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Sustaining Urban Networks
The Social Diffusion of Large
Technical Systems
Telecommunications, transportation, energy, and water supply networks have gained
crucial importance in the functioning of modern social systems over the past 100
to 150 years. Sustaining Urban Networks studies the development of these networks
and the economic, social, and environmental issues associated with it.
Previous research on industrialized countries has shown that, although many
infrastructure networks have become quasi-universal, their development did not
spontaneously emerge as a result of technical and economic superiority. Rather the
development of networks is the result of complex and often contested dynamics
involving systems, uses and users, institutions and territories. The authors analyze
challenges to the expansion of access to and use of network-supplied services, as
well as challenges associated with such expansion. Far from arguing that expan-
sion is always positive, some of the authors argue that universal development of
some networks may prove to be unsustainable.
Analyzing the relations between cities and networks is crucial to discussions
of the sustainability of networks and of cities. On the one hand, cities have been,
and are increasingly dependent upon the smooth functioning of a host of techno-
logical networks; on the other hand, cities are where techological, economic,
and social innovations originate, that support the initial development of networks.
The functional dependence of cities on infrastructure systems, the social dynamics
associated with the initial expansion of a new network in a city, and issues of
social/spatial access to basic utility services are analyzed in the chapters of this book.
Sustaining Urban Networks will be of interest to the growing interdisciplinary
academic community interested in technological networks, their historical develop-
ment, their social signiﬁcance, their role in the functioning of cities, their economic
regulation and their expansion in developing countries. It will also be useful reading
for strategists in utility companies and governmental agencies.
Oliver Coutard is a Senior Researcher with the French National Center for
Scientiﬁc Research (CNRS) at Laboratoire Techniques Territoires Sociétés (LATTS),
Marne-la-Vallée, France.
Richard E. Hanley is Editor of the Journal of Urban Technology and Professor
of English at New York City College of Technology of the City University of New
York (CUNY).
Rae Zimmerman is Professor of Planning and Public Administration and Director
of the National Science Foundation funded Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems
(ICIS) at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public
Service.
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The Networked Cities Series
Series Editors:
Richard E. Hanley
New York City College of Technology, City University of New York, US
Steve Graham
Department of Geography, Durham University, UK
Simon Marvin
SURF, Salford University, UK
From the earliest times, people settling in cities devised clever ways of moving
things: the materials they needed to build shelters, the water and food they
needed to survive, the tools they needed for their work, the armaments they
needed for their protection – and ultimately, themselves. Twenty-ﬁrst century
urbanites are still moving things about, but now they employ networks to facil-
itate that movement – and the things they now move include electricity, capital,
sounds, and images.
The Networked Cities Series has as its focus these local, global, physical,
and virtual urban networks of movement. It is designed to offer scholars, prac-
titioners, and decision-makers studies on the ways cities, technologies, and
multiple forms of urban movement intersect and create the contemporary urban
environment.
Moving People, Goods and Information in the 21st Century
The Cutting-Edge Infrastructures of Networked Cities
Edited by Richard E. Hanley
Digital Infrastructures
Enabling Civil and Environmental Systems Through Information Technology
Edited by Rae Zimmerman and Thomas Horan
The Social Diffusion of Large Technical Systems
Edited by Olivier Coutard, Richard E. Hanley, and Rae Zimmerman
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The Social Diffusion of Large
Technical Systems
Edited by
Olivier Coutard, Richard E. Hanley,
and Rae Zimmerman
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First published 2005 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2005 Edited by Olivier Coutard, Richard E. Hanley, and Rae Zimmerman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Sustaining urban networks: the social diffusion of large technical systems/
Edited by Olivier Coutard, Richard E. Hanley and Rae Zimmerman.
p. cm. – (The networked cities series)
Papers presented at a roundtable conference held in New York City in 2001.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Infrastructure (Economics) – Social aspects. 2. Technological innovations –
Social aspects. 3. Public utilities. 4. Municipal services. I. Coutard, Olivier, 1965–
II. Hanley, Richard (Richard E.) III. Zimmerman, Rae. IV. Series.
HC79.C3S95 2004
307.76–dc22 2004008078
ISBN 0–415–32458–0 (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–32459–9 (pbk)
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
"To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk."
ISBN 0-203-35711-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-66958-4 (Adobe eReader Format)

