infrastructures: Securing Energy and Water Services in Postwar Berlin

Abstract

The division of Berlin's infrastructure systems following the blockade of 1948-1949 posed an enormous challenge to the city's infrastructure planners on both sides of the political divide. This article is a study of the destabilization of apparently highly durable technical systems precipitated by the Berlin blockade and the subsequent efforts of those responsible to restabilize the systems. It investigates the different experiences of division in the electricity, gas, water, and wastewater sectors with a view to raising scholars' understanding of the durability and adaptability of urban technical networks in the face of major upheaval. In the immediate aftermath of the blockade, the article argues, the prime concern of network managers in both West and East Berlin was to maintain essential services in the face of interventions and reprisals from the other side. As prospects for reunification diminished, the strategy shifted toward reducing the vulnerability and advancing the territorial cohesion of each side by reordering their technical networks physically, spatially, and organizationally.

Enabling Sustainable Energy Transitions

“…The impact of political division on West Berlin's energy infrastructures and utilities was analysed initially by the political scientist Richard Merritt in the 1960s, but not with respect to environmental issues (Merritt 1968). The author of this chapter has explored how division nurtured a strategy of spatial reorientation and self-dependence of energy provision around the insular city (Moss 2009) that largely failed to entertain options for saving energy or using it more efficiently (Moss 2014). By contrast, in Berlin today, there is considerable academic interest in initiatives to reform energy governance and reconfigure energy infrastructures (Becker et al 2015(Becker et al , 2017Blanchet 2015).…”

The Changing Nature of Border, Scale and the Production of Hong Kong's Water Supply System since 1959

“…On Singapore, Long () shows how the city‐state succeeded in constructing a self‐reliant water supply system in order to prevent Malaysia's use of the water link as leverage. On Berlin, Moss () articulates the ways in which both East and West Berlin managed to rebuild their own self‐dependent ecological infrastructures to reduce vulnerability and create sufficient reserves to withstand external interventions, following the blockade of the city in 1948–9. What needs to be done is to bring these and other efforts into a comparative framework, analyse the resonance and dissonance between border situations and the strategic response of institutional actors.…”

Heterotopia and the urban politics of climate change experimentation

“…In Philadelphia, the inner city has long been and remains overwhelmingly poor and black (Bauman, 1987; City of Philadelphia, 2011; Schade et al., 2008), and Adams observes that incomes in the central city declined still further from 73% of suburban incomes in 1980 to only 61% in 2000 (Adams et al., 2008: 30). The Cold War partition of Berlin created an absolute divide between the capitalist west and communist east, with large parts of East Berlin left to decay even as infrastructure including water, gas and electricity networks were duplicated for security reasons (Campbell, 1999; Moss, 2009). Both cities have also found their finances perpetually strained at both public and personal levels.…”