Les impensés de la rénovation urbaine allemande: L'émergence de la question infrastructurelle dans Stadtumbau Ost

Processes of urban shrinkage have afftected most of Eastern German cities over the last couple of decades. These effects of the post-socialist transition have forced the housing market's and political actors to design a large-scaled public policy of urban renewal called Stadtumbau Ost. This programme preferentially targeted a housing-oriented strenghtening of a market destabilised by a million of vacant housing units. This article tackles a largely overlooked aspect of this programme, ignored by both researchers and practionners, the possible integration of technical networks within the urban renewal. The commitment of operators of infrastructure helped opening a widow of opportunity to include technical networks in the agenda programme and in the urban planning. This paper describes the politically conflictual emergence of this infrastructural question and how this resulted in a reorientation of the programme's philosophy and new arrangements in the power distribution in the uban arena.