CONTENTS
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiv
INTRODUCTION Network Systems Revisited: The Confounding
Nature of Universal Systems 1
and Rae Zimmerman
PART I
Networks and the Development of Cities 13
CHAPTER ONE Gig@city: The Rise of Technological
Networks in Daily Life 15
Dominique Lorrain
CHAPTER TWO “Internetting” Downtown San Francisco:
Digital Space Meets Urban Place 32
Stephen Graham and Simon Guy
CHAPTER THREE Urban Space and the Development of
Networks: A Discussion of the “Splintering
Urbanism” Thesis 48
Olivier Coutard
PART II
Risks, Crises and the Dependence of Cities upon Networks 65
CHAPTER FOUR Social Implications of Infrastructure Network
Interactions 67
Rae Zimmerman
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CHAPTER FIVE When Networks are Destabilized: User
Innovation and the UK Fuel Crisis 86
Simon Marvin and Beth Perry
PART III
Constructing and Deconstructing the Internet 101
CHAPTER SIX Internet: The Social Construction of a
“Network Ideology” 103
Patrice Flichy
CHAPTER SEVEN The Diffusion of Information and
Communication Technologies in Lower-
Income Groups: Cabinas De Internet in
Lima, Peru 117
Ana María Fernández-Maldonado
CHAPTER EIGHT Living in a Network Society: The Imperative
to Connect 135
Sally Wyatt
PART IV
Networks and Sustainable Access to Water 149
CHAPTER NINE Conﬂicts and the Rise of Users’ Participation
in the Buenos Aires Water Supply
Concession, 1993–2003 151
Graciela Schneier-Madanes
CHAPTER TEN Reforming the Municipal Water Supply
Service in Delhi: Institutional and
Organizational Issues 172
Marie Llorente
CHAPTER ELEVEN Not Too Much But Not Too Little: The
Sustainability of Urban Water Services in
New York, Paris and New Delhi 188
Bernard Barraqué
Contents
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PART V
Networks as Institutions 203
CHAPTER TWELVE Networks and the Subversion of Choice: An
Institutionalist Manifesto 205
Gene I. Rochlin
AFTERWORD After Words
Seymour J. Mandelbaum 231
AUTHOR INDEX 233
SUBJECT INDEX 235
Contents
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Bernard Barraqué was trained as a civil engineer. He holds a degree in city
planning (Harvard University) and a PhD in urban socio-economic analysis.
He is now a full-time researcher in an interdisciplinary research group. His
major theme of research covers water-related public policies in Europe, at
various territorial levels. He has published the first systematic analysis of
water policies in each of the fifteen member states of the European Union
(Les politiques de l’eau en Europe, Paris: La Découverte, 1995; translated
into Portuguese and Italian), as well as several articles in the major
European languages. He has also done socio-historical research on various
environmental policies. He serves on scientific boards of three French basin
authorities, and on several editorial boards in France and in the US (e.g.
Water Policy, of the World Water Council). He was recently elected as the
president of the French national committee of the UNESCO International
Hydrological Program.
Olivier Coutard holds an engineer’s degree (1988) and a PhD in economics
(1994) from the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (Paris). He is a per-
manent researcher with the French National Center for Scientific Research
(CNRS). His research focuses on the social and spatial (especially urban)
issues associated with reforms in utility industries (energy and water supply,
telecommunications), and on public policies addressing low-income groups’
mobility and travel needs. His published books include The Governance of
Large Technical Systems (ed., London: Routledge, 1999) and Le Bricolage
Organisationnel (Paris: Elsevier, 2001). He sits on the editorial boards of
Flux and the Journal of Urban Technology.
Ana María Fernández-Maldonado has worked as an architect, urban planner,
and researcher in Lima, Peru, and since 1992 in the Netherlands. She holds
a position as urban researcher at the Spatial Planning Group of the Section
of Urbanism, at the Faculty of Architecture of Delft University of
Technology. Since 1997 she has been studying the relationship between
information and communication technologies (ICTs) and cities, with special
emphasis on large cities of the developing world. She has published both
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for the academic world and for the development community, contributing
among others to Connected for Development – Information Kiosks and
Sustainability, edited by A. Badshah, S. Khan, and M. Garrido (UN ICT
Task Force, 2003) and The Cybercities Reader, edited by Stephen Graham
(London: Routledge, 2003).
Patrice Flichy is Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University
of Marne la Vallée in France, and editor of Réseaux, a French journal on
communication studies. His research and writing focus on innovation and
uses in ICT, both in the past and the present. His published books include
L’Imaginaire d’Internet (Paris: La Découverte, 2001); Dynamics of Modern
Communication: The Shaping and Impact of New Communication Tech-
nologies (London: Sage, 1995); and European Telematics: The Emerging
Economy of Words (co-edited with Paul Beaud and Josiane Jouët,
Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1991). Patrice Flichy received a PhD in sociology
(1971) from the University of Paris 1 Sorbonne. He also holds a degree in
business management from the École des Hautes Études Commerciales.
He was formerly the head of the sociology research group of France
Telecom’s Research and Development division.
Stephen Graham is Professor of Human Geography at Durham University in the
UK. In 2002/3 he was Deputy Director of the Global Urban Research Unit
(GURU) at Newcastle University. He has a degree in geography, an MPhil
in planning and a PhD in science and technology policy. His research devel-
ops a critical and “socio-technical” perspective to the reconﬁguration of
urban infrastructures and mobility systems; the growth of urban surveillance;
the technological dimensions of social exclusion; the development of urban
technology strategies; the “relational” turn in urban theory; and the inter-
connections between war, terrorism, and cities. As well as a large collection
of articles and reports, he is the author of Telecommunications and the City
(London: Routledge, 1996), Splintering Urbanism (London: Routledge,
2001) (both with Simon Marvin), editor of the Cybercities Reader (London:
Routledge, 2003), and co-editor of Managing Cities: The New Urban Con-
text (London: John Wiley, 1995) and Cities, War and Terrorism (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2003). Between 1999–2000 he was Visiting Professor at MIT’s
Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Currently he sits on the editor-
ial boards of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
Information, Communication and Society, the Journal of Urban Technology,
and Surveillance and Society.
Simon Guy’s research interests revolve around the social production and con-
sumption of technology and the material environment. He has undertaken
research into a wide spectrum of urban design and urban technology issues
including the development of greener buildings, the role of architecture and
property development in urban regeneration and the links between building
Notes on Contributors
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design, mobility planning and the provision of infrastructure services funded
by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council and Engineering and
Physical Research Council, and the European Union. His publications
include Development and Developers: Perspectives on Property (ed., with
J. Henneberry, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Urban Infrastructure in Transi-
tion: Networks, Buildings, Plans (with S. Marvin and T. Moss, London:
Earthscan, 2001), and A Sociology of Energy, Buildings and the Environ-
ment: Constructing Knowledge, Designing Practice (with E. Shove,
London: Routledge, 2000).
Richard E. Hanley is the founding editor of the Journal of Urban Technology
and the editor of Moving People, Goods, and Information in the Twenty-
First Century, the first book in the Networked Cities series. He is Professor
of English at New York City College of Technology of the City University
of New York.
Marie Llorente is working as an independent consultant in environmental
economics. She received her PhD in 2002 from the University Paris X. Her
dissertation is a contribution to the understanding of the urban water sector
crisis in Delhi, based on field-work and interviews. Her current research
deals with regulatory issues in the water sector (in France and developing
countries) and focuses on participatory mechanisms within decisional
process.
Dominique Lorrain is a senior researcher with the French National Center
for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Centre d’étude des mouvements soci-
aux (CEMS-EHESS). His current work addresses reforms in infrastructure
industries (liberalization policies, corporate strategies). He recently edited
three special issues in academic journals: “Eau: le temps d’un bilan,”
Flux 52–53 (July–September 2003); “Gouverner les très grandes métro-
poles” (with Patrick Le Galès), Revue française d’administration publique,
107 (December 2003); “Les grands groupes et la ville,” Entreprises et
Histoire 50 (September–November 2002). He is a member of the editorial
boards of three academic journals (Sociologie du Travail, Flux, Annales
de la Recherche Urbaine) as well as of several scientific committees includ-
ing the Institut de la Gestion Déléguée and the Technical Advisory Panel of
the World Bank’s Public–Private Initiative Advisory Facility (PPIAF) pro-
gram. He teaches the socio-economics of utility industries at the Paris
Institut d’Etudes Politiques and in the Tong Ji University (Shanghai)
international MBA.
Seymour J. Mandelbaum is Professor of City and Regional Planning at the
University of Pennsylvania. For many years he has been principally
concerned with planning theory and the design of communities and insti-
tutions. He contributed an essay on “Cities and Communication” to the
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1988 volume on Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe
and America. His major work is Open Moral Communities (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2000). He is co-editor of a volume on the networked
society, scheduled for publication in 2005.
Simon Marvin is co-director of the Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional
Futures (SURF) and United Utilities Chair of Sustainable Urban and
Regional Development, both at the University of Salford in the UK. Simon’s
research has built a detailed understanding of the changing relations
between cities, regions, and infrastructure networks in a period of rapid
technological change, environmental concern and institutional restructur-
ing. With funding from the two UK research councils he has developed
a specialist knowledge of how the reconﬁguration of water, waste, energy,
telecommunications, and transportation networks re-shapes relations with
users and places in contemporary cities and regions. Recent books published
include Urban Infrastructure in Transition: Networks, Buildings and Plans
(with Simon Guy and Tim Moss, London: Earthscan, 2001) and Splintering
Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the
Urban Condition (with Stephen Graham, London: Routledge, 2001).
Beth Perry is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Urban and
Regional Futures (SURF Centre) at the University of Salford. Her main
conceptual interests are in urban and regional policy and governance, partic-
ularly in relation to theories of multi-level governance and the role of
universities in regional development and the knowledge economy. Recent
publications include “Universities, Localities and Regional Development:
The Emergence of the Mode 2 University?” (International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research, March 2004), co-authored with Michael Harloe.
Her current research is on comparative regional science policies in the
context of the European Research Area, funded through the ESRC Science
in Society program.
Gene I. Rochlin is Professor in the Energy and Resources Group at the
University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include science,
technology, and society; cultural and cognitive studies of technical opera-
tions; the politics and policy of energy and environmental matters; and the
broader cultural, organizational, and social implications and consequences
of technology – including large technical systems. His book Trapped in the
Net: The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1997) won the 1999 Don K. Price Award of the
Science, Technology and Environmental Politics Section of the American
Political Science Association.
Graciela Schneier-Madanes is an architect (University of Buenos Aires) and a
geographer (University of Paris 1 Sorbonne). She holds a permanent posi-
tion with the French National Center for Scientiﬁc Research (CNRS) at the
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Research and Documentation Center on Latin America (CREDAL). She is
also the director of the CNRS-supported international research network
“rés–eau–ville” (water–cities–territories). She teaches at the Institut des
Hautes Etudes de l’Amérique Latine (University of Paris 3 Sorbonne
Nouvelle) and at the School of Architecture Paris la Villette. Her work cen-
ters on urban affairs in several Latin American countries, with research pro-
jects related to architectural issues and to network services, in particular the
internationalization of urban water management. Her published works
include Eaux et réseaux, les déﬁs de la mondialisation (ed., with Bernard
de Gouvello, Paris: IHEAL/La Documentation Française, 2003); Buenos
Aires, portrait de ville (Paris: Institut Français d’Architecture/CNRS, 1996);
and L’Amérique Latine et ses télévisions, du mondial au local (Paris:
Economica, 1995).
Sally Wyatt works in the Department of Communication Studies, University
of Amsterdam. She is also the President of EASST, the European Asso-
ciation for the Study of Science andTechnology.Together with Flis Henwood,
Nod Miller, and Peter Senker, she edited Technology and In/equality:
Questioning the Information Society (London: Routledge, 2000). She also
contributed three chapters to Cyborg Lives? Women’s Technobiographies (eds
Flis Henwood, Helen Kennedy, and Nod Miller, York: Raw Nerve, 2001.
Her current research is about the role of the internet in the ways in which
people construct risks associated with health problems and treatments.
Rae Zimmerman is Professor of Planning and Public Administration at New
York University‚ Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She
is Principal Investigator and Director of the NSF-supported Institute for
Civil Infrastructure Systems (ICIS). Her teaching and research interests
are in environmental planning, management, and impact assessment with
a special focus on environmental health risk assessment, environmental
equity, and institutional aspects of global climate change; urban infra-
structure and its measurement and performance in light of social objectives;
and risk management and public perceptions of complex technologies.
Most recently she has addressed the security of infrastructure systems in
urban areas, and leads NYU’s partnership for the Center for Risk and
Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (headquartered at the University
of Southern California), funded by the US Department of Homeland
Security. Her recent publications include: “Social and Environmental
Dimensions of Cutting-Edge Technologies,” in Moving People, Goods and
Information in the Twenty-First Century (edited by R. Hanley, London:
Routledge, 2003); “Public Infrastructure Service Flexibility for Response
and Recovery in the September 11th, 2001 Attacks at the World Trade
Center,” in Beyond September 11th: An Account of Post-Disaster Research
(Boulder: University of Colorado, 2003), and Digital Infrastructures:
Enabling Civil and Environmental Systems Through Information Technology
(ed., with T. Horan, London: Routledge, 2004).
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The chapters of this book have been selected from a broader collection of
papers presented and discussed at a roundtable conference on the “social sustain-
ability of technological networks,” which was held in New York City in April
2001. The conference was organized by the Institute for Civil Infrastructure
Systems (ICIS, New York University)* and the Laboratoire Techniques, Terri-
toires, Sociétés (LATTS, Marne-La-Vallée), and co-sponsored by the Journal
of Urban Technology and Flux (Cahiers scientifiques internationaux Réseaux
et Territoires), the leading English- and French-speaking academic journals
dedicated to a territorial/urban approach to network infrastructures.
As discussants of the papers presented at the conference, Pierre Bauby
(Electricité de France), Michel Gariépy (Université de Montréal), Thomas
P. Hughes (University of Pennsylvania), Dominique Lorrain (CNRS), Seymour
Mandelbaum (University of Pennsylvania), Jane Summerton (University of
Linköping), Ruth Schwartz Cowan (State University of New York at Stony
Brook), and Joel A. Tarr (Carnegie Mellon University) have each provided a
precious contribution to this intellectual venture. The help of Nate Gilberson
(then project manager at ICIS) in the preparation and in the course of the
conference was invaluable.
After the conference, Dominique Lorrain, Jane Summerton, and Joel Tarr
helped the three editors to select and review the papers that were – often substan-
tially – revised and updated to form the chapters of this book. Neil O’Brien
and Wendy Remington greatly contributed to the preparation of the manuscript.
Several public and private institutions in France have provided intellectual,
material, and financial help for this project: the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique (CNRS, Département des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société);
the Centre de prospective et de veille scientifique (CPVS) of the Ministère de
l’Equipement, des Transports et du Logement (Direction de la Recherche et
des Affaires Scientifiques et Techniques); the École Nationale des Ponts
et Chaussées; Electricité de France; and Réseau Ferré de France.
Olivier Coutard, Richard E. Hanley, Rae Zimmerman
Marne-la-Vallée and New York City, March 2004.
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Early versions of Chapters 1, 4, 7, 9, and 12 were originally published in the
Journal of Urban Technology, December 2001, vol. 8, no. 3, Carfax Publishing,
an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.
Note
*This work is supported by the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems (ICIS) at New York
University (in partnership with Cornell University, Polytechnic University of New York, and
the University of Southern California). This material is based upon activities supported by
the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement No. CMS-9728805. Any
opinions, ﬁndings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this document are those
of the author(s) and do not necessarily reﬂect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Acknowledgments
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INTRODUCTION
Network Systems Revisited:
The Confounding Nature of
Universal Systems
and Rae Zimmerman
This book is a contribution to the study of the development of the telecom-
munications, transportation, energy, and water supply, networked systems –
sometimes referred to as large technical systems (LTSs) – that have gained
crucial importance in the functioning of modern social systems over the past
100 to 150 years.
Previous research on industrialized countries has shown that, although
many infrastructure networks have become quasi-universal, their development
was not the spontaneous result of their technical and economic superiority.
Rather, the development of networks is best understood as the result of a
complex process of co-construction of systems, use(r)s and institutions. In line
with this tradition, the authors in this book seek to escape deterministic views
of the development of infrastructure networks and their “effects” on society.
They consider, in particular, that new technologies do not mechanically produce
social change, that it is not “in the nature” of LTSs to grow irresistibly, and
that network development is a fundamentally contested process. At the same
time, they also seek to escape “social determinism,” i.e. the idea that the
development of technical systems and their role in society are entirely deter-
mined by the interplay of “pure” (non-technical) social forces. Rather, the
authors in this book would agree to the idea that society is, to a certain extent,
determined by technologies in use (Edgerton 1998). They believe that tech-
nologies are shaped by society at the same time as they shape society or, in
other words, that (social) technical systems and (technical) societies co-evolve.
Building upon the knowledge (both empirical and theoretical) in this
area, the authors in this book investigate the development of LTSs in light of
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sustainability, i.e., they explore the economic, social, and environmental issues
associated with the long-term development of those systems (and, often, their
universality). They discuss challenges to the expansion of access to and use of
network-supplied services, as well as challenges associated with such expan-
sion, from a sustainability perspective. (Indeed, several authors argue that the
universalization of some networks may prove to be unsustainable.)
Many chapters emphasize the urban dimensions of networks. Analyzing
the relations between cities and networks is crucial to discussions of the sustain-
ability of networks (and of cities too!). On the one hand, cities have been, since
the middle of the nineteenth century, and are increasingly dependent upon the
smooth functioning of a host of technological networks; on the other hand,
cities are the loci and the foci of technological, economic, and social innova-
tions that sustain the initial development of networks. The book discusses, for
example, the functional dependence of cities on networks, the social dynamics
associated with the initial expansion of a new network in a city, and issues of
social/spatial access to basic utility services. Chapters in the book emphasize
the importance of network-shaped and network-shaping uses as well as the
importance of institutions in sustaining infrastructure networks.
The study of the sustainable development of LTSs raises a broad range
of issues including: the nature and the role of “mediators” between emerging
technologies and evolving social behaviors; the conceptions of solidarity or
of general interest embedded in or affected by the regulation of network
industries and the provision of network services; whether social behaviors,
expectations, or values are shaped by networks, and if so how and to what
extent; the costs incurred by the dependence of urban and social systems upon
networks, and the potential ways to mitigate such costs; the economic, social,
and environmental risks associated with the performance, or failure, of
networks; the comparative performance of networks and of alternative forms
of provision of essential services. The chapters of this book, many based on
in-depth empirical studies, explore many of these issues. Despite a common
theoretical background, robust areas of contention appear among the authors.
Such controversies should be regarded as a resource, rather than an obstacle,
in investigating the sustainable development of urban networks.
Networks in Spatial and Urban Systems
The three chapters in Part I discuss the role of network infrastructures in spatial
and urban dynamics. This is a controversial area of research. A major contri-
bution to this ﬁeld is the work of Stephen Graham, Simon Guy, and Simon
Marvin, originally associated with the Center for Urban Technologies (CUT)
at the University of Newcastle. It was synthesized in a recently published book
by Graham and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism, in which the authors argue that
the “modern integrated infrastructure ideal” is collapsing and with it the drive
Oliver Coutard, Richard E. Hanley, and Rae Zimmerman
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“to construct ubiquitous, normalized and standardized infrastructure networks,”
and that “infrastructure networks are [currently] being ‘unbundled’ in ways that
help sustain the fragmentation of the social and material fabric of cities”
(Graham and Marvin 2001: 33, 88, 90). The ideas developed in Splintering
Urbanism run through this book’s ﬁrst three chapters.
In an essay on the history and regulation of networks, Dominique Lorrain
analyzes the relationship between networks and cities over time. He argues that
we have been entering, over the last two or three decades, a new phase of urban
history with the emergence of the gigacity, a new, distinctive form of networked
city (Tarr and Dupuy 1988) differing from its nineteenth-century ancestor by its
unprecedented size (population), its vertical extension above and below ground,
its network density and its blurring of city boundaries made possible by new
fast transportation and broadband telecommunications systems. Lorrain relates
the advent of this third stage in urban history to the dynamics of network
development. Once adequate institutions and rules had been designed by public
authorities, he argues, the expansion of “successful” networks was primarily a
self-sustained process fueled by the “logic” of utility companies (their strategic
interest), scale, and club effects produced by network infrastructures and ser-
vices, and the development of a very diverse set of network-dependent sub-
systems, appliances, and social practices. Network services are thus tending
to become ubiquitous in contemporary cities, Lorrain argues, refuting the cherry
picking (Graham and Marvin 1994) and splintering urbanism theory. In giga-
cities entirely criss-crossed by infrastructure networks, Lorrain concludes, the
major regulatory issues are therefore not about access disparities, but about
the reliability of network systems, the contents of network services, and the
protection of people’s privacy.
In contrast to Lorrain’s essay, the chapter by Stephen Graham and Simon
Guy emphasizes the exclusionary logic of contemporary network development.
Graham and Guy offer a fascinating study of the contested “Internetting” of
some of San Francisco’s downtown neighborhoods (mainly SOMA and the
Mission Area) in the late 1990s. The migration of dot-com entrepreneurs, mainly
from the Silicon Valley, to those areas, together with massive investment in
telecommunication infrastructures, fueled a major increase in rental values,
changes in building uses (with the development of broadband connected “live–
work spaces”), as well as “divisive” effects on local communities. The process
was highly contested, with ﬁghts at the San Francisco planning commission and
building occupations in response to threats of eviction. Opposition movements
gave rise to attempts at regulating the real-estate boom and its social conse-
quences, and to a broader distrust of development policies within the city’s pop-
ulation. The “Internetting” of San Francisco, and the “biased and exclusionary
appropriation of selected central urban spaces” that went along with it is, the
authors argue, an expression of the more fundamental “shift to a post-national
phase of infrastructural development which tends, very broadly, to undermine,
or at least challenge, the relatively standardized and equitable infrastructure
Introduction: Network Systems Revisited
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systems that were constructed in western nations during the Fordist-Keynesian
post war-boom.” Although the tensions around the appropriation of space in
central San Francisco receded as a consequence of the dot-com failure in the
early 2000s, the questions raised by these conflicts remain.
The chapter by Graham and Guy thus offers a carefully documented and
reflexive exploration of the splintering urbanism thesis articulated by Graham
and Marvin (2001). In the next chapter, Olivier Coutard develops a critique of
this thesis. Based on a discussion of historical and contemporary empirical
material, Coutard argues, first, that recent reforms in utility industries have
not significantly challenged existing universal services in developed countries.
Nor have they systematically aggravated the social disparities in access to
basic network services in developing countries. More specifically, the notion
of “unbundling” used by Graham and Marvin is misleading when applied to
network infrastructures in developing countries, insofar as it suggests that the
provision of basic services was previously “bundled.” In fact, non-network forms
of service provision must be included in the picture, as they characterize the
everyday life of a majority of the population in those countries. Second, Coutard
contends that, contrary to Graham and Marvin’s assumption, disparities between
spaces in the provision of, access to, and use of network infrastructures are not
always socially undesirable. For example, it is not a priori shocking that busi-
ness districts should benefit from enhanced transportation, telecommunications,
and other infrastructure services; the key policy issue is the extent to which
the economic achievements of these districts benefit the surrounding popula-
tion. Third, Coutard contests that infrastructure “unbundling” plays a leading
role in residential segregation or in other forms of “privatization” of urban
space. Premium network supplies may not even be a good indicator of premium
spaces because homogeneous and standardized infrastructures can coexist
with strong social or functional specialization of city spaces. Applied to the
contested “Internetting” of San Francisco studied by Graham and Guy in the
previous chapter, this critique would suggest a close examination of the network
specificity, if any, of what is first and foremost a gentrification process.
Risks and Crises in Networked Systems
Part II addresses how risks and crises play out in highly networked systems in
urban areas, and how such systems can be sustained (or sustain themselves) in
the face of major disruptions. Crises provide opportunities to analyze how (and
how much) cities are functionally dependent upon networks. Two chapters
analyze examples of network failures and discuss the origins of these failures,
the failure processes, their effects, and ways to mitigate their adverse conse-
quences. The two chapters clearly illustrate the risks associated with the ubiquity
of networks: functional and physical interdependencies that may lead to
systemic, large-scale failures; and deep socially disruptive effects of failures.
But they also emphasize the resilience of matrix-pattern networks in dense
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urban areas and the crucial importance of user responses in the mastery of
crises and, at least potentially, in shaping more sustainable future development
of infrastructure systems.
The chapter by Rae Zimmerman focuses on interdependencies between
infrastructure systems (utilities, roads, computer-based systems). Based on a
discussion of various examples, Zimmerman addresses three dimensions in turn:
functional and spatial interconnectedness, redundancy in and between infra-
structures, and system knowledge aspects. She argues that interconnectedness
and interdependencies within and between infrastructure systems are a key
element in system performance as well as system vulnerability. This results in
tricky technological and managerial issues that are discussed in the chapter
along with possible responses to these issues: technical responses such as trench-
less technologies that minimize disruptions on road systems caused by utility
networks’ building or maintenance; regulatory responses such as obligations
for utility firms to coordinate their demands on local authorities; responses
involving the detailed configuration of computer-based knowledge systems; and
organizational and institutional responses (from shared knowledge systems to
integrated multi-utility firms).
The next chapter by Simon Marvin and Beth Perry takes a different stance
by focusing on the consequences of an infrastructure failure. Based on a study of
how a sample of working urbanites dealt with a fuel supply disruption (the British
“fuel crisis” of 2000), the chapter examines the implications of the increasing
social dependence upon – increasingly vulnerable? – infrastructure systems (in
this instance the automobile system). It does so by addressing three issues: How
did a sample of car users cope during the fuel crisis and the disruption of both
the public and private transport services? What external conditions influenced
individual strategies? And to what extent did the alternative travel and behavioral
patterns developed during the crisis become embedded in new routines?The study
shows, first, that car users were able to develop viable strategies for reducing their
motoring, and a range of more sustainable and environmentally friendly transport
behaviors emerged; second, that employers facilitated or negated the coping
efforts of their employees by providing favorable or non-supportive environments
for adjustment; and third, that in that case, the crisis did not last long enough for
new behaviors to become embedded. This research corroborates the observations
made in a similar situation created by a month-long major strike in the Paris public
transport system in 1995: that situation also induced innovative behaviors that did
not outlast the end of the crisis. It thus provides useful insights on the plasticity
and resilience of individual and social behaviors, a key element in the resilience
of networked cities and societies.
A Focus on Two Infrastructure Sectors
Parts III and IV focus on two specific infrastructure sectors: the internet and water.
These two sectors differ in several important respects. Technologically, new
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information and communication technologies (ICTs), including the internet, are
characterized by rapid technological innovation and proliferating infrastructures,
while drinking water supply and sanitation systems are characterized by stable
technologies (not precluding incremental innovations) and well-developed long-
lasting infrastructures. And the internet is an emerging and rapidly changing
system, whereas water is a relatively old, stabilized service. Functionally, the
internet uses the infrastructure of a tier system (making it belong to the group of
second-order LTSs analyzed by Braun and Joerges (1994)), whereas water supply
mostly uses proprietary infrastructures. Socially, ICTs support a host of economic
and social activities, while water is a relatively straightforward service. Econom-
ically, ICTs are the sector where competition, local and global, is the most thriv-
ing, while water supply is the least liberalized of all network industries. Focusing
on sectors at opposite ends of the evolutionary scale of networks has the great
advantage of revealing clear-cut, contrasted patterns that would be more blurred
in intermediary systems such as energy or urban transportation systems.
Part III of the book thus consists of three chapters on the development of
the internet, emphasizing the issues raised by the perspective of the general-
ization of this already widespread yet relatively new service. Through a careful
and penetrating analysis of early discourses on the internet, Patrice Flichy shows
the remarkably large extent to which use rules designed by the small community
(mostly from academic and counter-culture groups) of so-called digerati in the
early days of the internet are still valid today in the large communication system
the internet has become. Flichy argues that the idealistic social world envi-
sioned by internet pioneers, in which relations between individuals would be
equal and cooperative and information would be free, was admittedly challenged
as the internet spread. Inequalities in skills (in the use of computing and the
production of discourse) of a far greater dimension than in the academic world,
have appeared. And the idea of a free internet has faded with the need to finance
certain resources through self-supporting mechanisms such as subscriptions.
But the initial model has, nevertheless, lasted. Forums for the public at large
have been set up, information organized by universities is accessed by different
users, and ordinary individuals create sites that present information that is some-
times very valuable. Flichy’s analysis, therefore, goes beyond the genealogy
of the internet’s use rules; it documents and analyzes the emergence of a “net-
work ideology” that is remarkably consistent with widespread social values,
expectations and relational patterns.
However, a powerful and widely acknowledged network ideology does not,
by itself, warrant widespread access to the corresponding network service. In
her examination of the diffusion of the internet in Lima, Peru, Ana María
Fernández-Maldonado uncovers some of the mediations that related social
values and expectations to the emerging internet system. The chapter first
provides a general view of the social diffusion of ICTs (fixed telephone, mobile
telephone, cable television, personal computer, and domestic internet access)
in the population of Lima, a strongly polarized city. Statistics of domestic or
individual access to ICTs reveal a profound “digital polarization” strongly
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correlated with the city’s socio-economic polarization. Fernández-Maldonado
then focuses on cabinas de internet, the local form of internet cafés. Despite
a complete lack of governmental support, cabinas developed very quickly, first
in higher-income areas of the Peruvian capital, then in the lower-income areas
as well, as the result of thousands of individual initiatives from within a predom-
inantly informal local economy. Cabinas are very successful, especially among
the younger part of the population with a higher-than-average education. Initial
motivation for the use of the internet in cabinas, which was centered on work,
school, and academic purposes, endured, even though users progressively
discovered and exploited the communications opportunities offered by the
internet. Finally, Fernández-Maldonado critically discusses the significance of
ICTs for the improvement of the daily life of poor Lima residents. She notes
the many changes associated with the diffusion of cabinas: people have been
eager and able to improve their ICT-literacy, people go to the cabina as their
primary recreational activity, and people view the internet as their “window
onto the world.” Cabinas also serve as urban resource centers that are lacking
in those areas. Thus, based on their expectations and, in a sense, on their adher-
ence to the “network ideology” described by Flichy, Lima’s poorer groups have
taken the first step into the “digital economy.” But Fernández-Maldonado argues
in conclusion that cabinas will only allow the achievement of more sustainable
goals of local economic development if they benefit from institutional support
by local and national government, a support that has, until now, been lacking.
Another form (or dimension) of the “network ideology” is the idea that
universal access is unquestionably good. Citizens, policy-makers, and especially
researchers should be cautious not to fall into the traps of this preconception.
In a very stimulating chapter, Sally Wyatt challenges the widely shared assump-
tion that having internet access is always better than lacking it, and that once
financial and ICT-literacy issues have been overcome by cheaper services and
education and training, people will embrace the technology wholeheartedly.
She does so by symmetrically exploring “the use and non-use” of the internet.
She first discusses what she terms “two fallacies” associated with notions of
trickling-down or catching-up of internet diffusion. The first is that growth will
lead to a more even distribution of users, whereas, Wyatt argues, most of the
available data suggest that it does not. Although gender differences in internet
access and use have dramatically declined, differences between countries and
differences based on race and income remain stark. A second fallacy implicit in
the trickle-down assumption about continued growth, Wyatt argues, is precisely
that growth will indeed continue. Recent studies provide evidence of a flatten-
ing of internet growth in Europe and the US. The possible reasons for this
and for the existence of non-users (including voluntary ones) are manifold: high
levels of connection costs, the need for a computer, “a potential gap between
heightened expectations and the reality of the ‘internet experience’,” and the
declining amount of social prestige that can be gained from being an internet
user. In the conclusion, Wyatt highlights the importance of incorporating non-
users, together with users, into technology studies as a way of avoiding the
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traps associated with following only the powerful actors (producers) or with
accepting too readily the social normalization that is part and parcel of the
“imperative to connect.”
Part IV of the book contains three contributions to contemporary issues on
the development of water supply systems. To a certain extent, they support
Wyatt’s argument that being connected is not always better. Admittedly, poor
access to water is a clear and unambiguous sign of deprivation; in this respect,
it cannot be compared to a lack of access to the internet, a more relative form of
deprivation. But the three following chapters challenge, to a certain extent, the
assumption that physical connection to the network warrants access to the ser-
vice, and, more fundamentally, the assumption that a networked-based domestic
supply of water (and sewerage) should, in principle, be regarded as the univer-
sal norm of access to water. In doing so, they emphasize the limits, in analytical
as well as in policy terms, of a (rarely thus phrased) notion of “water divide.”
At first glance, the two successive water conflicts in Buenos Aires analyzed
by Graciela Schneier-Madanes suggest a clear divide, and even opposition,
between networked water supply haves and have-nots. Indeed, the first conflict
(in 1995) consisted of fierce opposition by populations in network expansion
areas to the very high connection charge requested by the water company
(in agreement with its concession contract). And the second conflict (in 1998)
similarly involved already connected groups who refused to pay for the expan-
sion of the network. It would seem that these conflicts reveal the antagonistic
interests of connected and non-connected groups, as well as the deeper social
significance of being connected, both in terms of user rights and in terms of
social inclusion. However, as Schneier-Madanes shows, those conflicts were
rooted in a context in which the population’s initial support of privatization
reforms (in many utility and public services) was progressively undermined by
rate increases for many public services, the lack of subsidies to low-income
families, and the new commercial character of the services. This situation was
exacerbated by the impoverishment of large parts of the population in the con-
text of a broader economic crisis. The socially inclusive properties associated
with the connection to utility networks are hampered by the risk of being
disconnected faced by a growing part of the city’s population; and being discon-
nected may well be more stigmatizing than not being connected in the first
place. This corroborates a conclusion of many studies: the physical connection
to a centralized or “bundled” network is not by itself the ultimate solution to
problems of access to essential services.
In a different institutional context, Marie Llorente discusses the reasons for
the poor performance of the formally “bundled,” publicly owned and operated
water supply system in Delhi, and how this performance might be improved.
Delhi’s water supply is characterized by an insufficient and low-quality resource,
poor condition of infrastructure (with massive wastage), insufficient and inter-
mittent supply, strong disparities in access to and consumption of water, which
affect low-income users disproportionately, and have poor cost recovery.
Llorente includes in her discussion the many facets of this situation: rules, both
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formal (laws, policy, judiciary) and informal (customs, norms, codes of con-
duct); operators’ internal governance structure (including incentives, the degree
of bureaucracy, the level of autonomy and skills of agents and their behavior,
and the representation of public interests); and users’ practices and involvement
(or the lack of it). Focusing in the conclusion on the question of whether or not
a centralized network would be a sustainable global solution to Delhi’s water
problem, she argues in favor of a more diversified, demand-oriented approach,
integrating centralized and decentralized supply via public or private providers.
In particular, setting up a single, all-Delhi franchise contract would be a mistake
because it would not provide a relevant answer to the two main issues: the
fragmented nature of the city and the limited ability of customers in poor areas
to pay. Thus, despite the unsustainability of current decentralized forms of
water provision in Delhi, Llorente argues that a decentralized system should be
preferred to a centralized, “bundled” network.
The next chapter takes a broader perspective, encompassing the “three
worlds” of water use patterns. Bernard Barraqué argues that the model of water
supply and waste water treatment systems services that was developed in indus-
trialized countries during the twentieth century may not be sustainable. In the
US, the extremely high levels of water consumption are jeopardizing the entire
system. In Europe, the proliferation of environmental directives (laws) and of
liberalization reforms in public services (based on so-called “full cost recovery”)
led simultaneously to more instances of non-compliance to drinking water
standards and to larger water bills. The ultimate result is customers’ growing
distrust of their water utilities. In developing countries, Barraqué further argues,
public–private partnerships and the privatization of services will not help to
universalize access to water networks. In all contexts, sustainable services
(economically and environmentally efficient services at socially and politically
acceptable prices) will require “cheap money,” public subsidies and cross sub-
sidies, as well as the transition to “environmental engineering”: resources
protection, demand management, and, in specific contexts, alternative forms of
service supply. But, Barraqué asks, “Who would want a ‘substandard’ septic
tank in their garden when everybody tells them that networked-based and
public sewage collection and treatment is the only real solution?” This ques-
tion echoes discussions in other chapters on the (rhetorical and social) power
of the notion of universalization and its sometimes questionable economic,
social, or environmental benefits.
As a conclusion to this collection of chapters on challenges to, or associated
with, network universalization, Gene Rochlin speculates about the deregulation
or, as he puts it, the “ de-institutionalization,” of network-based large technical
systems in the US and elsewhere. Viewing LTSs as social institutions in their
own right, Rochlin calls for an analysis of reforms in LTS industries that
goes beyond the dominant analyses of the preconditions, forms, and economic
consequences of these reforms. He systematically explores the social impact
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of reforms on companies’ staffs, the general population of “users” and public
institutions. He argues that, as deregulation has:
broken what were claimed to be their visible chains, humans are led to
deny the costs, and the more insidious means by which they increas-
ingly become technically, economically, and socio-politically bound
by the means and mechanisms of “free market” rules, structures, and
coordination requirements.
In many cases the break-up of large technical systems under the guise of dereg-
ulation did not lead as promised to the emergence of effective competition and
competitive markets. Instead, those with the greatest or most effectively used
market power are moving to re-aggregate the system, but this time largely free
of the regulatory and government controls that restrained them from exploiting
either their customers or their workers.
Concluding Remarks and Future Directions
Chapters in this book confirm the society-shaping (and not only socially shaped)
nature of network systems and networking technologies. Networks are at the
same time: socially and politically acknowledged standards of service (network-
supplied basic services); socially normalizing devices; fundamental elements
of the functioning of “network-dependent” societies (dependence can be
assessed, in particular, through the cost of non-access or of network failures);
a metaphor, even an “ideology”; and social institutions. As such, the chapters
in this book are a contribution to bridging the gap identified by van der Vleuten
(2001) between strong claims by scholars as to the major social importance
of large technical systems and studies that focus on the internal workings of
those large technical systems rather than on their interactions with society. The
chapters do this in a way close to the “pluralist approach” to network studies
that van der Vleuten advocates. By confronting very contrasted situations in
different parts of the world, the book suggests future areas of research. In
closing this introduction, we would like to emphasize three directions in network
research that, in our view, deserve particular attention.
Networks, Cities and Spatial Dynamics
As noted above, the relations between technological networks and cities are cru-
cial in two ways: first, because cities have, since the middle of the nineteenth
century, been increasingly dependent upon the smooth functioning of a host of
technological networks; and second, because cities are the loci and the foci of
technological, economic, and social innovations that sustain the initial develop-
ment of networks. The supply of networked-based urban services is usually a
major responsibility of local governments and, therefore, an indicator of the
ability of local governments to act. Focusing on the provision of network services
gives essential insights into the evolving forms of urban government and into
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their capacity to implement public policies (see Le Galès and Lorrain 2003).
Because network services are so central to the life and government of cities, the
co-evolution of urban networks and urban spaces/societies discussed in several
chapters of this book should be further explored, both empirically and theoreti-
cally. But this spatially sensitive study of networks should be fundamentally
multiscalar, because networks intimately articulate spatial scales.
Networks and Sustainable Access to Essential Services
The “urban transition” that has affected (or is affecting) most areas in the
world, resulting in an ever-growing portion of the Earth’s population living
in cities and in the multiplication of very large cities, was made possible by
network technologies. Large agglomerations of population would simply not
have been possible without the water, sewerage, transport, and energy supply
systems carrying vital fluids to those cities and mephitic waste away from
them, and connecting those agglomerations with their hinterland and with the
rest of the world. But this does not necessarily imply that the contemporary
forms of development of networks are sustainable economically, socially, and
environmentally. The chapters in this book raise serious reservations. First,
the cost of ever-stricter environmental and health regulations, together with
full-cost-pricing and polluter-pays principles, may threaten the affordability of
water supply even in the richest countries, not to mention the very serious prob-
lems faced by poor populations worldwide. Second, supply-oriented policies
have favored the development of levels of consumption (of energy, water, cars,
etc.) that are generally regarded as unsustainable, especially if they were to
be extended on a world level. But the transition to more sustainable levels
of consumption in advanced economies, and the control of rising levels of
consumption in the rest of the world prove particularly tricky. Third, network-
based supply has become the norm in the eyes of populations and of politicians,
irrespective of its cost, its social accessibility, and its environmental efficiency.
A crucial issue is thus: to what extent can reasoned use of networked and alter-
native forms of service provision be part of a sustainable scenario of universal
access to basic services (and rights)?
Networks as Institutions
Social and political institutions tend to be taken for granted in studies focused
on the development of technological networks in developed countries during
stable policy phases. As suggested by the chapters in this book, however, when
one broadens the analysis, geographically (to include developing countries) or
historically (to include the less stable periods in terms of networks expansion,
for example, the late nineteenth century and the recent period of liberalization/
deregulation), the picture is quite different. In this book, the electricity crisis
in California, conflicts over water supply in Latin America, or the pending
crisis in the European model of urban water services, provide starting points
for discussions of the interdependencies between the development of networks
and the stability of social institutions. But the analysis can and should be taken
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further. A comparative approach seems very helpful to investigate networks as
institutions and, even more fundamentally, as one in a group of alternative
institutions structuring societies. What other “structuring institutions” did
networks replace historically in societies where they are presumed to have taken
on that function? What other structuring institutions exist in contexts where
networks remain marginal (if only in terms of the proportion of the population
connected to them)? These institutional issues may turn out to be key direc-
tions of investigation (in research as well as in policy terms) when searching
for social responses to the vulnerability of advanced societies deriving from
their dependence upon networks.
References
Braun, I. and Joerges, B. (1994) “Second order large technical systems,” in J. Summerton
(ed.) Changing Large Technical Systems, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Edgerton, D. (1998) “De l’innovation aux usages: dix thèses éclectiques sur l’histoire des
techniques,” Annales Histoire, Sciences sociales, 53(4/5): 815–37.
Graham, S. and Marvin, S. (1994) “Cherry picking and social dumping: British utilities in
the 1990s,” Utilities Policy, 4(2): 113–19.
–––– (2001) Splintering Urbanism. Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and
the Urban Condition, London: Routledge.
Le Galès, P. and Lorrain, D. (eds) (2003) “Gouverner les très grandes métropoles: Institutions
et réseaux techniques,” Revue française d’administration publique, Paris: La
Documentation française.
Tarr, J. and Dupuy, G. (eds) (1988) Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe
and America, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
van der Vleuten, E. (2001) “Etude des conséquences sociétales des macro-systèmes tech-
niques: une approche pluraliste,” Flux, Cahiers scientiﬁques internationaux Réseaux et
Territoires, 43 (January–March): 42–57.
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PART I
Networks and the
Development of Cities
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CHAPTER ONE
Gig@city: The Rise of Technological
Networks in Daily Life
Dominique Lorrain
This chapter analyzes the diffusion of network technologies as a complex and
contingent process. In so doing, it participates in the debate on the “post-Fordist”
city and the so-called tendency towards fragmentation and segregation (Castells
1997; Graham and Marvin 2001).1
Our central hypothesis is that it is neces-
sary to examine each element of a city’s social structure before asserting such
a trend (Harvey 2000; Marcuse and van Kempen 2000). In simple terms, the
logic underpinning urban productive sectors is not necessarily the same as that
governing housing markets, or that structuring the economy of technical
networks. Society is constituted of many sub-parts which are, of course, inter-
connected and respond to the same general logic (globalization, market forces,
etc.); however, I believe that it is erroneous to consider that a phenomenon on
one level – if we use the metaphor of “instances” (or levels) coming from struc-
tural analysis – explains what is happening on another level (Lorrain 2001). It
is necessary to develop analyses that seriously take account of the “built” (or
technical) dimension of cities. This dimension is not a metaphor, it is a central
part of how cities are organized, structured, and governed.
This chapter is divided into three parts. The ﬁrst part argues that we are
experiencing a new, third phase in urban history characterized by the growing
role of technological networks and other infrastructures as key elements of mod-
ern life; the built environment structures the environment in which human beings
live more than ever before. In the second part, the process of the diffusion of
these networks is discussed, based on a number of case studies (water supply
and the automobile). This process never begins as a universal phenomenon; in
their infancy networks are limited to speciﬁc areas and players (individuals or
enterprises). The third part analyzes the lessons of the process of generalization
by considering two issues: the “splintering urbanism” argument and regulation
activity. If we consider the central role of the built environment and recognize
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that it is the product of human action (individuals, organizations, institutions),
then the organization of the built environment must be seen as representing new
responsibilities for governments. This certainly involves greater responsibility
than the classical regulation of national monopolies. The division between
utilities and the services provided by them are blurring; in some industries the
services provided via “the pipe” are more strategic than the pipe itself. This raises
the question of exactly what should be regulated.
Three Types of Cities
Taking the example of Tarr and Konvitz (1981), we propose to discuss three
historical types of urban structures: the city, the megalopolis, and the gigacity
(Lorrain 2000a: 12–13). The transition from one type to the next is not only
characterized by growth, but also by a change of pattern.
Polis: The City of Pedestrians
The first type of city, the polis, has a long history spanning many centuries. It
is characterized by some general features: spatial focus around several public
buildings (palace/fort, church/temple), low buildings, public fountains and indi-
vidual wells, and limited transport techniques (Mumford 1964). The polis was
a distinct territory from the rural area under its control. It had commercial deal-
ings with its surrounding rural environment and with other cities or states,
which were sometimes very far away. Nevertheless, the city was mostly a closed
space surrounded by walls and organized around a citadel, a fort. In his seminal
history of cities, Lewis Mumford accurately describes the different phases in
this long period of the pedestrian city: antique, middle age and baroque (Table
1.1). In these cities, spatial relationships were determined under a principle of
contiguity (relations with those who are close). The value of the fixed struc-
tures (networks) that framed the city remained low in comparison to the value
of other elements of the built environment (palace, fort, cathedral, etc.).
The Megalopolis
The break with the polis began in the nineteenth century with the development
of new sources of energy, railroads, and the first capital intensive underground
networks: water, sewerage, and subways (Tarr and Konvitz 1981). After the
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Table 1.1 Basic Elements of the Pedestrian City
Period Type Outstanding Buildings
Ancient city Citadel Palace, grain warehouse, temple
Medieval city Walled Fort, cathedral, cloister, hospital, market place
Baroque city Palace Treasury, prison, avenue
Source: Adapted from Mumford (1964), chapters 9, 10 and 12.

