In emerging cities, municipal utilities have had difficulties keeping up with rapid rates of urban migration. Efforts to expand central water pipe systems in many fast growing cities around the globe have failed to ensure fair and equitable access for growing low-income and informal settlements.

In this paper, the authors propose the concept of gridless water configurations (GWCs) to analyze the informal and local water practices that arise to fill gaps left by inadequate centralized water distribution systems.

Using key informant and focus group interviews, they investigate GWCs in Bangalore, India and Nakuru, Kenya to reveal new sets of hydrosocial issues that lie beyond the bounds of conventional water management. Accounting for and engaging with GWCs like borewells and rainwater harvesting – as well as the gaps they are filling – can help make more efficient and equitable policy and governance by bringing in need-driven perspectives from local contexts.