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Improstructure - an improvisational
perspective on smart infrastructure governance

Article in Cities · January 2017

DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2017.09.017

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 Cities 72 (2018) 329–338

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Cities
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities

Improstructure - an improvisational perspective on smart infrastructure T

governance
Dietmar Offenhubera,⁎, Katja Schechtnerb
a
Art + Design, Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University, United States
b
MIT Media Lab, United States and Technische Universität Wien, Austria

A B S T R A C T

Infrastructure modernization is a central concern in many cities of the developing world. Local governments
struggle to provide adequate public services under budgetary constraints and vast spatial and economic in-
equalities. After the demise of the centralized modernist planning paradigm, current approaches to urban de-
velopment focus on public-private partnerships, resulting in networks of dependency that involve multiple
stakeholders and complex relationships of accountability. This stakeholder complexity complicates decision
making, but can also lead to new social practices and participatory models of infrastructure governance.
This paper presents the results of a qualitative study of social practices surrounding the provision and
modernization of streetlight and electricity in Paco, Manila, enacted by formal and informal actors. Drawing
from the case study, literature on organizational improvisation and improvisational governance (Martijn Hartog,
2015), we propose a model of infrastructure governance that is based on the concept of improvisation. Based on
ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with city officials, planners, residents and local activists, we develop the
notion of improstructure as a conceptual model for understanding infrastructure governance as an improvisa-
tional process of “call and response” among a diverse set of actors.
We apply this perspective to ongoing modernization efforts by the city of Manila and its utility companies,
involving smart city technologies including sensor networks, drone mapping, and data analytics. We argue that
despite the placeless and generic rhetoric surrounding these technologies, they constitute improvisational re-
sponses to local conditions. We conclude by formulating design principles for improvisational infrastructure
governance, which are not limited to the Global South, but also apply in developed countries.

1. Introduction vendors equipped with batteries or jumper cables.

Among other peculiarities, a visitor to Manila might notice a per-
plexing variety of street lamps in sculptural shapes, bright colors, and
gaudy designs. While infrastructure is often treated as neutral, stan-
dardized, and invisible, the streetlights in Manila are flamboyant,
multifaceted, and come in various states of maintenance and repair. In
the centrally located Paco district—the site of the subsequent in-
vestigation—almost every street uses a different type of luminaire. The
variety of designs corresponds to an equally wide range of uses and
conditions. Some lamps are well-maintained, some broken, and yet
others show signs of ad hoc repairs, such as wires pulled out from the
lamp post and routed to a makeshift luminaire close by. Lamp posts are
also appropriated in different ways, supporting makeshift structures or
holding street decoration and clotheslines. Where light is needed but
not available, it is provided by local actors such as residents or street-
Local newspapers attribute the astonishing variety in street lamp
designs to corruption, alleging that the extravagant streetlights were
bought at inflated prices together with lucrative maintenance contracts
(Marketman, 2007).1 City officials emphasize that the iconic lamps
attract foreign tourists and investments. However, both explanations
fall short in capturing the complex realities and social practices sur-
rounding nighttime illumination in Manila, which involves a multitude
of formal and informal actors. The sculptural “lollipop lamps” first
appeared in Manila during Mayor Lito Atienza's tenure (1998–2007).
The project was close to the mayor's heart; according to a city official,
the mayor picked the models from the supplier's brochures himself.
Subsequent administrations were less enthusiastic; the current mayor,
Joseph Estrada described them as an embarrassment and launched an
initiative to replace them with a standardized design in 2015 (Sauler,
2013).

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: d.offenhuber@northeastern.edu (D. Offenhuber), katjas@mit.edu (K. Schechtner).
1
For a similar example from China see http://www.economist.com/news/china/21670048-murky-business-fancy-streetlamps-darkness-under-light

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.09.017
Received 15 April 2017; Received in revised form 20 August 2017; Accepted 23 September 2017
Available online 03 November 2017
0264-2751/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
D. Offenhuber, K. Schechtner
The lollipop lamp as a material artifact offers a window into a
complex system of infrastructure governance. Urban infrastructure and
service provision have traditionally been associated with long-term
planning and extensive capital resources controlled by central autho-
rities. However, during the past decades of infrastructure privatization,
this modernist paradigm has shifted into a networked mode of system
building that involves many public and private stakeholders (Steve
Graham & Marvin, 2001; Thomas P. Hughes, 1998). In this model, the
networked distribution of power, resources, and accountability involves
constant coordination and re-negotiation of relationships between the
actors involved. These conditions can also be observed in the system of
street light and electricity provision in Manila, where international
organizations, national and municipal governments, utilities, local in-
terest groups and a large informal sector shape the distribution of
electricity and provision of street lights.