Second World War, changes in building techniques (the widespread use of
concrete and the massive use of glass frames), the development of elevators,
and the mass diffusion of automobiles led to a new form of urban center: the
megalopolis. Cities expanded both horizontally and vertically. This was the era
of skyscrapers, the most advanced types of which were found on the East Coast
of the US. The density of networks changed, and cities were reshaped by these
“first” heavy networks and by automobiles.
The Gigacity
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we are experiencing a new type of
city characterized by several features. The first salient feature is size (see Table
1.2).2
In 1960 there were two megalopolises with more than 10 million inhabi-
tants; by 2000, there were 20. The second feature of the changed city is the
expanded role of networks. A gigacity can be defined as a place with a high den-
sity of networks. Gabriel Dupuy mentions that in the modern city, reshaped for
use by automobiles, the dense network of streets represents “up to 30 percent of
the urban surface, in Los Angeles 40 percent” (Dupuy 1995). Water and waste
water mains, electricity networks, and mass transport systems are ubiquitous;
they are the first level of modern cities. New networks, including telecommuni-
cations and cable networks have been added to cities, as have new techniques
Technological Networks in Daily Life
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Table 1.2 The Twenty Largest Cities in 1960, 1996 and 2015 (projected) (in millions of
inhabitants)
City 1960* 1996 2015
Tokyo 10.4 27 29
Mumbai 4.5 16 26
Lagos 0.7 11 25
São Paulo 3.2 17 20
Dhaka 0.6 9 19
Karachi 1.9 10 19
Mexico City 3.1 17 19
Shanghai 6.9 14 18
New York 11.3 16 18
Calcutta 4.6 12 17
Delhi 2.6 10 17
Beijing 4.0 11 16
Manila 1.1 10 15
Cairo – 10 15
Los Angeles 6.5 13 14
Jakarta 2.9 9 14
Buenos Aires 7.0 12 14
Tianjin 3.2 10 14
Seoul 3.0 12 13
Istanbul 1.5 8 12
Sources: Beaujeu-Garnier et al. (1966) for the year 1960, UNDP for 1996 and 2015.
Note: *Depending on the country, the year of the census can vary from 1958 to 1963.

