Reconfiguring urban infrastructure governance: Co-Production as iterative governance in poly-crises in the context of a coastal city in Indonesia

In an era of multiple climate crises, cities face compounding infrastructure failures, with other contemporary challenges including rising health risks, green space scarcity, digital divides, and the escalating costs of retrofitting. As such, conventional public and private sector responses often fail to address the complex, multi-layered nature of urban crises, necessitating a re-examination of alternative governance models. This paper critically interrogates co-production as a contingent and iterative governance approach. Rather than a deliberate, strategic intervention, we conceptualize co-production as an emergent, everyday social practice, where diverse actors—including state agencies, utility companies, private entities, civil initiatives, and urban residents—engage in infrastructure adaptation (and failure) in response to interrelated dead-end situations. Despite the increasing adoption of co-production theory in infrastructure governance, little empirical research critically examines its function in the context of multi-disaster crises, where uncertainty and complexity make planned responses no longer work. Drawing on one year of empirical research in Semarang, Indonesia, this study investigates how urban infrastructure and services are incrementally co-produced in response to compounding crises under multi-disaster. Our findings reveal that infrastructure failure itself serves not merely as a breakdown but a platform for co-production, where solutions emerge through non-linear feedback loops rather than strategic planning. It clearly demonstrates multi-step co-production processes, through which diverse actors themselves become integral components of infrastructure solution at critical moments, shaping resilience through iterative processes. Moreover, by comparing historic centers and newly developed urban areas, we reveal each case presents unique advantages and challenges shaped by its context and by different groups. By conceptualizing infrastructure co-production as an evolutionary, rather than premeditated, this study advances critical infrastructure governance scholarship. It calls for a shift from static governance models toward adaptive, agency-driven solutions that leverage crises as moments of infrastructural transformation, challenging dominant narratives of resilience and planned adaptation.