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Paper short abstract:

In a neighborhood in central Vilnius that has been subject to long-running state neglect, new infrastructure improvements have been met with ambivalence. This paper looks at past and existing DIY solutions to infrastructural neglect and new responses in the face of urban renewal.

Paper long abstract:

Šnipiškės is a centrally located neighborhood of Vilnius that has long been excluded from urban developments and infrastructural grids common throughout the rest of Lithuania’s capital city. For decades, residents have articulated their position and experience of living in wooden houses at the foot of skyscrapers in terms of abandonment: as adjacent to yet overlooked and forgotten by the city government and state institutions. In 2019, the reshaping of the main street of the neighborhood signaled renewed interest on the part of the city government to improve the area by investing in utilities, pavement, and other infrastructures, while simultaneously auctioning off social housing units. This regeneration project forged new vectors of hope but also critique aimed at the poor design decisions on the part of planners and shoddy workmanship of construction personnel on the ground. While residents had long engaged in makeshift solutions in the face of state neglect, by maintaining unpaved roads, improvising hook-ups to city water, scavenging firewood, and engaging in public landscaping, once the state showed interest in providing such services to the neighborhood, residents became ambivalent about this attention. The services offered by the state represent an uneasy fit with the practices and places that people had already negotiated for themselves in the face of state neglect. Residents took up new practices of surveillance, appropriation, artistic commentary, and public complaint to maintain an intimate connection to the neighborhood, which proved more important than the material conditions that are either withheld, bestowed, or sold-off by the state.