Energy, Power and Protest on the Urban Grid

Andrés Luque-Ayala is a Lecturer at Durham University’s Geography Department. His research examines the emergence of a local governance of energy and the interface between urban infrastructures, climate change and development modes in the global South.Jonathan Silver is a postdoctoral research associate at Durham University’s Geography Department. His research works at the intersection of urban infrastructure, politics and socio-environmental inequality.

’Urban studies has switched on to energy at long last. In Energy, Power and Protest on the Urban Grid, Luque-Ayala and Silver have gathered together a dynamic group of young scholars and an exciting array of case studies from across the global urban landscape which advance our knowledge of the inequalities, infrastructures and indignations through which energy comes to matter in the urban arena. From everyday encounters with wires, meters and generators to the assembling of resistances and alternatives, the electricity grid is shown to be highly charged with political power and possibility.’ Jonathan Rutherford, LATTS, Paris Est University, France

• 1. Introduction(Andrés Luque-Ayala and Jonathan Silver) Part 1: The Uneven Geographies of Urban Energy Networks2. The American South: Electricity and Race in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, 1900-1935(Conor Harrison)3. Plovdiv: (De-)racialising electricity access? Entanglements of the material and the discursive(Rosalina Babourkova)Part 2: Rewiring the Urban Grid4. Rio de Janeiro: Regularising favelas - energy consumption and the making of consumers into customers (Francesca Pilo)5. Delhi: Questioning urban planning in the electrification of irregular settlements(Laure Criqui)6. Maputo: Fluid flows of power and electricity - Prepayment as mediator of state-society relationships(Idalina Baptista)Part 3: Social Movements and Protest in the Electric City7. Berlin: Cooperative power and the transformation of citizen’s roles in energy decision-making(Arwen Colell and Luise Neumann-Cosel)8. Beirut: Metropolis of darkness and the politics of urban electricity grids (Eric Verdeil)9. Barcelona: Municipal engineers and the solar guerrillas(Anne Maassen)10. Athens: Switching the power off, turning the power on - Urban crisis and emergent protest practices(Georgia Alexandri and Venetia Chatzi)