Based on a case study of the social practices surrounding street light
provision in central Manila, this paper conceptualizes this mode of
distributed governance as a process of improvisation. The actors in-
volved in this process respond to the results of each other's actions
based on the resources available to them, similar to jazz musicians
drawing from their individual repertoires. Beyond offering a lens for
describing existing conditions, we argue that principles of improvisa-
tional governance are also relevant for understanding future technolo-
gical changes to the system. As the city of Manila embarks on a project
to upgrade its street lights to LED technology and the power distribu-
tion utility Meralco launches a smart city initiative that involves drone-
mapping the grid and installing smart meters in low-income neigh-
borhoods, we argue that these modernization measures are again part
of an improvisational process rooted in local conditions. Despite the
globally interchangeable rhetoric surrounding these technologies, they
are deployed as responses to specific local conditions and practices of
appropriation.
We use the term “improstructure” to describe a mode of fluid,
participatory infrastructure governance, where decisions are im-
plemented immediately, but are at the same time historically con-
textualized in an environment structured by social conditions and
power relationships. Drawing from literature on organizational im-
provisation (Cunha, da Cunha, & Kamoche, 1999; Hadida,
Tarvainen, & Rose, 2015) we consider informality and improvisation
not outside, but instead often located inside formal systems of gov-
ernance.
Practices of improvisational infrastructure governance share simi-
larities with co-production models of public services (Bovaird, 2007;
Joshi & Moore, 2004; Marvin & Guy, 1997; Ostrom, 1996). In both fra-
meworks, collaborative approaches to service provision with an em-
phasis on individual agency are employed within an institutional en-
vironment. But there are important differences. In improvisational
frameworks, collaboration can emerge in an unplanned and un-
mediated way. Furthermore, the interests of the actors involved are not
necessarily aligned; they can be competitive or even adversarial.
The improvisational governance of infrastructure is tightly con-
nected to its material and aesthetic dimensions, as the street lights of
Manila illustrate. Policies are often driven by the aesthetic experience
of infrastructure; “how things look.” Infrastructure is not merely a silent
enabler, it is also a communication system that signals how systems are
managed, represents powerful actors, and delivers promises of possible
urban futures.
2. Manila's electric infrastructure in historical context
During the past half-century, Manila has experienced extraordinary
growth (Fig. 1). Almost completely destroyed during the Second World
War, the city is today one of Asia's most populous places. The munici-
pality of Manila, occupying only a small part of the metropolitan re-
gion, also known as Metro Manila or the National Capital Region
(NCR), has an average density of over 66,000 persons per square
330
Cities 72 (2018) 329–338
kilometer, which makes it one of the densest cities in the world (United
Nations, 2015). Manila's ascent to a global city has led to both climbing
land values and a shelter crisis: over a third of Metro Manila's popu-
lation lives in informal settlements (Ragragio, 2003; Shatkin, 2004).
The definition of informal settlement is somewhat blurry, mixing dif-
ferent criteria for low-quality housing, legality of land titles, income
factors and including subjective assessments on a case by case basis.
Public agencies distinguish between informal settlers, who may lack
land titles but are tolerated, and professional squatters, who are not
tolerated. (Ragragio, 2003; Shatkin, 2004).
The rapid urbanization took place despite of comprehensive urban
planning efforts. During the past decades, planning authorities sought
the solution in western paradigms of modernization and privatization,
encouraged by policy advice and loan requirements of international
lenders including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank
(The World Bank, 1993). As these models largely failed, the city kept
struggling to provide basic public services such as transportation,
electricity, and sanitation (Shatkin, 2008). Manila's residents experi-
ence frequent power blackouts and brownouts, flooding, and suffer
from air pollution caused by ubiquitous and permanent traffic gridlock.
In this environment, policymakers are often forced to improvise to
address the most pressing problems. Limited budgets and small muni-
cipal workforces require an agile, ad-hoc-style of planning. The plan-
ners of a large-scale urban redevelopment project described their ex-
perience of working in a space where technical, institutional, and
organizational responsibilities are insufficiently defined, while more
and more stakeholders kept coming to the table.
One manifestation of Metro Manila's growing pains is the develop-
ment of its electric grid. During the 1990s, the country experienced a
severe power crisis characterized by daily power disruptions and a lack
of access to electricity for significant parts of the population. In re-
sponse to these conditions, the Electricity Power Industry Reform Act
(EPIRA) from 2001 introduced sweeping privatization and deregulation
of the electric grid, modeled after similar efforts in the UK and Australia
(Sahakian, 2014, p. 50). These reforms, however, failed to resolve the
technical and social issues. Today the region's residential electricity
tariffs are among the highest in the world — in Asia surpassed only by
Japan and Australia and on par with New York (Lantau Group, 2013).
Moreover, the tariff structure is complex and opaque, reflecting the
entangled relationship between the regulatory commission, the dis-
tribution utility, and the local government (Mouton, 2014).
The mutual dependencies of different actors and the absence of clear
leadership are the context in which improvisational governance un-
folds. Since electricity tariffs are set but not subsidized by the govern-
ment, the distribution utility passes on all costs to its subscribers, in-
cluding mandated subsidies for low-income households as well as
system loss due to inefficient infrastructure and electricity theft
(Sahakian, 2014, p. 68). As a distribution utility, Meralco cannot gen-
erate its own power or directly set tariffs; the company therefore has to
seek creative ways to minimize costs towards its customers and inter-
pret and influence policies towards the regulatory commission. The
government, in return, has chosen to take a weaker role in energy
policy and empowered private actors. The barangays, the smallest ad-
ministrative units in the Philippines with sizes ranging from a neigh-
borhood to a medium municipality, have no formal role in electricity
governance, yet remain present in all of its practical aspects (Mouton,
2014, p. 14).
