Everyday geographies of uneven water infrastructures and practices in China

Abstract China has committed to providing equitable, available, improved, and safe water in its cities, and has worked to achieve ecological civilisation and the Sustainable Development Goals. Geographical research about water governance in China has largely focused on the state, market, and large‐scale water infrastructure projects. There is still a limited pool of empirical evidence and theorising about how everyday infrastructures and practices shape uneven urban waterscapes in urban China. To address this gap, this paper mobilises the theoretical and empirical potential of everydayness as a lens to bridge urban political ecology (UPE) and social practice theory (SPT). Specifically, we interrogate urban water provision in Chinese cities and regions and draw on in‐depth qualitative fieldwork in Changsha, China. We examine how centralised water provision crystallises and exacerbates uneven water distributions and insecurity challenges at the material, discursive, institutional, and practical levels. We explain how heterogeneous configurations of water infrastructures and practices fill the gaps of everyday water demand, but can amplify unequal allocations of water resources at the community and domestic levels. Finally, we explore how these water arrangements are closely intertwined with socio‐spatial differences and co‐produce dynamics of power and authority in urban waterscapes. These uneven hydrosocial relationships are internalised and normalised by excluding the urban poor and marginalised groups, pointing to the need to deepen understandings of the everydayness of hydrosocial geographies in China.