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Abstract:

Urban infrastructures do not figure prominent among the topics in Central Asia studies. My research on public transport in Uzbekistan targets this gap. My presentation focuses on the infrastructure of the tramway system in Samarkand and on working conditions and coping strategies of those who bring it into the movement.

The system consisting of only two lines was built from scratch in 2017-2018 after an order by president Mirziyoyev and utilized the remnants of a larger tram system that shortly before was closed in the capital Tashkent. The fact itself was celebrated among public transport enthusiasts while also criticized for the bad quality of the frenzy works. Yet today, only some years after its inception, the overall condition of the system is close to dilapidation and its workers experience exploitative working conditions.

In the presentation I first describe the working conditions of the tram drivers and argue that the burden of financial profit and maintenance responsibility that is carried by the drivers, forces them to become involuntary entrepreneurs. Further, the informal practices and rent-seeking attitude of its administration resembles the features of the marshrutka-systems. Secondly, I present the tram case as an illustration for a particular sort of urban development trajectory that we can observe in today’s Uzbekistan public transport policy. I argue, that global imaginaries of urban modernity create an urge and impatience to create such kind of modernity as soon as possible, bypassing the necessity of long-term planning. Together with the authoritarian condition, short-term thinking and ignorance regarding the necessity of technical expertise and necessity of maintenance on the side of the decision-makers this leads to situation, where after initial funding and construction many comparable projects suffer neglection in maintenance and operation.

The presentation is part of a PhD project, and the data draws upon multi-sited ethnographic research about ongoing transport reforms in Uzbekistan and the political system as it shows itself through urban governance in post-soviet Central Asia.