ABSTRACT
During the winter of 2000-1 a series or accidents at thermo-electric power stations revealed the precariousness of life in Siberian cities. As infrastructural systems cut out and broke down, desperate measures had to be taken, thus exposing to the population the social conditions of existence of technologies they had taken for granted. This chapter reveals the fundamental role of infrastructure in the character of urban life. It shows how cities may be wounded from their very depths and how people respond as citizens—within familiar urban landscapes suddenly turned unfamiliar and scary. At the same time, the chapter suggests that the politics of infrastructure reveal a dimension in which "the city" is not in fact a bounded and integrated entity. The chapter addresses the "taken-for-granted" character of infrastructure, and the way this has been embedded in mid-twentieth-century ideologies of state provision that are destabilized and (in their strong form) virtually defunct.
