Infrastructure and Metropolitan Reorganization: An Exploration of the Relationship in Africa and India

:Despite decades of effort, deficiencies in access and quality of infrastructure persist in cities of the developing world. One common response to the infrastructure problem is to reorganize the structure of metropolitan areas in the hopes that infrastructure provision, management, and quality will improve. What is not clear globally, however, is how the reorganization of metropolitan areas comes to be, and how infrastructure deficiencies function as a rationale for reform in conjunction with other dominant reasons or drivers of metropolitan reorganization. Building on the demand for increased cross-regional comparison in urban studies generally, this article explores and compares the relationship between infrastructure quality and political and social pressures in four cities—two in India and two in East Africa. The comparison is intended to be exploratory; it shows how city and national government efforts to improve infrastructure quality are shaped by political and social pressures. The results provide a foundation for future cross-regional comparison and theory building.