Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552
Recent scholarship on the materiality of cities has been criticized by critical urban scholars for being overly descriptive and failing to account for political economy. We argue that through the conceptualization of urban metabolisms advanced by ecological economists and industrial ecologists, materialist and critical perspectives can be mutually enriching. We focus on conflict that has erupted in Delhi, India. Authorities have embraced waste-to-energy incinerators, and wastepickers fear that these changes threaten their access to waste, while middle class residents oppose them because of their deleterious impact on ambient air quality. We narrate the emergence of an unlikely alliance between these groups, whose politics opposes the production of a waste-based commodity frontier within the city. We conclude that the materiality and political economy of cities are co-constituted, and contestations over the (re)configuration of urban metabolisms span these spheres as people struggle to realize situated urban political ecologies.
Anglès
Environmental justice; Political economy; Southern metropolises; Urban political ecology; Waste; Commodity frontier
European Commission 266642
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad FPI/CSO2010-21979
Antipode ; Vol. 48, issue 2 (March 2016), p. 293-313
open access
Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