3. Infrastructure and improvisation - a theoretical framework
Urban infrastructure is frequently described in dichotomies such as
public and private, provider and user, top-down and bottom-up. Within
the planning discipline, most accounts describe urban infrastructure
services from the angle of the system builder or administrator. Under
the concept of the large technological system (LTS), historian Thomas
Hughes characterizes the evolution of the electrical grid as a complex
D. Offenhuber, K. Schechtner
Fig. 1. Manila urban growth since 1975. Image courtesy of German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) & German Aerospace Center (DLR).
system of technologies, institutions and organizations, laws and stan-
dards (Thomas Parke Hughes, 1993). Although Hughes describes the
development of the electricity grid as an evolutionary, iterative process,
the user disappears when the system is considered at its whole scale. In
contrast, other accounts conceptualize infrastructure from the per-
spective of the user, as an activity rather than a thing (Star & Ruhleder,
1996). As a counter model to the LTS perspective, inverse infra-
structures describe systems that are entirely built and maintained by its
users (Egyedi & Mehos, 2012). But even in traditionally planned sys-
tems, ad-hoc appropriations, maintenance, and unplanned repairs
conducted by users are essential activities that allow these systems to
work in the first place (Stephen Graham & Thrift, 2007).
As a socio-technical system, the power grid is comprised of technical
systems, which are planned and evaluated towards a purpose, and so-
cial systems, which often unfold in unpredictable ways and serve their
own needs (Fischer & Herrmann, 2011). To describe this unpredict-
ability, organizational theorists have embraced jazz improvisation as a
metaphor for the collective behavior of social systems (Cunha et al.,
1999; Hadida et al., 2015; Jencks & Silver, 1973). The recognition of
improvisation as a complex social and intellectual process is largely
owed to jazz critic Ted Gioia (1987). Under his framework of the aes-
thetics of imperfection, he describes improvisation as a skill of making
decisions in the moment and planning several steps ahead without
knowing the full picture, put to test in arrangements that often resemble
“musical obstacle courses” performed at “breakneck speed.” Gioia de-
scribes jazz improvisation as a retrospective method in which each
phrase is shaped in relation to what has been played before rather than
following predetermined blueprints. Notable for the context of this
paper, he attributes the emergence of the art form to the invention of
the phonograph, an information technology that facilitates education
and stylistic development by preserving and disseminating records of
past performances. Activities of improvisation and jamming transcend
questions of musical composition; they are organizational activities
characterized by “fluid behavioral coordination” (Eisenberg, 1990).
Considering the role of personalities and power relationships in jazz
bands, the creative activity cannot be separated from the underlying
social structures and cultures of communication. Improvisation in-
volves governance and conflict resolution (Bastien & Hostager, 1988;
Berliner, 2009).
The jazz metaphor resonated deeply with organizational theorists
who drew parallels to the challenges of planning in modern organiza-
tions. Improvisation serves as a model for emergent decision-making as
331
Cities 72 (2018) 329–338
well as a leadership style that can provoke a creative response to new
situations and prevent an organization from falling into old habits
(Barrett, 1998). In their extensive literature review on the subject,
Cunha et al. define organizational improvisation as the “conception of
action as it unfolds, by an organization and/or its members, drawing on
available material, cognitive, affective and social resources" (Cunha
et al., 1999). This definition synthesizes two aspects of improvisation
that in previous literature were often treated as separate: improvisa-
tional decision-making and the material practices of bricolage.
While most organizational theory inspired by jazz performance
emphasized temporal immediacy, literature on bricolage focuses on the
historical continuity of the improvisational repertoire as a set of re-
sources that is, in Claude Lévi-Strauss' words “the contingent result of
all the occasions there have been to renew or enrich the stock or to
maintain it with the remains of previous constructions or destructions”
(Lévi-Strauss, 1966, p. 17). Consequently, bricolage plays a prominent
role in design theory concerned with the creative practices of open
source development, do-it-yourself (DIY) culture, hacking (understood
in the benign sense of the word as creative problem solving) and
creative appropriation (Jencks & Silver, 1973; Ratto, 2014; Townsend,
2013). As Cunha et al. emphasize, both improvisational performance
and bricolage are contingent upon each other, since all actions are
constrained by the resources available at the particular place and mo-
ment (Cunha et al., 1999).
Literature on organizational improvisation is generally limited to a
single organization or institution, however, the concept can also be
applied in the broader context of public administration. Improvisational
governance is concerned with the interactions among public and pri-
vate stakeholders who work together to provide goods and services
(Hartog & Westerdijkplein, 2014; Laws & Forester, 2015). The govern-
ance of the electric grid involves multiple actors including international
organizations, public institutions, private service providers, and bene-
ficiaries, who are connected by a complex network of responsibilities
and dependencies. We argue that such systems are even more con-
ductive to improvisational practices than traditional organizations be-
cause of the diverging interests and the greater autonomy of the actors
involved. The participating stakeholders operate with incomplete in-
formation and therefore have to respond to outcomes of each other's
actions. Governance involves dynamics that resemble the pattern of call
and response, where musicians engage in a musical dialogue, responding
to each other's expression. In a governance context, this means that
programs and policies are developed impromptu in response to the
D. Offenhuber, K. Schechtner
results of previous actions.