for movement, such as elevators. Third, a new dimension was added to cities
with the development of underground spaces and high-rise buildings.3
A fourth
element is the way in which new networks are changing the relationship of cities
with the rest of the world. With fast trains, the generalization of air travel, and
the diffusion of cable networks and the internet, the city no longer has any
boundaries. This change marks a shift from the old principle of contiguity to a
new principle of connectivity (Offner and Pumain 1996). A fifth aspect con-
cerning new developments in the built environment and technical networks is
the parallel diffusion of robots, i.e., technical devices used in daily life which
are complementary to the network (e.g., the addition of GPS systems in cars).
These new developments in urbanization move cities from the realm of mega-
lopolis, corridors, or urban regions, characterized by sprawling, urbanized
spaces, to that of an archipelago, where cities represent islands concentrating
activities and exchanges (Veltz 1996). The techniques of exchange then become
strategic within an economy of flux and nodes.
The Process of Diffusion
Inhabitants of modern megalopolises and gigacities take the built environment
for granted with its complex mix of buildings, public equipment, technical net-
works, and mechanical devices. However, this environment is the result of a long
process of development and diffusion and it requires intensive control and main-
tenance. The development of networks and their diffusion into daily life have
not followed a rational pattern – they have evolved through trial and error.
The Infancy of a Network
In the first phase (infancy) of a network, few people are connected and the
service is expensive. During these early years, the well-off have access to these
symbols of modern life: running water, electricity, telephones, or private cars.
In general, it is a time of experiment and invention; several technologies are
competing (as was the case with electricity): the system has not been stabilized.
Water supply, at the turn of the nineteenth century in France, was limited
to public fountains. Water mains had been laid in the center of major cities,
but the periphery (suburbs and villages) had no access. In the city of Lyon,
described by Franck Scherrer, the first contract to improve water distribution
was signed in 1853 with the newly established Compagnie Générale des
Eaux. Ten years later, 10,000 households had been connected; this number rose
to 20,000 after 20 years, which represented only one-sixth of all residents. Water
was not easily available. Under the initial agreement, the daily production was
20,000 cubic meters, half of which were for municipal requirements (street
cleaning, public fountains, etc.). Five years later, these needs were estimated at
a minimum of 45,000 cubic meters (Scherrer 1997: 49). Other cities had similar
experiences. In 1841, Bordeaux had 120,000 inhabitants and provided the equiv-
alent of 3.5 liters per person per day of running water. As noted by Jean-Roland
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Barthélémy, “the municipal effort began in 1854, however, it was only in 1880
that a municipal water agency was created” (Barthélémy 1997: 63).
One century later, the same situation can be observed with regard to another
modern network: the cellular phone. In the mid-1980s, this new technology was
only in the experimental phase in France. Only one network was available,
under the responsibility of the incumbent state enterprise. This was poorly
diffused, expensive, and not very convenient (the calls were transferred through
an operator). When a second license was granted in 1987 (after a process of
direct negotiations between the French Ministry of Post and Telecommunications
and the Compagnie Générale des Eaux), the cost of equipment exceeded
US$3,000 and there were less than 30,000 subscribers to the state company’s
network. In 2001, just 14 years later, Cegetel, the CGE subsidiary was oper-
ating the second network. It has 10.1 million subscribers, and, for the first time
in France, the number of cellular telephones exceeds that of fixed lines.
Expansion of the Network
Public policies have been central to expanding networks and increasing the
supply of services. These policies establish priorities, determine norms, and
design institutional frameworks that are of key importance in facilitating trans-
actions in a sector where markets have been partially inadequate (North 1990).
Many examples exist from developed and emerging countries. They demonstrate
the central role of the state during the expansion phase of network development.
Even though the first French water corporations were created in 1853 and
1880, compared to other industrial countries, France lagged a long way behind
other developed countries. This was due to two factors. First, a cultural attitude
of indifference to hygiene that was mentioned by many observers, reformists,
and members of visiting missions. Second, an inadequate institutional frame-
work. At this time, water was considered a “public good” with low tariffs; the
levels of capital expenditure were low, with most resources coming from state
grants. Consequently, the development of water mains was dependent on state
budgetary policies, which had their own logic, resulting in intermittent develop-
ment. This was a major weakness in the development of a water policy. It took
until the 1930s to develop a new framework. The basic change that occurred was
the realization that water had a cost, so meters were installed, tariffs were raised,
and utility companies or municipalities began to generate positive cash flows
that were then allocated in order to modernize the network.4
After the Second
World War, in 1954, an additional tariff was assigned to a specific fund dealing
with the modernization of rural areas in order to make the service universal
(the same mechanism had previously been set up for electricity). The process
of expanding the water networks continued and by the mid-1960s, French
backwardness in this area was a thing of the past.
In another country, Argentina, specifically in Buenos Aires, we have a case
where an inadequate tariff structure and poor management hampered the exist-
ing water company, Obras Sanitarias de la Nación (OSN), which was among
the best water companies in the world before the Second World War (Dupuy
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1997). When reform was instituted at the beginning of the 1990s, the position
of this company had seriously deteriorated since its halcyon days (Faudry 1999;
Schneier-Madanes 2001: 45–63):
• the organization was over-staffed and this had adverse consequences on
costs;
• due to a poor commercial policy, only 75 percent of bills were paid;
• the need for treated water was considerable due to leaks and illegal
connections. There was a discrepancy between the amount of water
produced and the amount sold – this was estimated at 43 percent (“esti-
mated,” because there were no meters on many parts of the network,
and accurate figures were difficult to obtain);
• there was a generous flat rate for the middle class and the rich living in
the city center. These sectors consumed an average of 573 liters per
capita per day (lcd) for all the networked area, but 700 lcd in the Capital
Federal (the city center).
In 1993, this situation led to a privatization reform. Nine million people
were included in the service area of the contracting firm; however, at that time
only six million were connected to the water network. This meant that the exten-
sion of the network was essential to the success of privatization efforts. But
expansion was made difficult by an inadequate institutional framework (tariff
setting). The concession agreement provided for connection charges (cargo de
connection) and a charge to finance the new network (cargo de infraestructura)
for both the water and the wastewater networks. The cost was 1,455 pesos per
household, compared with an average monthly income of 240 pesos. The users
had to pay the real cost of connection (principle of marginal cost pricing); this
represented a charge of six months’ income. After the first extension program
in 1995, the users refused to pay these charges. They demonstrated; opponents
to privatization resumed their criticism. The issue rapidly became politically
sensitive. The entire process was stopped and new mechanisms had to be estab-
lished. The principle used was the consideration of the average cost as a way
to calculate the charges. All users (those already connected and those soon to
be connected) had to pay an additional charge called the SUMA (servicio
universal, mejora ambiental) which could not be more than three pesos per
month. Those soon to be connected had to pay an extra charge of 2 pesos per
month for each service, for a period of five years; this represented a total of
120 pesos (Faudry 1999, Schneier-Madanes 2001, and this article). Again, the
role of the public sector in the design and legitimacy of new rules was central
to the development of this network.
China offers another instance of a clearly defined, strong institutional
framework based on the public sector that has been relatively efficient if we
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consider the pressure of the needs (Sogreah Consultants 2000). In the period
from 1990 to 1998, water treatment capacity and the size of the distribution
network in China have increased by almost 50 percent, from 140 million to 210
million cubic meters per day, corresponding to a total investment of ¥79 billion
($9.5 billion). Much of the investment in the water sector came from govern-
ment funds (either national, provincial, or local). In mid-2000, “only 24 oper-
ations with the private sector have been identified; they represent approximately
$580 million or 6 percent of the investment in the water supply sub-sector”
(Sogreah Consultants 2000). There is nothing extraordinary in this achievement
and in the ability of the Chinese authorities to oversee the development of their
infrastructure. They have set up a framework that provides the basic answer to
their problem: a well-structured municipal government has proven to be an
efficient means of managing the extension of water networks in urban areas.
They have installed meters (90 percent of the urban population has access to tap
water). As in many developing countries, the original policy was to have low
tariffs. This policy was reconsidered in the 1990s and water companies increased
their rates and, consequently, their resources (Lorrain 1998: 5–21).
India, with similar quantitative issues, provides a very different example.
Part of the problem is rooted in a poorly designed public policy with many
elements similar to the Buenos Aires example. Insufficient control of the urban
process and low tariffs have resulted in a lack of funds and a deterioration
of the service, both in terms of the quantity of water available and the quality
of the tap water. “Cities are facing many problems and demographic growth is
only one of these. There are numerous other constraints: an inefficient infra-
structure, badly designed urban regulations, weak municipal institutions, and
inadequate financial services and funding for urban development” (Zérah 2000:
16). The central point to consider is the reaction of households and the related
consequences for the future development of the network. Households have
reacted to the poor level of municipal service; they make their own decisions
on how to improve their situation. They dig wells on their own property; they
invest in motor pumps, storage tanks, and, frequently, in simple treatment
devices. Overall, this private investment in equipment has a cost. “The unreli-
ability of water supply costs Delhi Rs 3 billion annually; this is twice the
municipal expenditure on water” (Zérah 2000: 144). Furthermore, this invest-
ment in private equipment impedes the future development of the network. If
the public system was upgraded and if every household had access to tap water,
this investment in equipment would become superfluous and would represent
a loss for the household. This issue of modernization is sensitive because those
who have invested in such equipment are not the poor; they have the political
ability to express their grievances to elected officials. The Indian case thus
provides an example of a “vicious circle” regarding the role of institutions. The
originally bad institutional framework prompted households to seek private solu-
tions which, in turn, hampered the development of water mains and distribution
pipes throughout the city.
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Generalization: Networks and Services
The third step in the diffusion of networks is characterized by increasingly
frequent practices. At this stage of “extension,” a clear distinction has to be
made between the network and the “practices behind the meter.” The extension
of the user’s practices and the diversification of policies of network companies
(from pipe to services) leads to the disappearance of the barriers between
“before” and “after” the meter, or the difference between the network (the regu-
lated utility) and private practices. The point we want to stress here is that the
present-day gigacity is not only characterized by a growing number of networks
and of uses of networks, but at the same time by the development of various
goods that are extensions of these networks. This socio-technical mix of utili-
ties and private equipment complicates regulation and changes the role of public
action. We will illustrate this point with the example of the diffusion of the
automobile (a similar demonstration could be provided for the diffusion of
electricity, natural gas, or the telephone in modern daily life).
The diffusion of the automobile has led to the development of roads, high-
ways (two networks), and other complementary facilities and services: gas
stations, repair shops, rest areas, car parks, and insurance. The diffusion also
depends on a car industry with sophisticated strategies for selling its products
(cars) to the greatest number of consumers. In such a case, the process of
diffusion combines three elements: the network, the product (the car), and the
education of drivers.
The network. The investments to develop roads, increase their length, and
improve their safety have been a permanent concern of European public policy
since the Second World War. “It is now a fully integrated system . . . which
goes beyond institutional boundaries” (Dupuy 1995). Some rules, which aim
to organize individual practices on the network, have been diffused all over the
world. The first red light goes back to 1914, as does the first stop sign posted
in Chicago. As Gabriel Dupuy writes, common standards mean that a motorist
“can drive his car across borders knowing that there will be no surprises on
the roads in other countries” (ibid.).
The product. The same standardization process has occurred in the car industry.
Everything has been done to simplify the driver’s job,5
to provide a similar
local environment (in the car, the gear box, the buttons for the lights, the horn,
etc.). The tendency is towards simplification and convergence; the result is the
homogeneity of the fleet.
Education of the driver. At the same time, policies have been established to
educate future drivers. In the US, driving licenses were first issued in Chicago
in 1898, followed by the State of New York in 1901; licensing was universal-
ized throughout the country only in 1926 (Flink 1975; Boullier 2001). Rapidly,
the car industry developed sophisticated strategies, not only in order to sell its
products, but also to create the necessary general conditions for the business.
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The product had to be desirable: marketing campaigns have associated cars and
freedom. The car is a convenient tool for traveling, however, it depends on
having a map of the network mentioning all available facilities: where to stay
and what to visit (Baudant 1980; Karpik 2000: 369–89). This was the genius
of Michelin; being the first company in France to understand that these elements
were critical for the development of its tire manufacturing activity. It entered
the guide and road maps business. This still exists today and the Michelin Guide
is a must as regards hotel and restaurant classification.
Lessons
Time is a Central Factor
The process of expansion takes place over a long period of time (several
decades); the first phase of construction is followed by expansion of the network
and then by the diffusion of practices. This general process, consisting of three
phases, leads us to question the well-established thesis of segregation in tech-
nical networks, especially if the operators are private firms. Briefly, the
segregation argument can be developed along two lines: (1) firms only have an
interest in the wealthy (cherry picking attitude), and (2) this results in a divided
city (splintering thesis) (Graham and Marvin 1994: 113–19; Guy et al. 1999;
Graham and Marvin 2001).6
Most of this thesis is not supported by facts; a large part of it is based on
the housing market and on telecommunications. Starting with the telecom-
munications network, the authors generalize to other networks, however, they
do not consider whether these technical networks had different technical
characteristics and different histories and, whether, because the development of
telecommunications is relatively recent, it may not necessarily be relevant to
all technical networks (Lorrain 1995: 47–59). In the examples we have previ-
ously mentioned, one common trend can be observed. The expansion of these
networks began with a small group of users; this was the case for automobiles
and the early use of electricity, gas, and water. In the beginning, these tech-
nologies were expensive; sometimes they were not easy to adopt and required
major modifications and personal investment of time (e.g., the case of auto-
mobiles before 1960 in France, or the first years of microcomputers and the
internet). The development of “heavy” networks always starts in and develops
from the city centers; they are dedicated to those who can afford them – busi-
nesses and the rich. Three factors then converge to produce a generalization of
the networks and mass diffusion.
Public Rules
The large urban networks we have been discussing have not traditionally been
organized under free market rules. They have been considered “public utilities,”
or “public services”; new categories of “universal services” and “services of
general economic interest” seem to be emerging in Europe, but still have not
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been clearly defined. These networks have been considered essential to society
and, therefore, too important to be left to operate under the laws of supply and
demand. Their organization has been guided by several principles, one of which
is access for all. We have no clear evidence to demonstrate that these princi-
ples have been abandoned. On the contrary, we have the example of water and
electricity supply in emerging countries. Changes were introduced by pro-
market reformers; however, the contracts signed with the private sector have
always included an obligation to expand the networks. The achievement of this
goal can take time; it can sometimes be chaotic, but it means that these pro-
market reformers hope for universal access and not segregation. Nevertheless,
if segregation does occur and if “social dumping” becomes a reality for some
groups and for some neighborhoods, this is less a specific feature, inherent to
the technical networks themselves, than a product of society in general. This
would mean that the public in a particular country has accepted tariffs and rules
for connection that will produce differences among inhabitants. If this occurs,
the society would also be fragmented in other sectors – housing, education,
transportation, labor, etc. In such a case, technical networks merely reflect the
previously accepted view of a divided society.
The Logic of the Firm
It is an over-simplification to consider that the goal of a private company is
only “to maximize profits for shareholders”; this is the debate between “maxi-
mizing” and “satisfying” (Simon 1979; Winter 1991). Private utilities have to
serve five stakeholders: consumers, the regulatory authorities, their share-
holders, employees and managers, and the firm itself. From one country to
another, from one sector to another, from one time period to another, the equi-
librium between these five forces may change (Chandler 1994; Crouch and
Streeck 1996). This is apparent in the recent history of the electricity industry.
At the end of the 1980s, when the movement towards deregulation began, a
firm’s profits could be increased in three ways: by a technology push, a reduc-
tion in the labor force, or through a shift from coal to gas (or nuclear power)
as a source of primary energy. In the case of the UK, a direct confrontation
with the miners, a constant reduction in employees, and a shift towards small
gas turbines rapidly generated profits. However, because of the dynamics (some
would say aggressiveness) of the financial markets, a large portion of these
profits were distributed to managers and shareholders (Glachant 2000). In
Germany, the combination of these factors was different both in the way profits
were generated and in how they were allocated. First, the large electricity
companies agreed to pay an extra charge to manage the transition to coal; they
had been present for over a century in the coal producing regions and recog-
nized that they had responsibilities. A large part of their efficiency was achieved
through better vertical integration. Second, the allocation of profits between the
various stakeholders was more balanced.
We could make the same observations with regard to the large French util-
ity groups, Suez and Vivendi. These two companies never considered profits to
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be the central aim of their policy.7
They had good reason to think that way. In a
market where they have to compete for access to contracts, a central factor in
their development is satisfying their clients – the local municipality (which is
the organizing authority and signs the contract) and users. Of course, these com-
panies have a monopoly, but not an absolute one. In particular, this monopoly is
reviewed periodically. Therefore, it is risky for them to be involved in conflicts,
either with their employees or their customers. UK water companies provide a
different example – they used their profits to offer their top managers very high
wages. As a result, their image and reputations were badly damaged during the
1995 drought. This led to political criticism, to a questioning of the model of
reform, and to a considerable increase in their obligations under the “final deter-
minations” published in 1999 by the Office of Water Services (OFWAT), the
water industry regulator.
What we have learned from the most successful private companies that
have been established in these sectors for a long period, and which are still
expanding, is that a company’s reputation is a fundamental asset. Indeed, happy
users make for happy companies. In order to achieve this, managers of these
companies know that they must establish reasonable policies, demonstrate tech-
nical proficiency, and deliver affordable services. They also understand that it
is not possible to operate a service in a city where a large and permanent part
of the population is excluded. This could create an explosive situation, which
is a major risk for a company as the denial of basic utilities by a private company
can have dire political and economic consequences – civil disturbances and loss
of a contract.8
In other words, while the logic of these firms is obviously not
to lose money; they are not eleemosynary institutions. Their goals are to expand
over time, to obtain new contracts, and to satisfy clients. Ultimately, they wish
to reach every household; there are no good or bad consumers, there are only
people who consume services and pay their bills.
Telecommunications companies are somewhat different because they can
be seen as both utilities and commodities. As providers of commodities, different
companies compete for “niche” markets, especially those of businesses and
wealthy consumers. However, this dual nature of services cannot be applied to
other utility networks such as water and wastewater, solid waste, and electricity
(even though, in this last case, consumers in some countries may choose their
distributor; in such a case, the splintering of supply does not necessarily mean
discrimination and segregation of services).
Club Effects and Economies of Scale
A third property has to be taken into account in a discussion of segregation in
the network industry. For most goods and services, the satisfaction of a con-
sumer is independent of the overall number of consumers (Chandler 1994). For
network services, however, this is different. If a telecommunications network has
only one cable and two clients (the same applies to a road network) the number
of possible connections is low, as is the social utility for the two pioneers.
Therefore, it is easy to understand the notion of the “club effect”: the greater the
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number of people connected, the greater the number of possible connections and
the more valuable the service. Additional users increase the advantages of being
connected. This property, specific to networks, creates a “demand pull” which
expands the network and increases the number of people connected. This process
can be accelerated by a technology push, as was the case with the cellular tele-
phone industry in the 1990s or the micro-computer sector. It is reinforced by
economies of scale: the greater the number of consumers, the smaller the share
of sunk and other fixed costs (commercial costs involved in obtaining the con-
tract, research costs to improve the technical process, etc.) borne by each cus-
tomer. These two phenomena (club effects and economies of scale) combine to
expand the network. If we understand the lessons of history, successful networks
(networks that have not disappeared) are those that have expanded beyond
their initial niche (either socially or spatially defined) to encompass the whole
population, without excluding any group/section.
For all these reasons the segregation thesis is inadequate for the purpose
of describing the history of urban networks. If discrimination can be observed,
this means that we are in the infancy of the network and that it is organized
under a dual regime (utility and commodity), or that the society as a whole is
fragmented; in such a case, the situation is not rooted in the public policies
that organize the technical networks, but in more general factors. In this case,
researchers have to investigate political failures in society and in the estab-
lishment of democracy. The ultimate goal of networks and firms is expansion
and diffusion. The idea of fluidity usually associated with networks is therefore
a genuine concern in the provision of network services. Networks carry flows;
the ultimate goal of an operator is to achieve a totally fluid flow: no disrup-
tion, no accidents, no conflicts. It is to deliver a good or a service to everybody,
24 hours a day, 365 days a year, trouble-free. Following such logic, a perma-
nently segregated society would be too risky and would not necessarily lead to
greater profits.
Expansion and Diffusion
The diffusion of networks is based on the expansion of the networks as well
as on the “social practices behind the meter”; this implies two sets of players.
In the beginning, technological networks (referring to the notion of utility) are
clearly separated from private goods and from the private sphere (domestic
activities). These technical networks are subject to specific regulations; they are
organized under a monopoly and operated by large public or private corpora-
tions. The first phase of expansion is characterized by the stabilization of the
networks themselves. We have discussed the socio-political construction of
networks as a stabilization process consisting of four elements: technologies,
institutional architecture, rules and norms, and values (Lorrain 2000b). The
process is largely influenced by public policies and the role of administrative
bodies; in their infancy the development of networks is concerned with the so-
called “system builders” (Hughes 1983). During this strategic period in the
infancy of a technology, these inventors, engineers, and administrators play a
Dominique Lorrain
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primary role in stabilizing all the elements that enable the early diffusion of
the system.
If we ask the question, “Why do some networks grow and spread among
users?” we see that success is not linked only to public policies. A wide spec-
trum of social practices also has to be taken into consideration. Networks expand
because they satisfy global needs. They act as symbols of progress, offering
access to a healthier lifestyle (water, electricity) and personal freedom (the car,
the telephone). Their diffusion is accelerated by the fact that these networks pro-
vide the basic support for a wide range of practices. These practices are char-
acterized by the utilization of goods and equipment delivered and promoted by
private firms. In such a case, diffusion is not only the result of the strategy of
the network companies (utilities want to promote electricity), but it also results
from a more complex mix of practices based on these facilities and the supply
of many goods that satisfy the needs promoted by the industry as a whole. The
changes in the kitchen over a century and the expansion of the use of small appli-
ances, based on the consumption of electricity, are a good example (Cowan
1983).As a consequence, electricity has become an essential commodity because
it is the energy source on which all these kitchen appliances depend. This is the
same “system of mixed private–public economics” that has characterized the
automobile and contributed to its success over the last century.
The effects of such a diffusion raise the issue of the limits of the networks
and also of what needs to be regulated. The boundaries between what was con-
sidered public (networks) and private (domestic) have changed. If we accept that
utilities expand after the meter, then there would be no limit to the notion. In such
a situation, one could state: a utility encompasses not only the facility provided
(e.g., electricity) but also the private practices based on that facility (e.g., cook-
ing). If so, every practice would have to be regulated, which is impossible. In the
case of water and electricity, the support facilities and the service are jointly oper-
ated by the same company. With telecommunications and the e-economy, support
facilities are considered a utility and the service a commodity. However, this raises
the following question: what is the most strategic, i.e., the most valuable part: the
pipe or the flux?
States must address how, or even whether to regulate this service. In the
past, one kind of regulation provided for universal access. In the case of telecom-
munications, for example, this might mean that carriers must provide a certain
level of connection at a minimum cost. But what is the equivalent level of
service in terms of access to the internet? What kinds of information should
be considered essential and, therefore, to be accessed by everyone as a matter
of course (e.g., information on the best providers of other utilities – water, gas,
electricity)? Also, is it necessary to provide access to this service in the home
(as is the case with water and electricity) or can this service be provided in
public locations?
As with the regulation of access, there are many content-related issues.
With water and electricity, this was a relatively simple matter. Standards were
set to define the potability of the water delivered to the end-user and the voltage
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level of the electricity supplied. With the internet and cable networks, the regu-
lation of what is delivered is much more problematic. Should the state regulate
the delivery of pornography, racist messages, anti-democratic screeds, the
promotion of Nazism, etc.? (The US constitution makes many of these ques-
tions a moot point. Apart from child pornography, there is little content that
can be regulated.)
Another issue raised by the new capabilities of utility networks is that of
the level of the protection of privacy. Because of the infusion of information
technologies into all networks, the potential now exists to accumulate a large
amount of data on each individual using a network. Of course, in the past, util-
ities had access to a considerable amount of data on a household’s consumption
practices, but only through graphs of the peaks and volumes of consumption
habits. This data, however, was seen as basic information necessary for the effi-
cient operation of the system (i.e., calibrating supply and demand). In the old
utility culture, this information was not viewed as a commodity that could be
sold – or that could be used to sell something to customers. This is now the
case,9
and this raises questions about privacy and the need to regulate how this
information is used.
Let us illustrate this point. Several years ago a court case in France showed
how much information could be gathered on someone to establish his where-
abouts at certain times. During a case concerning bribery, a judge tried to ascer-
tain the truth of an accusation that the manager of a soccer team, who was also
the new French Minister of Urban Affairs, attempted to bribe the manager of an
opposing team. The opposing manager asserted that he and the Minister had met
in Paris on a certain day, at a certain time and arranged to fix the outcome of a
game. A third party, the mayor of a city in Northern France, asserted that the
meeting could never have occurred because the Minister had come to the mayor’s
city, and they were meeting in the City Hall of this Northern city at almost the
same time, and on the same day as the supposed meeting in Paris.
The judge in the case ordered an investigation into the stories of all three
men. The investigator discovered that the mayor had had a meeting in Paris on
the morning of the day in question. Then, by checking his credit card records,
his cell phone records, and the toll-road database, it was established that the
only way the mayor could have been back for a meeting in his own city, as he
had testified, was by driving from Paris at an average speed of over 100 mph.
After months of investigation, the mayor admitted he had lied.
For our purposes, what is important about this anecdote is that it opens a
debate concerning some of the technical tools of control available in modern
society. It is not exactly “Big Brother,” but it’s getting close to it. In any case,
this “invisible hand of control” is the other (more negative) side of socio-
technical networks that have been built by the welfare state to protect and serve
citizens. Thus, the diffusion of networks in modern society has the following
two dimensions: easy access to many services and facilities and an invisible
net generating data on what we buy, where we go, and whom we call. In the
Dominique Lorrain
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Dec. 4.
Dec. 26.
1637.
1637-8.
In the night arose ‘ane horrible high wind,’ which
blew down the rafters of the choir of Elgin
Cathedral, left without the slates eighty years
before. This fact reminds us how much of the destruction of our
ancient ecclesiastical buildings was owing, not to actual or
immediate damage at the Reformation, but to neglect afterwards.
This day, in consequence of the late inundation
and storms, a bar made its appearance athwart
the mouth of the river Dee, ‘mixed with marble,
clay, and stones.’ The contemplation of so fatal a
stoppage to their harbour threw the citizens of
Aberdeen into a state of the greatest anxiety. ‘They fell to with
fasting, praying, preaching, mourning, and weeping all day and
night. Then they went out with spades, shools, mattocks, and mells,
in great numbers, men and women, young and old, at low-water, to
cast down this dreadful bar; but all for nought, for as fast as they
cast down at a low-water, it gathered again as fast at a full sea.’ The
people had resigned themselves to despair, when ‘the Lord, of his
great mercy, without help of mortal man, removed and swept clean
away this fearful bar, and made the water mouth to keep its own
course, as it was before.’—Slightly altered from Spalding.
On the hill of Echt, in Aberdeenshire, famous for its
ancient fortification called the Barmkyn of Echt,
there was heard, almost every night, all this winter,
a prodigious beating of drums, supposed to foretell the bloody civil
wars which soon after ensued. The parade and retiring of guards,
their tattoos, their reveilles, and marches, were all heard distinctly
by multitudes of people. ‘Ear-witnesses, soldiers of credit, have told
me,’ says Gordon of Rothiemay, ‘that when the parade was beating,

