scholarly journals Defiance from Down River: Deflection and Dispute in the Urban-Industrial Metabolism of Pollution in Guadalajara

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 6294
Author(s):  
McCulligh ◽  
Fregoso

Research in urban political ecology has been important in recent decades in understanding the complex socionatural processes entailed in urbanization, exploring the local and global linkages of the production and consumption processes of urban metabolism. While these studies have explored diverse networks and artefacts in this metabolism, little attention has been paid to the flows of the pollution of water and air, particularly of the industrial emissions that are also key to the socionatures of urbanization in industrialized regions of the Global South. In this paper, we explore two interconnected nodes in the metabolism of the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area in Western Mexico. These are key sites for the flows of resources and emissions, with different levels of social discontent and conflict related particularly to the health impacts of water pollution. Here, government authorities tend to deflect attention from industrial- and city-level sources of pollution, focusing instead on proximate sources and household emissions. Organized social resistance, on the other hand, calls attention to powerful industrial actors and speculative urban development while taking action to imagine new socio-ecological configurations in the region. We focus on the role of the state in maintaining socio-ecological inequities, and the lessons that can be learned about urban metabolism by expanding the frame to include industrial processes in the shaping of urban socionatures.

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gian Carlo Delgado-Ramos

Today, 52% of the world's population live in urban areas and this number is expected to rise to 64-69% by 2050. Cities consume most of the world's energy and materials, and are responsible of about three quarters of direct and indirect GHG emissions. Consumption patterns, however, are asymmetrical among cities and citizens. Urban metabolism, or the analysis of energy and material flows and stocks (infrastructure) that shape settlements, allows the identification not only of the dimensions of these flows and stocks, but also their main technical and socio-ecological features. These can also be evaluated from an urban political ecology perspective, that is, in terms of power relationships that define who gets access to, or control over, natural resources and other components of urban space. This article opens with a general introduction to urbanization trends, followed by a presentation of urban metabolism and urban political ecology approaches as useful analytical tools for assessing the access, management and usufruct of water in Mexico City's Metropolitan Area. A general description of the hydropolitan region of study is then offered in order to analyze urban water flows and their socioecological implications for the water-energy nexus and climate. The article concludes with a call for a paradigm change in order to transform urban settlements towards more livable, sustainable and equitable ones; a process that demands not only paying attention to the form but also to the function of urban territories within capitalist productive relationships. In this context the design and execution of public policies needed for transforming the current trend of constructing, operating, managing, and living in cities must be proactive, imaginative, and based on an integral metabolic planning that allows the adjustment of planning and policy tools to overarching contextual changes and to historical trends and socially desirable futures. Specific recommendations include the bottom-up management of water infrastructure and the guarantee of human rights to water, sanitation and a healthy environment; these are components of the 'right to the city.'Key words: urban metabolism, water, water-energy nexus, climate change, urban political ecology, Mexico City


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 951 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin A. Lynn

Abstract Even if public agencies sponsoring projects like flood alleviation have the best of intentions for relocated households, there may still be residents who do not agree with being forced to move. Federal relocation policy in the US has been, and continues to be, concerned primarily with housing economics and financial compensation. And yet, residents subject to relocation continue to express other concerns. The public agency responsible for relocation from flood-prone Kashmere Gardens in Houston, TX has promised to make households 'whole' in terms of finding new housing that is no more expensive (in terms of rent, mortgage payments, and equity) than vacated homes. While these considerations are important, this article illustrates how public agencies need to expand how they define 'whole.' Interviews with 53 households affected directly or indirectly by relocation show that the following factors need consideration when subjecting households to involuntary relocation: (1) suitability of new housing, (2) perceived competence of relocation specialists, (3) the relocation planning process, and (4) potential health issues for relocated households. Key Words: Kashmere Gardens, Houston, Uniform Relocation Act (URA), flood control infrastructure, urban political ecology


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Goldfischer ◽  
Jennifer L. Rice ◽  
Sara T. Black

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucero Radonic ◽  
Sarah Kelly-Richards

This article contributes to the urban political ecology of water through applied anthropological research methods and praxis. Drawing on two case studies in urban Sonora, Mexico, we contribute to critical studies of infrastructure by focusing on large infrastructural systems and decentralized alternatives to water and sanitation provisioning. We reflect on engaging with residents living on the marginal hillsides of two rapidly urbanizing desert cities using ethnographic methods. In the capital city of Hermosillo, Radonic emphasizes how collaborative reflection with barrio residents led her to reframe her analytical approach to water governance by recognizing informal water infrastructure as a statement of human resilience in the face of social inequality, resource scarcity, and material disrepair. In the border city of Nogales, Kelly-Richards reflects on the outcomes of conducting community-based participatory research with technical students and residents of an informally settled colonia around the construction of a composting toilet, while also investigating municipal government service provision efforts. Our article invites readers to view these infrastructure alternatives as ways to explore how applied anthropology can advance the emancipatory potential of urban political ecology through a collaborative investigation of uneven urbanization and basic service provisioning. We emphasize everyday situated relationships with infrastructure in informally organized neighborhoods. Using praxis to collectively investigate the complex and entangled relations between large piped water and sanitation projects and locally developed alternatives in under serviced areas, the two case studies reveal lessons learned and illuminate grounded research openings for social justice and environmental sustainability.Key words: Applied anthropology, infrastructure, political ecology, praxis, water governance, social justice


Antipode ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 1237-1258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara Esther Bartels ◽  
Antje Bruns ◽  
David Simon

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