The participants in improvisational governance do not always share
the same goals and may even have antagonistic rather than cooperative
relationships. Regardless of their various roles, they take part in the
provision of a shared public good. Informal actors often fulfill a need
and provide a service to the public that no formal actor can provide.
However, they may appropriate resources in ways that are in conflict
with the interest of formal actors, prompting more or less restrictive
responses from service providers or public agencies. Regulatory re-
sponse may also be triggered by private service providers who interpret
regulatory frameworks loosely in their favor or introduce new tech-
nologies into the system. Public institutions, on the other hand, may
also engage in informal processes when faced with a pressing need that
requires an immediate response. The material and organizational rea-
lities of the electric grid are the result of the interactions between in-
dividuals, private organizations and public institutions, whether they
are cooperative or competitive.
Improvisational infrastructure governance is a distributed form of
knowledge production. In an improvisational mindset, mistakes are a
potential source of learning. The assumption that whatever happens can
be a productive resource is deeply rooted in musical practice, just like
Charlie Parker was inspired by the sounds of car horns and shattered
bottles during his performances or John Cage considered the everyday
sonic environment a perfect musical composition. Designing for im-
provisation is an exercise in meta-design (Fischer & Herrmann, 2011),
concerned with creating the conditions in which infrastructure can
benefit from improvisational practices, rather than designing the sys-
tems themselves.
3.1. Research questions and methods
The case study discussed in this paper draws from ethnographic
fieldwork conducted between March and August 2015 in the Paco
district, located in central Manila (Fig. 2). Conducted with students and
faculty of the Technische Universitaet Wien and Julia Nebrija, a local
urban governance expert, the study involved environmental observa-
tion and spatial analysis. Systematic observations of the electric infra-
structure and the street light system were recorded in thematic maps
(Fig. 3a & b). Based on these mappings, we conducted a series of in-
terviews with planners, residents, and public servants. The qualitative
332
Cities 72 (2018) 329–338
Fig. 2. Location of Paco within the city of Manila and the sur-
rounding national capital region (NCR), including the locations
of informal settlements (data source Manila Observatory Project,
http://www.observatory.ph).
inquiry of improvisational systems of governance was guided by the
following questions:
● What are the roles of local actors such as residents, neighborhood
representatives, or informal workers in the provision and main-
tenance of street lights and the electricity system?
● How do these local actors interact with utilities and municipal au-
thorities to resolve issues of infrastructure governance, and how do
these actions shape the electric grid?
● And finally, how do local actors and service providers engage with
technological initiatives such as smart-city programs and technolo-
gies?
Based on these questions, we trace how the interactions and social
arrangements between the various stakeholders are inscribed into the
physical infrastructure of electricity and streetlight provision. We
conclude by discussing issues of planning and design in the context of
improvisational systems of governance. We evaluate principles identi-
fied in the theory of organizational improvisation in the context of our
case study and discuss implications for urban planning and infra-
structure governance.
4. Improvisational practices of provision and maintenance
Practices of bricolage are evident in the streetscape of Manila. The
kaleidoscopic variety of lamps and utility poles is surrounded by a
thicket of cables of different purposes and functional states. Besides
electricity, the bundles include telephone, cable TV and the CCTV video
surveillance systems, as well as many older defunct cables that are no
longer used. Despite the apparent visual chaos, the electricity infra-
structure has a hidden order strictly dictated by electricity cost. Most
residents we spoke to have a detailed awareness of their own electricity
consumption, the number of lightbulbs in their household and their
wattages, as well as the typical consumption of their appliances.
The infrastructural elements of the power grid are appropriated in
creative ways by Paco residents, who use cables for drying laundry,
attaching street decoration, or use light poles as support for building
constructions. Makeshift lamps are installed to illuminate dark alleys,
shop windows, or religious shrines, and are maintained and repaired by
locals. Street vendors, who depend on electric light to sell their goods
D. Offenhuber, K. Schechtner
Fig. 3. a (above): Streetlight design types in Paco. b (below): EMC (Elevated Metering Cluster) pole locations, informal settlements and working condition of street lights.
after dusk, use motorcycle batteries or have to buy electricity with a
steep surcharge from adjacent property owners.2 In low-income
neighborhoods electricity is an informally traded good (Fig. 4). Some
landlords install their own meters and sell electricity to their tenants or
neighbors, a practice the utility company disapproves of. Power ob-
tained through this informal electricity market is significantly more
expensive than official rates, but often the only choice for residents who
2
For powering a single fluorescent tube, a street vendor may pay up to 70 pesos (~$1.5
USD) per night. The Filipinos in the bottom 10% income bracket have a per capita income
of less than 86,000 pesos annually/235 pesos daily (~1,697 USD/4,6 USD) (PSA, 2016).