1638. Feb. 8 or
9.
they could discern when the drummer walked towards them, or
when he turned about, as the fashion is for drummers, to walk to
and again, upon the head or front of a company drawn up. At such
times, also, they could distinguish the marches of several nations;
and the first marches that were heard there were the Scottish
March; afterwards, the Irish March was heard; then the English
March. But before these noises ceased, those who had been trained
up much of their lives abroad in the German wars, affirmed that they
could perfectly, by their hearing, discern the marches upon the drum
of several foreign nations of Europe—such as the French, Dutch,
Danish, &c. These drums were so constantly heard, that all the
country people next adjacent were therewith accustomed; and
sometimes these drummers were heard off that hill, in places two or
three miles distant. Some people in the night, travelling near by the
Loch of Skene, within three mile of that hill, were frighted with the
loud noise of drums, struck hard by them, which did convoy them
along the way, but saw nothing; as I had it often from such as heard
these noises, from the Laird of Skene and his lady, from the Laird of
Echt, and my own wife then living in Skene, almost immediately
after the people thus terrified had come and told it. Some gentlemen
of known integrity and truth affirmed that, near these places, they
heard as perfect shot of cannon go off as ever they heard at the
battle of Nordlingen, where themselves some years before had been
present.’79
By order of the king, in consideration of the
rebellious proceedings in Edinburgh, ‘the session
sat down in Stirling. Ye may guess if the town of
Edinburgh was angry or not.’—Chron. Perth.

