Ideologies and informality in urban infrastructure: The case of housing in Soviet and post-Soviet Baku

The chapter explores (post)Soviet dynamics of ideology and informality in infrastructure with special reference to urban housing. I argue that housing constitutes an 'intimate infrastructure', which is strongly connected to local concepts of family, marriage and social reproduction - aspects largely neglected in infrastructural studies. In Soviet times, it was housing and a person's official registration that provided legitimate access to other urban infrastructures. Hence, this chapter examines the relation between socio-cultural and political conceptions of housing as infrastructure. I further argue that Soviet approaches and ideologies towards infrastructure prove to be remarkably alive in contemporary processes of urban transformation.