333
Cities 72 (2018) 329–338
otherwise have no access to the grid.
While such forms of informal service provision are a concern for
utilities and municipal authorities, the local barangay captains3 may
also enter informal arrangements with their constituents. In a densely
populated low-income barangay within our study area, the local council
works closely with residents and informal contractors to provide public
lighting in dark and narrow alleyways with insufficient lighting. In such
arrangements, the barangay council pays small subsidies to residents
for installing and maintaining lamps in the public alleys around their
3
Punong Barangay, the elected local chief executive
D. Offenhuber, K. Schechtner
Fig. 4. Street scene in Barangay 849; Paco, Manila (photo by the authors).
Fig. 5. Main street light switch in 826 Barangay (photo by the authors).
house. The council may also support families who cannot afford elec-
tricity by connecting them to the power of the streetlight system. Such
blurry transitions between the public good of street lighting and the
private good of household electricity would hardly be possible in a
formal framework of public service provision. They are the result of a
specific, urgent need, addressed ad hoc with the resources available at
the time.
These examples indicate a shift from a one-directional public service
provision to a mode of co-production that involves local individuals in
service provision. This development is supported by recent efforts of the
municipality to empower local barangays and giving them a larger role
in service provision (Shatkin, 2000). It has to be noted, however, that
this devolution of power does not necessarily come with additional
resources and capacities, and barangays therefore often lack the means
to implement policies (Mouton, 2014). While this form of co-produc-
tion, understood here as the “provision of services through regular,
long-term relationships between professionalized service providers and
service users” (Bovaird, 2007; Ostrom, 1996) is primarily motivated by
a lack of resources and alternatives, it affords the barangay council
additional agency. One such instance is the installation of a general
switch for the barangay street lighting in the barangay captain's office
(Fig. 5).
Indirectly, these informal arrangements also benefit the distribution
utility Meralco, who would otherwise be required to provide the sub-
sidized electricity rate to low-income residents or face the consequences
of power theft (Philippines Republic, 2001).
4.1. Responses to appropriation by the distribution utility
Many forms of appropriation are, however, not sanctioned by the
334
Cities 72 (2018) 329–338
Fig. 6. Elevated metering cluster (EMC) at the gate of Barangay 849 (photo by the au-
thors).
barangay council and actively targeted by the utility. Meralco attributes
persistent brownouts to system loss due to widespread electricity pil-
fering from utility poles and has developed its own methods to combat
such practices. While dangerous for the individual power thief, power
jumping also increases the load on the system, which can induce
overheating of transformers, and cause fires. In informal neighborhoods
with narrow alleys and lack of evacuation routes, such fires can have
catastrophic results (Villamor & Goldman, 2017).
Even when such catastrophes can be avoided, excessive system load
will cause system failure and the whole neighborhood loses power as a
result. At this point, the utility company dictates the rules. Power is
only restored if the neighborhood pays for the repairs and covers the
outstanding electricity bills. If the company designates the neighbor-
hood as a high system loss area, additional measures take effect. The
utility removes electricity meters from individual homes, and places
them together with 30–50 other meters on a tall electricity pole, the
Elevated Meter Cluster (EMC) (Fig. 6), from which individual cables are
then routed overhead to individual homes in the surrounding neigh-
borhood. Meralco and other distributers gained approval for introdu-
cing EMCs in 2009 through a resolution by the Energy Regulatory
Commission (ERC) as a policy specifically tailored as a response to
power theft, moving meters out of reach from pilferers and simplifying
their surveillance on the highly visible structures. Furthermore, the
wire between the EMC and the household is coated in a bright orange
insulation material4 and is designed to be tamper-proof, disconnecting
power for the whole cluster when manipulation is detected. Despite the
additional inconvenience for Meralco's inspectors, who have to use
binoculars for the bi-weekly meter readings, the company considers the
program successful in several respects: it reduced system loss, infra-
structure damage and safety hazards due to pilfering and managed to
reduce the black market of electricity resellers who charge exorbitant
rates (Meralco, 2014; Philippines Republic, 2009).
4.2. Regulatory responses by the city
The EMC program has also aesthetic consequences for the streets-
cape. Due to the significantly higher amount of wires necessary to de-
liver electricity to households, many streets are now covered with an
even denser canopy of cables compared to what already existed before
the implementation of the program. Confronted with Meralco's new
method against power theft and the visual clutter resulting from its
implementation, the ERC responded by introducing rules requiring the
utility to bundle the overhead cables and limited the number of meters
4
As defined by code, the main power line between meter and household has orange
coating, but is typically invisible when the meter is attached to the building.
D. Offenhuber, K. Schechtner
per cluster and cables per bundle.
This may seem like a modest step, but nevertheless indicates a
stronger role taken by the public authority in infrastructure govern-
ance. Until recently, electricity provision and street lighting was ex-
clusively considered an affair between the barangays and the utility
company, with the city staying in the background. Due to the power
differential between utility and local council, such a short route model of
accountability tends to benefit the utility rather than the residents. In a
long route model, the city or the government mediates between the
provider and the community and can and leverage its stronger position
for the public benefit (Kuriyan, Bailur, Gigler, & Park, 2011). Signaling
a slight reversal from earlier laissez-faire policies, the city is getting
more involved in installing and maintaining streetlights rather than
hiring contractors for this task.