Feb. 28.
1633.
This day commenced at Edinburgh the signing of
that National Covenant which for some years
exercised so strong an influence over the affairs of
Scotland. Public feeling, as far as the great bulk of
the people was concerned, had been wrought up
to a paroxysm of anxiety and enthusiasm regarding the preservation
of the Presbyterian model. An eternal interest was supposed to
depend on their not allowing their religion to be assimilated to that
of England, and, weighed against this, everything else looked mean
and of no account. After the document had been subscribed by the
congregation at the Greyfriars’ Church, before whom it was first
presented, it went through the city, every one contesting who might
be first, many blindly following the example of others—not only men,
but ‘women, young people, and servants did swear and hold up their
hands to the Covenant.’ Many copies, written out on parchment, and
signed by the leading nobles, were carried into the country, and laid
before the people of the several towns and districts. ‘The greater
that the number of subscribents grew,’ says the parson of
Rothiemay, ‘the more imperious they were in exacting subscriptions
from others who refused to subscribe; so that by degrees they
proceeded to contumelies, and exposing of many to injuries and
reproaches, and some were threatened and beaten who durst
refuse, especially in greatest cities.... Gentlemen and noblemen
carried copies of it about in their portmantles and pockets, requiring
subscriptions thereto, and using their utmost endeavours with their
friends in private for to subscribe.... All had power to take the oath,
and were licensed and welcome to come in.... Such was the zeal of
many subscribents, that, for a while, many subscribed with tears on
their cheeks; and it is constantly reported that some did draw their
own blood, and used it in place of ink to underwrite their names.
Such ministers as spoke for it were heard so passionately and with
such frequency, that churches could not contain their hearers in
cities; some of the devouter sex (as if they had kept vigils) keeping
their seats from Friday to Sunday, to get the communion given them
sitting; some sitting alway let before such sermons in the churches,
for fear of losing a room or place of hearing; or at the least some of

Apr.
1638.
their handmaids sitting constantly there all night till their mistresses
came to take up their places and to relieve them; so that several (as
I heard from very sober and credible men) under that religious
confinement, were——These things will scarce be believed, but I
relate them upon the credit of such as knew this to be truth.’
The Rev. John Livingstone says: ‘I was present at Lanark, and at
several other parishes, when, on a Sabbath, after the forenoon
sermon, the Covenant was read and sworn, and may truly say that
in all my lifetime, except one day at the Kirk of Shotts, I never saw
such motions from the Spirit of God; all the people generally and
most willingly concurring; where I have seen more than a thousand
persons all at once lifting up their hands, and the tears falling down
from their eyes.’
Maitland, describing the Edinburgh copy of the Covenant, says: ‘It is
written on a parchment of the length of four feet, and the depth of
three feet eight inches, and is so crowded with names on both sides,
that there is not the smallest space left for more. It appears that,
when there was little room left to sign on, the subscriptions were
shortened by only inserting the initials of the Covenanters’ names;
which the margin and other parts are so full of, and the subscriptions
so close, that it were a difficult task to number them. However, by a
cursory view, I take them to be about five thousand in number.—
Hist. Ed.
The household book of the Dowager-countess of
Mar80 commencing at this time, and running on for
several years, affords a few rays of scattered light
regarding the domestic life of the aristocracy of the period.81 They
are not susceptible of being worked up to any general effect, and
the reader must therefore take them as they occur.
‘April 21, to ane little boy for two buiks of the
Covenant, 12s.82 May 4, for pressing ane red
scarlet riding-coat for John the Bairn [a grandson
of the countess], 12s. May 16, to ane blind singer who sang the time

of dinner, 12s. May 17, ane quire paper, 5s. May 18, to ane of the
nourices who dwells at the Muir, who came to thig [beg], 29s. May
25, for ane belt to Lord James [an elder grandson of the countess],
18s.; for ane powder-horn to him, 4s. 6d.; for raisins to Lord James
and Charles, 10s. June, to William Shearer his wife for ane pair hose
to Lord James, £3. Paid for contribution to the Confederat Lords, £4.
To ane old blind man as my lady came from prayers, 4s. Edinburgh,
July 18, for a periwig to Lord James, £8, 2s. July 19, ane pound and
ane half pound of candles, 6s. July 21, ane pound raisins to keep the
fasting Sunday, 6s. 8d. July 27, given to the kirk brodd [board], as
my lady went to sermon in the High Kirk, 6s. Stirling, August 17, to
my lady to give to the French lacquey that served my Lord Erskine
when he went back to France, 4s. August 25, sent to my lady, to
play with the Lady Glenurchy after supper, 4s. September 1, for
making a chest [coffin] to Katherine Ramsay, who deceased the
night before, 20s.; for two half pounds tobacco ane eighteen pipes
to spend at her lykewake, 21s.; to the bellman that went through
the town to warn to her burial, 12s.; to the makers of the graff, 12s.
4d. September 8, to twa Highland singing-women, at my lady’s
command, 6s. September 23, to ane lame man callit Ross, who plays
the plaisant, 3s. Paid for ane golf-club to John the Bairn, 5s. 9th
November, to Andrew Erskine, to give to the poor at my lady’s
onlouping, 12s. December, paid to John, that he gave to ane woman
who brought ane dwarf by my lady, 12s. [Edinburgh], January 23,
1639, to my lady as she went to Lord Belhaven his burial, and to
visit my Lady Hume, £5, 8s. February, to Charles [son of the
countess], the night he was married, to give the poor, £5, 8s. 3d.
February 23, paid for ane pound of raisins to my lady again’ the
fasting Sunday, 8s. June 11, to Thom Eld, sent to Alloa for horses to
take my lady’s children ane servants to the army then lying at the
Border, 2s. Paid to the Lady Glenurchy for aqua-vitæ that she bought
to my lady, 6s. Paid for carrying down the silver wark to the Council
house, to be weighed ane delivered to the town-treasurer of
Edinburgh, 10s.83 August 23, paid for twa pair sweet gloves to Lord
James and Mr Will. Erskine, £3. September 9, to Lord James to play

July 20.
at the totum with John Hamilton, 1s. 4d. To my lady as she went to
dine with my Lord Haddington [for vails to the servants?], ane dollar
and four shillings. Paid in contribution to Edward the fool, 12s. Paid
to Gilbert Somerville, for making ane suit clothes to Lord James of
red lined with satin, £7, 10s. November 29, paid to the Lady
Glenurchy her man, for ane little barrel of aqua-vitæ, £3. May 27,
1640, to ane man who brought the parroquet her cage, 4s. June 15,
to ane poor woman as my lady sat at the fishing, 6d. August, for
tobacco to my lady’s use, 1s. March 4, 1641, to Blind Wat the piper
that day, as my lady went to the Exercise, 4s. March 6, given to John
Erskine to buy a cock to fight on Fasten’s Even [Shrovetide], 6s.
June 8, to ane masterful beggar who did knock at the gate, my lady
being at table, 2s. [It was then customary to lock the outer door
during dinner.] November 15, [the countess having visited Edinburgh
to see the king], given for two torches to lighten in my lady to court,
to take her leave of the king, 24s. February 21, 1642, sent to Sir
Charles Erskine to buy escorse de sidrone and marmolat, £5, 6s. 8d.
March 21, to ane woman clairshocher [harper] who usit the house in
my lord his time, 12s. August 10, to John Erskine to buy a bladder
for trying a mathematical conclusion. December 7, paid for three
white night-mutches [caps] to my Lord of Buchan, £3, 12s. January
13, 1643, for ane Prognostication [an almanac], 8d. February 17, for
dressing ane red four-tailed coat of Mr William’s, 1s. 8d. February
13, to my lady in her own chamber, when the Valentines were a-
drawing, £10, 12s. 4d. April 13, to Mr William Erskine, to go to the
dwarf’s marriage, 7s. 6d.’
While the generality of the Lowland people of
Scotland were wrought up to the highest pitch of
enthusiasm in favour of Presbyterianism, the
inhabitants of Aberdeen and the surrounding district remained
faithful to a moderate Episcopacy, and therefore disinclined to accept
the Covenant. It was a crisis to make men impatient of dissent in a

1638.
milder age than the seventeenth century. As men then felt about
religion—perfectly assured that they themselves were right, and that
dissent was perdition—this Aberdonian recusancy could look for no
gentle treatment; and it met with none. The first assault, however,
was not of a very deadly character.
It was under the leadership of the young Earl of
Montrose—afterwards so energetic on the other
side—that a Covenanting deputation came to
Aberdeen with the bond into which most of the nation had entered.
‘The provost and bailies courteously salute them at their lodging,
offers them wine and comfits, according to their laudable custom,
for their welcome; but this their courteous offer was disdainfully
refused, saying they would drink none with them while [till] first the
Covenant was subscribed; whereat the provost and bailies were
somewhat offended. Always they took their leave, [and] suddenly
cause deal the wine in the Bede-house amang the puir men, whilk
they so disdainfully had refused; whereof the like was never done to
Aberdeen in no man’s memory.’—Spal.
This discourteous party included, besides the Earl of Montrose, Lord
Arbuthnot, the Lairds of Morphy and Dun, and three ministers, Cant,
Dickson, and Henderson. ‘Because they could not get entres to our
church to preach, they went to the Earl of Marischal his close in the
Castle Gate, and preached three sermons on Sunday, where they
had such enticing sermons for the common people, that after ages
will not believe it. I was both an eye and ear witness to them. At
that time, they were [sae] cried up and doated upon, that the Laird
of Leys (otherwise ane wise man) did carry Mr Andrew Cant his
books. Yet at that time there was but very few that subscribed, only
fourteen men, [including] Provost Lesly, ane ringleader, but
afterwards he did repent it ... Alexander Jaffray, Alexander Burnet ...
and some others, but not of great quality; for at this time, good
reader, thou shalt understand that there was worthy preachers in
Aberdeen, as Britain could afford.... Thir men had many disputes
with the Covenanters, for they wrote against other plies, replies,
duplies, thriplies, and quadruplies; but in all these disputes the

1638.
Covenanters came as short to the ministers of Aberdeen as are
grammarian to a divine.’—Ab. Re.
The Aberdeen doctors, as they were called, formed
a remarkable body of men, learned much above
Scotch divines in general, of that or any
subsequent age. Dr John Forbes of Corse, professor of divinity; Dr
William Leslie, principal and professor of divinity in King’s College; Dr
Robert Barron, principal and professor of divinity in Marischal
College; and Drs Scroggie, Sibbald, and Ross, ministers; were all
prepared to defend the moderate Episcopacy against which the
Covenanters were waging war; and there exists an unchallenged and
uniform report of their having had the superiority in the argument,
though all incompetent to stem the torrent of enthusiasm which had
set in against them. It was under the dignified patronage and care
of the late Bishop Patrick Forbes, that these men had grown up in
Aberdeen, ‘a society more learned and accomplished than Scotland
had hitherto known.’84 Connected with them in locality were other
men of talents and accomplishment—Arthur Johnston, John Leech,
and David Wedderburn, all writers of elegant Latin poetry—thus
adding to the reputation which Aberdeen enjoyed as a seat of
learning, that of a favourite seat of the Muses. For some years this
system of things had flourished at the northern city, amidst
handsome collegiate buildings, tasteful churches, and scenes of
elegant domestic life. One cannot reflect without a pang on the
wreck it was destined to sustain under the rude shocks imparted by
a religious enthusiasm which regarded nothing but its own dogmas,
and for these sacrificed everything. The university sustained a
visitation from the Presbyterian Assembly of 1640, and was
thenceforth much changed. ‘The Assembly’s errand,’ says Gordon of
Rothiemay, ‘was thoroughly done; these eminent divines of
Aberdeen either dead, deposed, or banished; in whom fell more
learning than was left in all Scotland beside at that time. Nor has
that city, nor any city in Scotland, ever since seen so many learned
divines and scholars at one time together as were immediately
before this in Aberdeen. From that time forwards, learning began to

Aug. 8.
1638.
be discountenanced; and such as were knowing in antiquity and in
the writings of the fathers, were had in suspicion as men who
smelled of popery; and he was most esteemed of, who affected
novelism and singularity most; and the very form of preaching, as
weel as the materials, was changed for the most part. Learning was
nicknamed human learning, and some ministers so far cried it down
in their pulpits, as they were heard to say: “Down doctrine, and up
Christ!”’
As a characteristic incident of the period—an
outlaw of the Macgregor clan, named John Dhu
Ger, came this day with his associates to the lands
of Stuart, Laird of Corse, in the upper vales of
Aberdeenshire, and began to despoil them,
pretending to be the king’s man, and that what he did was only
justice, as against a rebellious Covenanter. ‘Wherever he came in
Strylay and other places, he would take their horse, kine, and oxen,
and cause the owners compound and pay for their own geir.... He
took out of the Laird of Corse’s bounds a brave gentleman-tenant
dwelling there, and carried him with him, and sent word to the laird,
desiring him to send him a thousand pounds, whilk the lords of
Council had given his name [the Stuarts of Athole] for taking of
Gilderoy, or then he would send this man’s head to him. The Laird of
Corse rode shortly to Strathbogie, and told the marquis, who quickly
wrote to Macgregor, to send back Mr George Forbes again, or then
he would come himself for him. But he was obeyed, and [Forbes]
came to Strathbogie, haill and sound upon the 15th of August, but
[without] payment of any ransom.’—Altered from Spalding.
‘This year was ane very dry year, for about the end of August all the
corns was within the yards.’—Ab. Re.

Oct.
1638.
Amidst the excitement of the time, a young
woman named Mitchelson, who had been subject
to fits, attracted attention in Edinburgh by
becoming a sort of prophetess or Pythoness of the
Covenant. ‘She was acquainted with the Scripture,
and much taken with the Covenant, and in her fits spoke much to its
advantage, and much ill to its opposers, that would, or at least that
she wished to befall them. Great numbers of all ranks of people
were her daily hearers; and many of the devouter sex prayed and
wept, with joy and wonder, to hear her speak. When her fits came
upon her, she was ordinarily thrown upon a down bed, and there
prostrate, with her face downwards, spoke such words as were for a
while carefully taken from her mouth by such as were skilful in
brachygraphy. She had intermissions of her discourses for days and
weeks; and before she began to speak, it was made known through
Edinburgh. Mr Harry Rollock [one of the clergymen of Edinburgh],
who often came to see her, said that he thought it was not good
manners to speak while his Master was speaking, and that he
acknowledged his Master’s voice in her. Some misconstered her to
be suborned by the Covenanters, and at least that she had nothing
that savoured of a rapture, but only of memory, and that still she
knew what she spoke, and, being interrupted in her discourse,
answered pertinently to the purpose. Her language signified little:
she spoke of Christ, and called him Covenanting Jesus; that the
Covenant was approved from heaven; that the king’s covenant was
Satan’s invention; that the Covenant should prosper, but the
adherents to the king’s covenant should be confounded; and much
other stuff of this nature, which savoured at best of senseless
simplicity. The Earl of Airth, upon a time, getting a paper of her
prophecies, which was inscribed, “that, such a day and such a year,
Mrs Mitchelson awoke and spoke gloriously,” in place of the word
“gloriously,” which he blotted out, writt over it the word “gowkedly”
or foolishly, [and] was so much distested for a while among the
superstitious admirers of this maid, that he had like to have run the

1639. Feb.
fate of one of the bishops, by a charge with stones upon the street.
But this blazing star quickly vanished....’85
There seems no reason to doubt that Mrs Mitchelson was a sincere
young woman, but in an unsound nervous condition. Ecstatics like
her are common in the Romish Church, in which case there is much
tendency to visions of St Catherine, instead of ravings about the
Covenant. From analogous cases of persons under hallucinations,
the giving pertinent answers to ordinary questions, which Gordon
adduces as a ground of doubt, does not necessarily infer that Mrs
Mitchelson was a cunning woman playing a part.
The Earl of Montrose went about in the north
country with a large armed band, forcing the
Covenant upon those who were disinclined to sign
it, and raising funds for the use of the Covenanting party. As it never
once occurred to the ‘Tables’ that anybody could have a
conscientious scruple on the subject, much less that any scruple
called for respect and forbearance, force seemed quite fair as a
means of attaining to uniformity. The city of Aberdeen, looking with
apprehension to this kind of mission, ‘began to choose out captains,
ensigns, sergeants, and other officers for drilling their men in the
Links, and learning them to handle their arms;’ also ‘to big up their
back yetts, close their ports, have their catbands in readiness, their
cannons clear, and had ane strict watch day and night keepit.’—Spal.
All this to battle off an Idea. Still they feared it might not be
sufficient. So, looking to the victual they had against a siege, they
began to cast ditches, and towards the south raised up timber
sconces, clad with deals. They had eleven pieces of ordnance, each
provided with a sconce, planted commodiously on the streets. In
short, it was a town pretty well fortified, as such things were in
those days, and no doubt the worthy citizens were in good hopes of

