Paper short abstract:

The tram in Cuenca, Ecuador, is analysed according to its three lives: a radical innovation proposed by authorities to produce a sustainable, modern city; an unruly, damaging construction which raises questions of responsibility; and a technology that needs to be adopted by responsible city actors.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I propose to explore three lives of the tram in Cuenca, Ecuador, which today coexist, but which also contradict each other by changing what the tram is and does and how responsibility is attributed. First, the tram comes into being as a spectacular project, capable of making the city more sustainable, modern, orderly and beautiful. From this perspective, the tram is given the agency to transform, to ignite a transition toward sustainability. Responsibility for solving urban problems is made to bear on a technological fix. Local and national authorities, for their part, are eager to claim responsibility for the tram, hoping that it will also work as a political tool for winning people over. However, in 2013, the tram emerges as something different as construction works begin. It increasingly appears as an unpredictable set of forces which haunt the city. The spatial and temporal unfolding of the construction gets out of control, causing long years of delay and economic crisis in the surrounding areas. Affected business owners are seeking justice and compensation until today, but the responsibility over the project has dissipated into an opaque blame game. In 2020, the tram goes into operation, but still does not fulfil its initial promises, lacking passengers and connection with the privately operated bus system. Instead of a technology capable of fixing the city's problems, city dwellers and organisations are now called upon to fix the technology by adopting it, taking care of it and making it sustainable.