4.3. The aesthetics of policy - infrastructure as communication
This pattern of policy call and response between informal actors,
barangays, distribution utility and the city has a material and aesthetic
dimension. Due to their visual prominence, EMC poles have become a
reliable social signifier of a poor neighborhood where electricity pil-
fering was once common practice. In an interview, a barangay captain
emphasized the higher socioeconomic status of his own barangay by
noting that his neighborhood doesn't have the orange wire.
For the residents of a designated high system loss area, the EMC can
also carry positive connotations. Many residents see the meter pole as a
sign of functioning infrastructure and orderly affairs that differentiates
them from squatters. EMC poles are often found right next to the main
gate of a barangay, typically adorned with portraits of the local council
members and surrounded by political messages. Whether intentional or
not, the co-location of visible infrastructure components and political
communication including murals, messages, and speakers is a pervasive
phenomenon. In areas with a lack of public space, where street lighting
is often the only visible public infrastructure besides roads, utility poles
become the conduit of civic exchange. Infrastructure maintenance fol-
lows a regime of visibility. A well-maintained lamp in front of a poli-
tical mural in a prominent location underscores the message. A well-lit
street not only projects safety, but it also shows that the local council
takes its residents' interests seriously. The barangay boundaries,
otherwise invisible in the densely-built environment, suddenly become
clearly marked when one side of a street that separates two neighbor-
hoods has functional street lighting and the other side does not. A
sculptural streetlamp can be source of local identity, and if it works it
shows that everything is in order. The lamp is a promise - a promise of a
city that works.
5. Improvisation and infrastructure modernization
Mayor Estrada's plans5 to replace the assemblage of idiosyncratic
street lighting with modern and standardized infrastructure faces sev-
eral challenges, starting with a lack of information about the status quo.
At the time of our study, the city had no comprehensive maps of the
location and condition of existing lamps. When preparing for the im-
plementation of planned upgrades, city inspectors take photographs on
the specific site and develop typologies of different lamps based on their
observations. Based on this information, power-efficient LED luminaires
are gradually introduced along the main transportation routes, while
the dismantled lamps, if still useful, are reinstalled in other parts of the
city. The LED upgrades involve responses to malicious forms of ap-
propriation: to avoid copper theft, many of the new lamps will be
powered through overhead power lines instead of underground wiring.
Unlike the power distribution to end-consumers, which traditionally
uses overhead power lines due to lower costs, streetlights are typically
5
Tenure since 2013
335
Cities 72 (2018) 329–338
built together with roads and wired underground. Recently, however,
the city also considers moving parts of the power-grid underground,
which is more expensive but safer during earthquakes and tropical
storms (The Manila Times, 2014). Despite the exposed cabling of the
new LED lamps, city engineers expect that these new lamps require
little to no maintenance. Whether that will be the case remains to be
seen.
To modernize their electricity infrastructure, both the city and
Meralco embrace new technologies. Meralco has launched several in-
itiatives that the company advertises as smart grid technology
(Metering.com, 2014; Philippines Republic, 2017). Kuryente Load is
essentially a pre-paid program through which consumers buy electricity
in coupons in convenience stores or recharge their meter using their
cellphone. Kuryente load requires the installation of a smart meter that
notifies users of their electricity consumption and remaining balance
per SMS on a daily basis. The utility covers the installation cost of the
meters, but benefits by avoiding the risk of unpaid bills, the option to
interrupt power at any time, and the capacity for remote, real-time
monitoring of power consumption. Even considering the inefficiency of
staff required to read meters on the EMC using binoculars, the initiative
offers significant advantage to the utility while shifting the risks of
malfunction and power theft to consumers. Despite the rhetoric of fu-
turistic smart city scenarios, the prepaid metering program is specifi-
cally targeted at the urban poor, who cannot afford monthly subscrip-
tion fees. To advertise this program, the utility seeks the assistance of
the barangay halls. While some council members promote the program,
others remained skeptical due to the higher costs incurred on con-
sumers.
The capacity of smart meters to capture fine grained, real-time data
offers additional avenues to combat power theft or the appropriation
(alleged by Meralco) of reduced rates for charitable organizations to
support individual households instead (Philippines Republic, 2014).
Continuous measurement of electricity usage allows the identification
of active appliances and TV channels watched (Greveler,
Justus, & Loehr, 2012). Through such forms of surveillance, Meralco
hopes to identify characteristic signatures of power-theft (Laguitan,
2014; Teodoro & Garcia, 2014). But smart meters are only one example
of smart city solutions embraced by Meralco, who recently also an-
nounced to acquire and deploy aerial drones for monitoring the state of
the power grid in earthquake or flooding disaster situations (Adel,
2015; Horario, 2015).
