Moss Timothy
Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys), Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.
Soc Stud Sci. 2016 Aug;46(4):559-582. doi: 10.1177/0306312716657205. Epub 2016 Jul 19.
This article takes an historical perspective on current attempts to 'open up' established, centralized systems of urban infrastructure to alternative technologies designed to minimize resource use and environmental pollution. The process of introducing alternative technologies into, or alongside, centralized urban infrastructures is not a novel phenomenon, as is often assumed. The physical and institutional entrenchment of large technical systems for urban energy, water or sanitation services in industrialized countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries did not close the door completely on alternatives. I investigate a number of alternative technologies used in Berlin in the interwar period (1920-1939), in order to reveal the rationales developed around each technology and the ways in which each emerged, disappeared and re-emerged or survived across highly diverse political regimes. The selection of cases is guided by the desire to illustrate three different phenomena of alternative technology diffusion (and exclusion) experienced in Berlin: (1) technologies promoted by early pioneers and discarded by their successors (waste-to-energy), (2) technologies modifying traditional practices that were at odds with modernized systems (wastewater reuse for agriculture) and (3) technologies co-existing alongside the dominant centralized system throughout the 20th century (cogeneration). The empirical findings are interpreted with reference to their contribution to scholarship on urban socio-technical transitions.
本文从历史的角度审视了当前为使既有的集中式城市基础设施“开放”，以接纳旨在减少资源使用和环境污染的替代技术所做的种种尝试。将替代技术引入集中式城市基础设施，或与集中式城市基础设施并存，这一过程并非如人们通常所认为的那样是一种新现象。19世纪末20世纪初，工业化国家中城市能源、水或卫生服务的大型技术系统在物理和制度层面的根深蒂固，并没有完全堵死替代方案的大门。我研究了两次世界大战之间（1920年至1939年）柏林使用的一些替代技术，以揭示围绕每项技术形成的基本原理，以及每项技术在高度不同的政治体制下出现、消失、再次出现或留存下来的方式。案例的选择旨在说明柏林经历的三种不同的替代技术扩散（和排斥）现象：（1）由早期先驱者推广但被其继任者摒弃的技术（垃圾发电），（2）改变与现代化系统相悖的传统做法的技术（农业废水回用），以及（3）在整个20世纪与占主导地位的集中式系统并存的技术（热电联产）。本文将结合这些实证研究结果对城市社会技术转型学术研究的贡献进行解读。