1639.
Mar. 30.
1839.
resisting the storm of Christian reformation which was mustering
against them. Alas!
It soon became evident to the poor Aberdonians
that, however well their doctors might argue, the
Covenant was not to be resisted. Dismayed at the
accounts they got of large forces mustering against them, they
abandoned all design of defence. All that the more notable friends of
the king and church could do was to fly.
Spalding’s account of the entry of the Covenanting militia under
Montrose and Leslie into Aberdeen is highly picturesque.
‘... they came in order of battle, weel armed both
on horse and foot, ilk horseman having five shot at
the least, ... ane carabine on his hand, two pistols
by his sides, and two at his saddle-tore. The
pikemen in their ranks [with] pike and sword; the
musketeers in their ranks with musket, musket-staff, bandelier,
sword, powder, ball, and match. Ilk company both on horse and foot
had their captains, lieutenants, ensigns, sergeants, and other
officers and commanders, all for the most part in buff coats and
goodly order. They had five colours or ensigns.... They had
trumpeters to ilk company of horsemen, and drummers to ilk
company of footmen. They had their meat, drink, and other
provision, bag and baggage, carried with them, done all by advice of
his Excellency Field-marshal Leslie.... Few of this army wanted ane
blue ribbon hung about his craig [neck] down under his left arm,
whilk they called the Covenanter’s Ribbon.... [Having passed to the
Links], muster being made, all men was commanded to go to
breakfast, either in the Links or in the town. The general himself, the
nobles, captains, commanders, for the most part, and soldiers, sat
down, and of their awn provision, upon ane serviet on their knee,
took their breakfast.’ Here was a sight for a poor town of
Episcopalian prepossessions—eleven thousand men come to convert
them to proper views! This was on Saturday: on the Tuesday, all
persons of any note, and all persons in any authority in the city,

May 25.
were glad to come before the marching committee and subscribe
and swear the Covenant, ‘albeit they had sworn the king’s covenant
before.’ A week later, a solemn fast was kept; and after sermon by
one of the marching clergy, the Covenant was read out, and he
‘causit the haill town’s people convened, who had not yet
subscribed, to stand up before him in the kirk, both men and
women, and the men subscribed this Covenant. Thereafter, both
men and women was urged to swear by their uplifted hands to God,
that they did subscribe and swear this Covenant willingly, freely, and
from their hearts, and not from any fear or dread that could happen.
Syne the kirk sealed and dissolved. But the Lord knows that thir
town’s people were brought under perjury for plain fear, and not
from a willing mind, by tyranny and oppression of thir Covenanters,
who compelled them to swear and subscribe, suppose they knew it
was against their hearts.’—Spal.
As a pleasant finale, to compensate in some degree for the trouble
they had given, the citizens were laid under a contribution of ten
thousand merks, besides being forced to promise their taking share
in all expenses that might thereafter be necessary for promotion of
the good cause.
Aberdeen had not kept steady in the Covenanting
faith—since so solemnly and sincerely signing the
bond in April, it had maintained a loyal
correspondence with the king. The Covenanters, now on the eve of
their expedition to Dunse Law, had to take order with it; and as the
movement at such a moment was inconvenient, they were in no
good-humour. What happened, as described in the simple notes of
the town-clerk Spalding, gives such a picture of civil war as it may
be salutary to keep in mind.
‘They were estimate to 4000 men, foot and horse, by [besides]
baggage-horse 300, having and carrying their provision, with

1639.
thirteen field-pieces. They enterit the town at the over Kirkgate in
order of battle, with sounding of trumpets, touting of drams, and
displayed banners; went down through the Braid-gate, through the
Castle-gate, and to the Queen’s Links march they.... Now Aberdeen
began to groan and make sore lamentation at the incoming of this
huge army, whom they were unable to sustein, or get meat to buy.
‘Upon the 26th, being Sunday, the Earl of
Montrose, with the rest of the nobles, heard
devotion; but the renegate soldiers, in time of both
preachings, is abusing and plundering New Aberdeen pitifully,
without regard to God or man. And in the meantime, garse and corn
eaten and destroyed about both Aberdeens, without fear of the
maledictions of the poor labourers of the ground.... The bishop’s
servants saved his books, and other insight and plenishing, and hid
them in neighbours’ houses of the town, from the violence of the
soldiers, who brake down and demolishit all they could get within
the bishop’s house, without making any great benefit to
themselves.... Richt sae, the corns were eaten and destroyed by the
horse of this great army, both night and day, during their abode. The
salmon-fishers, both of Dee and Don, masterfully oppressed, and
their salmon taken from them.... The country round about was
pitifully plundered, meal girnels broken up, eaten, and consumed; no
fowl, cock or hen, left unkilled. The haill house-dogs, messans, and
whelps within Aberdeen, fellit and slain upon the gate, so that
neither hound nor messan nor other dog was left that they could
see. The reason was, when the first army came here, ilk captain,
commander, servant, and soldier had ane blue ribbon about his craig
[neck]; in despite and derision whereof, when they removed frae
Aberdeen, some women, as was alleged, knit blue ribbons about
their messans’ craigs, whereat their soldiers took offence, and killit
all the dogs for this cause.
‘They took frae Aberdeen ten thousand merks to save it from
plundering, and took twelve pieces of ordnance also from them....
The town, seeing themselves sore oppressed by the feeding and
susteining of thir armies without payment, besides other slaveries,

May.
1639.
began heavily to regret their miseries to the general and rest of the
nobles and commanders, saying they had subscribed the
Covenant.... There was no compassion had to their complaints.... So
the country anti-Covenanters was pitifully plagued and plundered in
their victuals, fleshes, fowls, and other commodities, whilk bred
great scarcity in this land....’
This was but a beginning of the troubles and damages of Aberdeen
from civil war. In the very next month, in consequence of the town
being taken possession of by a royalist band under the Earl of
Aboyne, a Covenanting army came against it, and forcing its way in,
subjected it to further fining and spoiling. Altogether, the
Aberdonians considered themselves as having been injured to the
extent of £12,000 sterling in the first half of this year, besides thirty-
two of the citizens being fined specially in 42,000 merks. It would be
tedious to enumerate the losses of the city during the few
subsequent years.
Gordon of Rothiemay notes a quasi prodigy as
happening at Dunse Law while the Scottish army
lay there. It has a whimsical character, as
connecting the Covenanting war with a geological
fact. The matter consisted of ‘the falling of a part
of a bank upon the steep side of a hill near by to the Scottish camp,
which of its own accord had shuffled downward, and by its fall
discovered innumerable stones, round, for the most part, in shape,
and perfectly spherical, some of them oval-shapen. They were of a
dark gray colour, some of them yellowish, and for quantity they
looked like ball of all sizes, from a pistol to field-pieces, such as
sakers or robenets, or battering-pieces upwards. Smooth they were,
and polished without, but lighter than lead by many degrees, so that
they were only for show, but not for use. Many of them were carried
about in men’s pockets, to be seen for the rarity. Nor wanted there a
few who interpreted this stone magazine at Dunse Hill as a miracle,

July.
as if God had sent this by ane hid providence for the use of the
Covenanters; for at this time all things were interpreted for the
advantage of the Covenant. Others looked upon these pebble-stones
as prodigious, and the wiser sort took no notice of them at all. I
suppose that at this present the quarry is extant, where they are yet
to be seen, no more a miracle; but whether the event has
determined them to be a prodigy or not, I shall not take it upon me
to define pro or con.’
A modern writer may feel little difficulty in defining this magazine of
pebbles as merely part of an ancient alluvial terrace, such as are
found in most mountain valleys in Scotland, being, in geological
theory, the relics of gravel-beds deposited in these situations by the
streams, when, from a lower relative position of the land, the sea
partially occupied these glens in the form of estuaries. On the banks
of the Whitadder, close to Dunse Law, we still see such banks of
pebbles, the water-rolled spoils of the Lammermuirs, and chiefly of
the transition or Silurian rocks. It gives a lively impression of the
excited state of men’s minds in the time and place, to find them
accepting, or disposed to accept, so simple a natural phenomenon
as something significant of the attention of Providence to the strife
which they were unhappily waging.
At this time we hear of some strangers from
England and Ireland who had crept in and drawn
the people to certain religious practices, accordant
with the general strain of the period, but not exactly with the specific
regulations prescribed by the Presbyterian Kirk. At their own hands,
without the allowance of minister or elders, the people had begun to
convene themselves confusedly about bedtime in private houses,
where, for the greater part of the night, they would expound
Scripture, pray, and sing psalms, besides ‘discussing questions of
divinity, whereof some sae curious that they do not understand, and
some so ridiculous that they cannot be edified by them.’ The

1639. Nov. 1.
Nov. 2.
consequence was, that they began to ‘lichtly and set at naught the
public worship of God.’ Seeing in this a movement towards
Brownism, the kirk-session of Stirling called on the presbytery to
take the matter into consideration, and meanwhile discharged the
congregation from giving any favour to such practices.86
Owing to the confusions, the Court of Session did
not sit down as usual for the winter session to-
day; ‘but was vacant the haill winter session, to
the great grief of the true creditor, and the pleasure of the debtor
unwilling to pay his debt.’—Spal.
A base coin called Turners had been struck by the
Earl of Stirling under royal licence, and were to him
a source of considerable gain, at the expense of
the rest of the community. On the day marginally noted, ‘King
Charles’s turners stricken by the Earl of Stirling, was, by
proclamation at the Cross of Edinburgh, cryit down frae twa pennies
to ane penny; King James’s turners to pass for twa pennies, because
they were no less worth; and the caird turners87 simpliciter
discharged as false cunyie. But this proclamation was shortly
recalled, because there was no other money passing to make
change.’ April 1640.—‘You see before some order taken with the
passing of turners, whereof some was appointit to pass for ane
penny. Now they would give nothing, penny nor half-penny, for King
Charles’s turners; but King James’s turners only should pass.
Whereby all change and trade was taken away through want of
current money, because thir slight turners was the only money
almost passing through all Scotland.’—Spal.

Nov.
1639.
John Dhu Ger, the Highland robber, came with
twenty-four men to William Stewart’s house on
Speyside, set out watches, and took up house
there. From this post he sent armed emissaries here and there to
raise money by practising on the terrors of the people. The people
gave fair words, but privately were active in collecting men for an
effectual resistance. ‘And John Dhu Ger, being informed of their
gathering by his watches, shortly takes both the ferry-boats, and
carries over his men to the Stannars, whilk is in the midst of the
water of Spey, and keepit the ferry-boats close beside himself, so
that there was no other boat near enough to follow them.’ The
country people had then to commence firing at the robbers from the
bank, exposing themselves of course to be fired at in return. At
length, by a shot from the gun of one Alexander Anderson, John
Dhu Ger fell dead, and his followers dispersed.—Spal.
The Viscountess Melgum, widow of the young
nobleman who had been burnt in Frendraught
Castle, lived for several years in Aboyne Castle on
the Dee, a gentle, charitable, and devout life, being a strict Catholic.
A certain Father Blackhall, who was her domestic chaplain or frere
from July 1638 till her death in March 1642, has left a copious
gossiping narrative of his career as a priest in Scotland, including
much that is curious regarding the private life of the lady, as well as
the state of the country in that agitated time. He tells us that he had
an apartment to himself, where four dishes of meat, as well as wine
and ale, were sent to him at every meal, till, remonstrating about
the expensiveness of this practice to the lady, he was allowed by her
to eat at her own table. It was customary, he says, for a domestic
priest in those days to confine himself very much to his chamber;
and if he but opened his window, ‘the people would run to get a
sight of him as a monstrous thing.’ But he, going freely about, soon
ceased to be an object of curiosity.

1639.
By permission of his lady—whom, by the by, he always calls by her
inferior title of Lady Aboyne—he made professional tours through
the country, to confess and communicate the Catholics scattered
about, usually staying a night in each house, or convening the
poorer sort in a tavern. He does not speak of any dangers or
difficulties encountered in performing this duty. He tells us, however,
of some considerable troubles he had in defending the widow lady’s
castle from the armed bands of Highlanders and others who were
continually going about the country in consequence of the
Covenanting wars. If he is to be believed, he was as much his lady’s
captain as her priest.
On one occasion, a party of the Clan Cameron,
forty or fifty in number, vassals of the Huntly
family, came into the court of Aboyne Castle,
asking to see my lady, with the hope of obtaining money from her.
Blackhall, finding there was no other man in the house besides a
porter and himself, amused them with fair speeches till he obtained
assistance, and then closing the gates against them, sent them out
some food, as all that Lady Aboyne was willing to bestow upon
them. They went away grumbling, and presently quartered
themselves upon one of her ladyship’s tenants, named Finlay, who
kept a tavern, compelling him to kill poultry and mutton for their
supper; and next day, they plundered the house, and set out for
another, the Mill of Bountie, which they seemed likely to treat in the
same way. Blackhall, hearing of their doings, mustered an armed
party of sixteen, and set out to surprise the depredators. The
dispositions he made shewed a good deal of sagacity, and were
attended with the desired effect.
Marching in single file, after the Highland fashion, and in perfect
silence, they had got near the house before the Cameron sentinel
observed them. ‘Having discovered us, he did run to the house, and
we after him, so near that he had not leisure to shut the gate of the
court behind him. All the vantage that he had before us was to win
the house, and shut that door behind him, which chanced well for
both parties; for if we could have entered the house with him, we

1639.
should have killed every one another, for we were in great fury to be
revenged of them, and they could do no less than defend
themselves, selling their lives at the dearest rate they could, as men
in despair should do. They would have had a great advantage upon
us, for they, being in a dark house, would have seen us well, and
we, coming in from the snow, would have been blind for some
length of time, in the which they might have done us great skaith,
before we could have done them any, not seeing them. But God
provided better for us.
‘How soon we were in the court, I said with a loud
voice: “Every one to his post;” which was done in
the twinkling of an eye. Then I went to the door,
thinking to break it up with my foot: but it was a thick double door,
and the lock very strong. Whilst I was at the door, one of them did
come to bolt it, and I hearing him at it, did shoot a pistolet at him.
He said afterwards that the balls did pass through the hair of his
head; whether he said true or not, I know not. I did go from the
door to the windows, and back again, still encouraging them, and
praying them at the windows to hold their eyes still upon our
enemies, and to kill such as would lay their hands to a weapon; and
to these at the door to have their guns ever ready to discharge at
such as would choose to come forth without my leave. And I still
threatened to burn the house, and them all into it, if they would not
render themselves at my discretion, which they were loath to do,
until they saw the light of bits of straw, that I had kindled to throw
upon the thatch of the house, although I did not intend to do it, nor
burn our friends with our foes. But if Malcolm Dorward, and his wife
and servants, and his son George Dorward, and John Cordoner, all
whom the Highlanders had lying in bonds by them, had been out, I
would have made no scruple to have burned the house and all the
Highlanders within it, to give terror to others who would be so brutal
as to oppress ladies who never wronged them.
‘They seeing the light of the burning straw coming in at the
windows, and the keepers of the windows bidding them render
themselves before they be burned, they called for quarters. I told

