Olivier Coutard

Water and gas: Early developments in the utility networks of Paris

CURRENT debates on the reconfiguration of utility industries make extensive use of a series of oppositions: customer vs user, public vs private ownership, competition vs monopoly, market incentives vs public regulations, and so on. These oppositions are by no means new inputs in the utility debate. On the contrary, they have been of common use ever since the first water pipes and railway tracks were laid. But the perception was not prevailing at the time, as it is now, that these legal and economic notions told the “whole story” of urban networks. For example, as we discuss in more detail below, water and gas supply were not perceived by mid-nineteenth century Paris officials as presenting the same degree of “essentialness:” universal access to a source of water (either at home or from a public fountain) was a top priority to them, whereas domestic gas supply was long seen as a luxury. May one, therefore, wonder whether it is not misleading or over-simplifying to use the same notions and the same analytical framework for networks whose basic functions were perceived as so different? Let us then provisionally admit that there have been historically two sorts of urban networks, the “indispensable” ones (water, sewerage, streets and street lighting, fire fighting . . .) and the merely “convenient” ones (domestic gas and electricity supply, the telephone, urban heating . . .). The primary distinction between the two sorts of networks, we shall argue, rests upon De Swaan Chatzis 1997