Smart city solutions to urban governance are controversial in the
urban planning discourse. Critic Adam Greenfield describes the smart
city as generic, yet over-specified: failing to account for the local con-
text, but at the same time making detailed prescriptions for which
technologies and methods to use (Greenfield, 2013). The commercials
and press releases of Meralco seem to prove his point, echoing the
rhetoric of comparable international projects. Yet, neither Meralco nor
the city of Manila buy into technological solutions wholesale. They are
not motivated by the vague promise of efficient urban management, but
instead by specific local problems and policy conditions. For Meralco, a
primary motivation for the described solutions is a ruling by the energy
regulatory commission that capped electricity tariffs for consumers,
therefore requiring the utility to cover the system losses (Mouton,
2015).
The smart city initiative aggressively pursued by Meralco is,
therefore, an improvisational response to energy policies and social
practices considered unfavorable by the company. Experimental tech-
nologies are deployed with short evaluation cycles and at a large scale.
Veiled in the rhetoric of modernization and public good, it is an attempt
to bring the informal practices of the urban poor under control. While
the smart meters deployed in Manila are the same generic devices used
in other parts of the world, they operate in a very specific local context:
the electrification of informal settlements and subsequent privatization,
tactics against system loss and power theft, EMCs and the increasing
importance of barangay halls. From an improvisational perspective, it is
D. Offenhuber, K. Schechtner
therefore not only relevant to ask what a specific technology “does,” but
also to which conditions it directly responds, and how this response is
constrained by available resources.
6. Policy implications and design strategies of improstructures
The actors participating in electricity provision improvise in re-
sponse to a particular need within the particular constraints of their
situation. Affected by poverty and high prices of electricity, residents
appropriate electric infrastructure in creative ways that are not always
anticipated by service providers. In some cases, their interventions align
with the interests of the local government, who is also constrained in
resources and agency, and lead to collaborative maintenance and im-
provement of public services and informal electricity donations to poor
constituents. Other practices such as re-selling electricity to tenants and
in the extreme case of jumping electricity, are in conflict with the in-
terests of the utility or the public, and provoke a repressive response.
Meralco, constrained by its regulatory obligations and a shortage of
power supplied by the generators, introduces new technologies in the
form of EMCs, smart meters, and surveillance technologies to minimize
system loss. This again triggers a post-hoc regulatory response by the
public authorities. A large part of these interactions take place through
actions and interventions in the system rather than verbal negotiation,
using the physical infrastructure as a medium of communication. As
Claude Levi-Strauss notes, the bricoleur “‘speaks’ not only with things,
as we have already seen, but also through the medium of things” (Lévi-
Strauss, 1966, p. 21).
Our concept of improstructure includes aspects that have been de-
scribed in co-production and organizational improvisation literature,
yet there are important differences. While co-production and co-design
are deliberate strategies to improve public services with limited re-
sources, improvisation arises spontaneously whenever there is an ur-
gency, a demand for immediate action in response to an unexpected
situation (Cunha et al., 1999). At the same time, improvisation is a
structured activity that is embedded in historical context (Hatch, 1997).
Each actor has a repertoire of practices and resources that can be varied
and recombined in many different ways. Residents, utility engineers,
and street-level bureaucrats are constrained by the resources available
to them, including materials, budgets, culture and skills, policy fra-
meworks and power relationships with other actors.
In a single firm or institution, it may be the role of a leader to be-
come a creative provocateur who confronts her or his team with an
unexpected situation and has to make consequential decisions in the
spur of the moment (Barrett, 1998). In our example of improvisational
governance, however, it is primarily the constituents who take on the
role of creative provocateurs, discovering opportunities and developing
new practices that city and utility managers have to respond to.
7. Implications for infrastructure governance
To state the obvious, improvisation is not a foreign concept for
planning practitioners, street-level bureaucrats, or community activists.
It is nevertheless useful to reflect the policy implications of under-
standing infrastructure governance as an improvisational process en-
acted in a heterogeneous network of actors connected by formal and
informal relationships.
Networked governance, involving several mutually dependent ac-
tors and levels of government, requires increased attention to the gaps
between these actors in terms of capacities, resources, policies, and
information (Charbit & Michalun, 2009). An improvisational perspec-
tive acknowledges such gaps and concentrates on developing interfaces
and capacities to overcome these gaps through improvisational rather
than centralized coordination. It does not necessarily aim to replace
central coordination, but acknowledges the heterogeneous and in-
complete nature of any system of governance and the need for im-
provisation to address these issues.
336
Cities 72 (2018) 329–338
In relation to constituents, the improstructure perspective suggests
an inclusive rather than repressive approach to informality that re-
cognizes informal actors as creators of public goods. It also suggests an
iterative approach to system design, taking ad-hoc appropriations and
repairs by users into account, and consider them for future evolutions of
the system. Design principles such as seamful design and design for
hackability focus on such capacity. Seamful design means exposing
parts of the inner workings of a system to its users to make it more
legible and adaptable (MacColl, Chalmers, Rogers, & Smith, 2002).
Design for hackability is a related approach for building systems that
invite collective appropriation, modification and improvement by their
users (Galloway, Brucker-Cohen, Gaye, Goodman, & Hill, 2004). These
goals can be supported on the regulatory level by favoring performance-
based over design-based specifications for infrastructure services, de-
fining the desired effect rather than the exact way of achieving it (Ben-
Joseph, 2005). In such a framework, failures and unintended con-
sequences can be conducive towards improvement and institutional
learning.