1639.
them they should get no other quarters but my discretion, unto
which, if they would submit themselves faithfully, they would find
the better quarters; if not, be it at their hazard. Thereupon I bid
their captain come and speak with me all alone, with his gun under
his arm, disbended, and the stock foremost. Then I went to the door
and bid the keepers thereof let out one man all alone, with his gun
under his arm, and the stock foremost; but if any did press to follow
him, that they should kill both him and them who pressed to follow
him. He did come out as I ordained, and trembled as the leaf of a
tree. I believe he thought we would kill him there. I did take his gun
from him, and discharged it, and laid it down upon the earth by the
side of the house. Then, after I had threatened him, and reproached
their ingratitude, who durst trouble my lady or her tenants, who was
and yet is the best friend that their chief, Donald Cameron, hath in
all the world. “For,” said I, “he will tell you how I and another man of
my lady’s went to him where he was hiding himself, with his cousin,
Ewen Cameron, in my lady’s land, and brought them in croup to
Aboyne, where they were kept secretly three weeks, until their
enemies, the Covenanters, had left off the seeking of them; and
you, unthankful beast as you are, have rendered a displeasure to my
lady for her goodness toward you.” He pretended ignorance of that
courtesy that she had done to his chief.
‘“Be not afraid, sir,” said I; “you shall find my
discretion to you better than any quarters that you
could have gotten by capitulation; for I shall
impose nothing to you but that which you shall confess to be just.”
This encouraged him, for he was exceeding feared. Then I said:
“Think you it is not just that you pay this poor man, Alexander
Finlay, what you spent in his house, and render what you plundered
from him?” He said: “It is very just,” and paid him what he asked; to
wit, four crowns in ready money; and promised to restore what
other things they had plundered from him as soon as his
companions, who had the things, were come out. All which he
performed. “Is it not just,” said I, “that you render to Malcolm
Dorward, in whose house you are here, and to his son, George

1639.
Dorward, and to their friend, John Cordoner, all whatsoever you
have taken from them?” “It is just,” said he; “and I shall not go out
of his court in which I stand, until I have satisfied everybody.” “Is it
not just,” said I, “that you promise and swear that you shall go out
of the land pertaining to my lady peaceably, untroubling any of her
tenants or servants any more; and that you promise and swear
never to molest her tenants hereafter?” “It is just,” said he; and did
swear to perform all these things. When he had sworn by his part of
Heaven to keep these articles, I made him swear by the soul of his
father, that neither he, nor none whom he could hinder, should ever
thereafter trouble or molest my lady, nor any of her tenants. Then I
sent him into his company in the house to see if they would stand to
all that he had promised and sworn. He said: “They have all sworn
fidelity and obedience to me, and therefore they must stand to
whatsoever I promise, and perform it.” “Notwithstanding,” said I,
“send me them out as you did come—their guns under their arms,
the stocks foremost; and send no more out but one at a time; and
let no more out until he who is out return in again; and when you
have all come out severally, and made the same oath which you
have made, you shall have leave to take up all your guns, but upon
your oaths that you shall not charge them again until you be out of
the lands pertaining to my lady.”
“They did all come out severally as I had
commanded, and as they did come to me, I
discharged their guns to the number of six or eight
and forty, which made the tenants convene to us from the parties
where the shots were heard; so that, before they had all come out,
we were near as many as they, armed with swords, and targes, and
guns. When they all had made their oaths to me, I ranked our
people like two hedges, five paces distance from one another rank,
and but one pace every man from another in that same rank, and
turn[ed] the mouths of their guns and their faces one rank to
another, so as the Highlanders might pass two and two together
betwixt their ranks. They passed so from the door of the hall in
which they were, to the place where their guns were lying all empty.

They trembled passing, as if they had been in a fever quartan. I
asked their captain, when they had taken up their guns, what way
they would hold to go out of my lady’s land. He said, they desired to
go to Birse. I said we would convoy them to the boat of Birse, a
good mile from the place where we were. I did so, because I had
promised never to come in my lady’s sight if I did not put them out
of her lands; and therefore, to come in her house, I would see them
pass over the water of Dye, out of her lands, which went to the
water-side, and we stood by the water-side until the boat did take
them over in three voyages; and when they were all over the water,
we returned home. Alexander Davidson returned from Bountie how
soon they began to march away. He told to my lady the event of our
siege, who was very joyful that no blood was shed on either side.”
‘Their captain and I going together to the water-side, [he] said to
me: “Sir, you have been happy in surprising us, for if our watchman
had advertised us before your entry into the court, but only so long
as we might have taken our arms in our hands and gone to the
court, we could have killed you all before you had come near us, we
being covered from you, and you in an open field to us; or if we had
but gone the first to the windows, we could have beaten you out of
the court, or killed you all in it.” “Good friend,” said I, “you think you
had to do with children; but know that I was a soldier before you
could wipe your own nose, and could have ranged my men so by the
side of the house wherein you was, that you should not have seen
them through the windows, and in that posture kept the door so well
that none of you should have come out unkilled, and so kept you
within until the country had convened against you. I confess, if you
had been masters of the court, and we in open fields, you might
have done what you say; but we were not such fools as to lay
ourselves wide open to you, being covered from us. If any house
had been near us, we could have made a sconce of it to cover
ourselves; if none were near us, we could retire in order, and you
could not pursue us, unlaid yourselves as open to us as we were to
you, and there we should have seen who did best.”

1639.
(Nov.?)
‘In the parish of Birse, these same fellows did call
away a prey of cattle, and killed some men who
resisted them. Then they went to Craigyvar, and
although he was esteemed the most active man in all the name of
Forbes, they plundered his tenants, and carried away a prey of
cattle, for all that he could do against them. And this I say, to shew
that these Highlanders were active and stout fellows, and that,
consequently, it was God, and not I with sixteen boys, that did put
them out of the lands of that pious and devout lady, whom he did
protect, and would not suffer to be oppressed. And to shew that it
was he himself, and none other, he made choice of weak and unfit
instruments; to wit, a poor priest, who made no profession of arms,
unless charity, as at this time, or his own just defence obliged him to
it, and sixteen boys, who had never been at such play before, to
whom he gave on this occasion both resolution and courage, and to
me better conduct than could have proceeded from my simple spirit,
without his particular inspiration; to whom I render, as I should, with
unfeigned submission, all the glory of that action.’
The Marquis of Huntly being at this time resident
in the Canongate, two of his daughters were
married there ‘with great solemnities’—Lady Anne,
who was ‘ane precise puritan,’ to Lord Drummond; and Lady
Henrietta, who was a Roman Catholic, to Lord Seton, son of the Earl
of Wintoun. The ladies had each 40,000 merks, Scots money, as her
fortune, their uncle the Earl of Argyle being cautioner for the
payment, ‘for relief whereof he got the wadset of Lochaber and
Badenoch.’—Spal. Lady Jean, the third daughter, was married in the
ensuing January to the Earl of Haddington, with 30,000 merks as her
‘tocher good.’

1640. Mar.
May 8.
1640.
In Aberdeenshire, there were ‘in this ait-seed time,
great frosts and snaw, no ploughs going, and little
seed sawing, so vehement was this storm. No
peats could be had to burn, for ane lead [horse-burden] would have
cost 13s. 4d. [1s. 1-1/3d. sterling], whilk would have been cost
[bought] other years for 2s. [2d. sterling]. The brewsters left aff to
brew for want of fire. The reason of this scarcity was, because the
Covenanters, coming here in March 1639, causit the haill servants,
who should have casten the peats for serving of both Aberdeens,
flee out of the country for fear; and so not only was our peats dear,
but, through the unseasonableness of the spring, the victual also
became very dear.’—Spal.
As the young Earl Marischal was returning from
Aberdeen to his castle of Dunnottar, a quarrel
arose amongst some of the large party of
gentlemen convoying him; and in a fight between
Forbes, the young Laird of Tolquhon, and Mr
George Leslie, the former was wounded in the head. Leslie was
returned in shackles to Aberdeen, along with an associate named
Fraser, to be punished. At the command of the earl, who acted as
general and governor of the district for the Covenanters, a stock or
block with an axe beside it was raised at the market-cross, with a
scaffold round about, and a fire; these being meant as preparations
for cutting off Leslie’s hand. The hangman stood ready to do his
office, when the young man was brought out, amidst the pitiful cries
of the populace, who deemed the punishment a monstrous cruelty.
The arm had been laid down on the block, and the axe was raised
for the stroke, when, past the expectation of the beholders, the
Master of Forbes suddenly approached and forbade the execution;
‘whereat the people mightily rejoiced.’ The general did this for
satisfying of young Tolquhon, but was believed to have from the first
designed to grant a pardon.—Spal.

July.
1640.
Eight hundred Covenanting troops, under the
command of General Munro, marched from
Aberdeen, to take rule in the estate of the Marquis
of Huntly at Strathbogie, the marquis himself being now with the
king in England. They carried six putters, or short pieces of
ordnance. On approaching Strathbogie, where there was no
resistance, ‘they took horse, nolt, sheep, and kine, drove the bestial
before them, slew and did eat at their pleasure. They brak up girnels
wherever they came, to furnish themselves bread. Coming after this
manner to Strathbogie, the first thing they entered to do was hewing
down the pleasant planting about Strathbogie, to be huts for the
soldiers to sleep in upon the night.... Then they fell to and meddled
with the meal girnels, whereof there was store within that place,
took in the office-houses, began shortly to bake and brew, and make
ready good cheer; and when they wanted, took in beef, mutton,
hen, capon, and such-like, out of Glenfiddich and Auchindown,
where the country people had transported their bestial, of purpose
out of the way, from the bounds of Strathbogie. Always they wanted
not good cheer for a little pains.’
Seeing the world run in this fashion, John Dhu Ger,
the Highland rogue, broke loose also,88 and fell to
plundering throughout the land of Moray. Munro,
hearing that he had collected an immense spreath of cattle and
sheep at Auchindown, sent Rittmaster Forbes with a small party to
rescue the goods out of his hands; but John stood his ground, and
defended his prey manfully. The Rittmaster retired with his party,
and told Munro in excuse that he did not find it good riding-ground.
Afterwards Munro made good his point, and took out of Auchindown
John Dhu Ger’s plunder and other bestial, to the amount of ‘2500
head of horse, mares, nolt, and kine, with great number of sheep,
and brought them to Strathbogie,’ where, it is said, ‘they were sold
by the soldiers to the owners back again, for 13s. 4d. the sheep, and
ane dollar the nolt,’ the horse remaining unsold.

Aug. 5.
The head men of the country, deprived of the presence of their chief,
the marquis, were obliged to bow to the rule of General Munro.
Some came in, and undertook to join the Covenanting army; others,
who did not do so, submitted to large fines. ‘Neither work-horse nor
saddle-horse was left about Strathbogie, but either the master was
forced to buy his own horses, or let them go for the service of the
army;’ all arms being likewise taken from them. ‘Baron, gentleman,
herd, and hireman,’ all alike suffered. Amongst other spoil, Munro
seized a great quantity of home-made cloth which he found
bleaching about the country, hanging it over the lofty walls of
Strathbogie Castle to dry—‘pity to behold!’ At length, after
oppressing the country for upwards of a month, this Covenanting
party ‘flitted their camp,’ previously setting fire to their wooden
lodges, and emptying out what was unspent from the girnels. ‘They
left that country almost manless, moneyless, horseless, and
armless.’—Spal.
At the command of a committee of the General
Assembly, some memorials of the ancient worship,
hitherto surviving in Aberdeen, were removed. In
Machar Kirk, they ‘ordained our blessed Lord Jesus Christ his arms to
be hewen out of the front of the pulpit, and to take down the
portrait of our blessed Virgin Mary, and her dear son baby Jesus in
her arms, that had stood since the up-putting thereof, in curious
work, under the sill-ring at the west end of the pend whereon the
great steeple stands.... Besides, where there was ane crucifix set in
glassen windows, this he [the Master of Forbes] caused pull out in
honest men’s houses. He caused ane mason strike out Christ’s arms
in hewen wark on ilk end of Bishop Gavin Dunbar’s tomb, and siclike
chisel out the name of Jesus, drawn cypher-wise IHS, out of the
timber wall on the fore-side of Machar aile, anent the consistory
door. The crucifix on the Old Town cross dung down; the crucifix on
the New Town cross closed up, being loath to break the stone; the

Aug. 30.
1640.
crucifix on the west end of St Nicholas’ Kirk in New Aberdeen dung
down, whilk was never troubled before.’—Spal.
This day, being Sunday, a dismal accident
happened, of some consequence for its bearing on
the interests of the Covenant, as it caused the
destruction of a considerable number of gentlemen
who were preparing to act in that cause. The Earl
of Haddington was at this time stationed at Dunglass Castle, in
Berwickshire, along with a number of other Covenanting chiefs, and
a store of ammunition. On the day noted, the house was blown up
by the explosion of the powder, which was placed in a vault
underneath. There perished the earl himself, his brother Robert, and
a bastard brother; Colonel Alexander Erskine, son of the Earl of Mar;
Sir John Hamilton of Redhouse; Sir Gideon Baillie of Lochend; James
Inglis of Ingliston; John Coupar of Gogar; Sir Alexander Hamilton of
Innerwick; and some others, including about fifty-four servants, men
and women; while thirty gentlemen, and others of inferior degree,
were sore hurt, but not irrecoverably. It was thought that an English
page, named Edward Paris, who was trusted by the earl with the key
of the vault, set fire to the powder voluntarily, in consequence of
pet; but accident is much more probable. ‘No part of him was ever
found but ane arm, holding ane iron spoon in his hand.’
‘One thing wonderful happened, about eight of the clock, on the
Thursday at night, before the blowing up of the house of Dunglass.
There appeared a very great pillar of fire to arise from the north-east
of Dunbar, as appeared to them in Fife who did behold it, and so
ascended towards the south, until it approached the vertical point of
our hemisphere, yielding light as the moon at her full, and by little
evanishing until it became like a parallax, and so quite evanished
about eleven of the clock in the night.’—Bal.

1640.
The Earl of Haddington, being only the second generation of a family
raised by state employment and royal favour to extraordinary
wealth, might have been expected to take no part against King
Charles. It is stated that when the king heard of the accident, he
remarked that ‘albeit Lord Haddington had been very ungrateful to
him, yet he was sorry that he had not at his dying some time to
repent.’89
Amongst the killed was Colonel Alexander Erskine, a younger son of
the late Earl of Mar. He was a handsome and gallant soldier,
originally in the French service, and is noted as the lover whose
faithlessness is bewailed in Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament:
‘I wish I were within the bounds,
Where he lies smothered in his wounds,
Repeating, as he pants for air,
My name whom once he called his fair:
No woman’s yet so fiercely set,
But she’ll forgive, though not forget.’
The orders for the discipline of the school at the
kirk of Dundonald, in Ayrshire, in this year, have
been preserved,90 and exhibit arrangements and
rules surprisingly little different from what might now be found in a
good Scotch parish school. There were to be prayers morning and
evening, and a lesson each day on the Lord’s Prayer, Belief,
Commands, Graces, or Catechism. Somewhat unexpectedly, we find
it enjoined on the master, that he teach his scholars good manners,
‘how to carry themselves fashionably towards all ... the forms of
courtesy to be used towards himself in the schule, their parents at
hame, gentlemen, eldermen, and others of honest fashion, abroad.’
One arrangement seems of questionable tendency, and certainly has
not taken root amongst us—namely, ‘for the mair perfyte
understanding of the children’s behaviour, there shall be a
clandestine censor, of whom nane shall know but the master, that he
may secretly acquaint the master with all things, and, according to

Dec. 28.
1640.
the quality of the faults, the master shall inflict punishment, striking
some on the lufe with a birk wand or pair of taws, others on the
hips, as their faults deserve, but none at ony time or in ony case on
the head or cheeks.’ The conclusion conveys an impression of good
sense in the deviser of the rules. ‘Especially is the master to kythe
[shew] his prudence in taking up the several inclinations of his
scholars, and applying himself thereunto, commendations,
allurements, fair words, drawing from vice, and provoking to virtue,
such as may be won thereby, and others by moderate severity, if
that be fund maist convenient for their stubbornness. And let the
wise master rather by a grave and an authoritative countenance
repress insolence, and gain every one to his duty, than by strokes,
yet not neglecting the rod when it is needful.’
At the command of the minister of the parish,
accompanied by several gentlemen of the
Covenanting party, the timber-screen of Elgin
Cathedral, which had outlived the Reformation,
was cast down. ‘On the west side was painted in
excellent colours, illuminate with stars of bright gold, the crucifixion
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This piece was so excellently
done, that the colours and stars never faded nor evanished, but
keepit hale and sound, as they were at the beginning,
notwithstanding this college or canonry kirk wanted the roof since
the Reformation, and no hale window therein to save the same from
storm, snow, sleet, nor weet; whilk myself saw.... On the other side
of this wall, towards the east, was drawn the Day of Judgment.... It
was said, this minister caused bring home to his house the timber
thereof, and burn the same for serving his kitchen and other uses;
but ilk night the fire went out wherein it was burnt, and could not be
holden in to kindle the morning fire, as use is; whereat the servants
and others marvelled, and thereupon the minister left off any further
to bring in or burn any more of that timber in his house. This was

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