Cerrada Morato, Lucia; (2022) Everyday Infrastructures in the In-between Territories. The role of alternative infrastructures for the degrowth transition in Santiago de Compostela metropolitan area

This thesis explores the role of alternative infrastructures in the degrowth transition of the dispersed territories. While these territories are identified as one of the most unsustainable models of urbanisation by mainstream research and policies who call for its densification, a recent line of enquiry challenges the growth and densification approach. This recent line of enquiry argues that dispersed morphology offers opportunities to implement decentralised and alternative infrastructures, which will improve their sustainability. Yet, little is known about the nature of these dispersed territories and their socio-technical underpinning. This thesis addresses this research gap through a comparative, multi-scalar, mixed methods, and diachronic analysis that investigates the everyday production and consumption of water and sanitation across three peripheral municipalities in the Santiago de Compostela metropolitan area, each operating under different management models. While challenging the simplified assumptions attached to peripheral areas, this thesis explores policy-makers’ approach on how to best transform the water and sanitation system to pursue a degrowth model and the role of municipal governments in a multi-scalar institutional setting. The thesis’ contribution is threefold. First, it offers more diversified accounts of the dispersed territories and advances the in-between territories (IBT) concept through a new taxonomy and methodological framework that explores their diverse spatial heterogeneity and contested production in relation to structural factors such as land, infrastructures, and built form. Second, it shows how alternative infrastructures play a more complex role (than depicted in mainstream literature) in the IBT’s degrowth transition, thus requiring a situated and context-dependent understanding of the social, economic, and environmental characteristics of each IBT, the scale and urbanity of each municipality, and the political and financial factors at play. Finally, it reveals how distinct forms of ownership and management of some alternative infrastructures can be fundamental to meet a degrowth agenda.