However, there are a number of caveats that need to be considered.
First, it is important not to fall for the illusion that improvisation can be
completely domesticated. Improvisation is inherently subversive, which
can be in conflict with the goals of reliable and equitable provision of
public services. How can benign forms of improvisation such as re-
pairing things be encouraged while discouraging free-riding, pilferage,
and racketeering? To address this apparent conundrum requires looking
beyond material practices and considering improvisation also as an
approach to collective rulemaking, but as a force of provocation rather
than a universal principle of governance. In our example, improvisation
prompts negotiation and drives the evolution of rules and norms.
Likewise, the open-source ethos of sharing and remixing does not only
apply to technological design and development, but also to the colla-
borative specification of protocols, the negotiation of governance
principles and modes of participation (Jiménez, 2014).
It is also important to resist a superficial romantization of bricolage.
Among techno-enthusiasts, self-organization, hacking, and DIY prac-
tices are frequently treated as unquestioned positive forces of innova-
tion. It is often overlooked that also generic consumer technologies can
have unexpected effects in different cultural contexts, even when they
are used exactly as intended. As Ethan Zuckerman (2016) notes, “while
mobile phones were designed for rich westerners, not for users in de-
veloping nations, they have become one of the transformative tech-
nologies for the developing world (2016).”
8. Improvisation and the platform paradigm
The improvisational perspective offers an alternative to the platform
paradigm that currently dominates the smart city discourse. The plat-
form paradigm advocates for augmenting urban infrastructure with a
digital layer of connectivity between people, data, and technology that
enables participation and self-organization (Bollier, 2016, p. 3). How-
ever, the platform paradigm assumes, explicitly or implicitly, that an
infrastructural abstraction layer of universal protocols and interfaces is
required as the basis upon which practices of participation and co-
production can unfold. The improvisational perspective does not re-
quire such preemptive generalization; it is not the problem or the need
that are abstracted to be solved once and for all, but the local, idio-
syncratic solution that might offer lessons for related problems. Smart-
city platforms designed without iteratively exploring local practices can
lead to spectacular failures, as in the recent case of the city-wide traffic
management system in Ho Chi Minh City, which was modeled after
successful systems deployed in western cities. However, the vehicle
sensors built into intersections failed to detect scooters, which con-
stitute the majority of vehicular traffic in the city (TN News, 2013).
While such failures might be prevented through diligent research
during the planning phase, not all interactions between new systems
and local practices can be anticipated, and new practices quickly
D. Offenhuber, K. Schechtner
emerge in response to these new regimes.
9. Conclusion - infrastructure governance as call and response
We have described improvisational governance as an extended
process of decision making and implementing between the actors in-
volved in the provision and use of public services. In this model, re-
sidents, utility companies, the local council, and the city planners
mobilize local resources—intellectual and material— to shape and re-
shape urban systems in an iterative, conversational process. Each actor
responds to the others' previous actions in a process that resembles
improvisational jazz rather than the implementation of a comprehen-
sive pre-conceived plan. As residents appropriate the electricity and
streetlight infrastructure, the utility company deploys countermeasures,
which then trigger a regulatory response by the public authorities after
the fact. In this model, informality is not outside or in opposition to
formal structures, but rather inside these structures: central city plan-
ners improvise just as street level bureaucrats who seek pragmatic ar-
rangements with residents to provide and maintain street lighting.
Improvisation happens out of necessity, and each actor is compelled
to improvise by different constraints. Residents may be driven by
poverty and the desire to receive better public services. Barangay
councils improvise to provide needed services under tight budgets and a
lack of formal roles in governance decisions. The distribution utility
seeks technical solutions to address its regulatory obligations, system
loss, and a general shortage of power. The regulatory commission is
constrained by a privatization-oriented national energy policy.
Examples of improvisational solutions are also not limited to the
Global South; they also present in systems that went through extensive
periods of planning. When a light mounted in the Boston Central Artery
Tunnel crashed onto the traffic lane below due to corroded screws and
the responsible contractor was no longer in business, the public works
department secured over 9000 lamps individually with black zip ties
(Bierman, 2011).
We do not claim that models that embrace organizational im-
provisation necessarily leads to superior infrastructure governance.
However, not taking improvisation into account can have catastrophic
results, especially if the presence of formal governance structures oc-
cludes improvisational practices (Giustiniano, Cunha, & Clegg, 2016).
After all, governance does not take place in an abstract, conceptual
space — it responds to material realities, their affordances, and aes-
thetic perceptions. In an improvisational process of governance, infra-
structure assumes the role of a communication medium. The EMC pole,
a measure against electricity theft, becomes a signifier for a poor
neighborhood, but at the same time, a sign of accomplishment for the
local council. Lamps and electrical installations become conduits for
political messaging re-election campaigns. Despite the emphasis on
organizational structures and immaterial rule systems, infrastructure is
a physical medium that inspires action and response based on its ma-
teriality.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by an internal grant by the first author's
university. The authors thank the participating students and faculty of
the urban design institute of the Technische Universität Wien and Julia
Nebrija for their contributions.
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