Scale as an 'Active Progenitor' in the Metamorphosis of the Waste Management Hierarchy in Member States: The Case of the Republic of Ireland

In the light of the raft of legislation introduced by the European Commission since the late 1980s, waste management planning in the European Union (EU) is currently undergoing tumultuous restructuring. At the heart of this restructuring is the requirement by member states to formulate waste management plans that embrace the Commission's central concept of the waste management hierarchy. This article begins with the assertion that the grounding of the waste management hierarchy in different European countries reflects members' ongoing difficulties balancing supra-national environmental regulations with the imperatives of national accumulation strategies. Central to negotiating this tightrope has been a tremendous transformation, modification, re-jigging and re-calibration of the hierarchies of waste management planning institutions in member states. The core argument advanced in this article is that far from being a neutral or technical or practical side show, contemporary (re)scalings of waste management planning in Europe must be approached as being centrally implicated in the constitution of forms of environmental controls that serve rather than burden the interests of leading capitals. This argument is illustrated through a detailed case study of recent scalar inventions in waste management planning in the Republic of Ireland.     

Bad news from an aberrant city: a critical analysis of the British press's portrayal of organised crime and the refuse crisis in Naples

This article examines the coverage of Naples since 2000 in the Guardian and the Independent, paying particular attention to their portrayal of the Camorra and the refuse crisis. It argues that this coverage was not simply riddled with stereotypes but was also characterised by significant inaccuracies and omissions. Analysts in Italy have detailed how the trash emergency in 2008 was the outcome of corporate malpractice and institutional complicity and that organised crime, although intent on exploiting the situation, was not a determining factor. The British press, instead, tended to conflate the breakdown of the urban waste cycle with the dumping of toxic waste and, by inverting cause and effect, to point the blame at the Camorra. These accounts, it is argued, are partially explained by the very nature of foreign news that seeks out dramatic and clear-cut stories for an otherwise disinterested audience. They also reflect the heightened interest in the Camorra following the Secondigliano War and the English translation of Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah. However, the article suggests that it is the press's assumption that Naples is already an ‘out of the ordinary’ urban setting that ultimately precludes the possibility of an informed coverage of the city and its predicaments.     

The Discourse of “Encultured Nature”in Japan: The Concept of Satoyama and its Role in 21st-Century Nature Conservation

The term satoyama gained currency in Japan in postwar decades as a term that describes a sphere of “encultured” nature that has traditionally existed on the periphery of rural settlements, but which is increasingly threatened by industrialisation, urban development, rural depopulation and changing lifestyles. Satoyama is appealing as a concept because it represents a sphere in which nature and culture intersect, and is reminiscent of a more idyllic rural lifestyle of the past, when the Japanese “lived in harmony with nature”. This article examines the role of this term in the nature conservation discourse in Japan, and in particular its appropriation by the Ministry of the Environment and the Japanese host organisations for the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which was held in Japan in 2010. The article will explore the way the concept of satoyama has been “showcased” as a model of sustainable resource management based on traditional methods of agriculture. The satoyama concept is used to demonstrate that Japan not only possesses the knowledge to live in harmony with nature, but also offers a model of sustainable resource management that the rest of the world can learn from.     

Working the Waste Commodity Frontier: Metabolic Value and Informal Waste Work

Ambitions for a European “circular economy” imply waste is becoming an important “commodity frontier”. Increased recycling in Europe has been accompanied by a proliferation of informal waste work. “Southern” geographies of informal recyclers provide resources for interpreting this phenomenon but studies of a commodity frontier in urban waste have tended to focus on moments when informal waste workers are displaced by capital intensive waste management systems. I draw on concepts in world-ecology and materialist ecofeminism to explore the proliferation of informal waste workers in Barcelona and the way their (re)production produces “Metabolic Value”. Informal waste work is shown to emerge and persist as part of a commodity frontier process—where the appropriation of unpaid work from non-commodified spaces is the hallmark of how capitalism secures “Cheap Nature”. The study suggests that, rather than internalising ecological costs, recycling often rests on the appropriation of value from uncommodified spaces.     

The governmentalities of infrastructure and services amid urban conflict: East Jerusalem in the post Oslo era

Urban conflict in Jerusalem has mainly been studied through the lens of spatial and functional segregation and discriminative fragmentation between Israeli and Palestinian localities. This article adopts a governmentality approach to the study of the politics of urban infrastructure and services in urban conflict, and argues that a governmentalization process of East Jerusalem by Israel has evolved in the last two decades that has been enacted mainly through the control and management of Palestinian urban infrastructure and services. Since, as manifestations of resistance to Israeli occupation, many of the Palestinian urban functionalities historically operated separately from Israeli state apparatuses, this new development and its consequences indicate an increasing dependency and forced adaptation of Palestinians in Jerusalem to Israeli rule. Based on analysis of Palestinian public transport and education systems, the article demonstrates how the “soft” power of governmentality – mediated through the control and management of urban infrastructure and services – diffuses among the Palestinian population and in space, restructuring them as objects and subjects of Israeli administration and governmental order. In this light, urban infrastructure and services appear in the course of urban conflict as an arena of governmentality and counter-governmentality. On the one hand they serve as a site where identities are practiced and defended; on the other, they may mediate and facilitate the restructuring of political subjectivities and normalization of political structures and hierarchies.     

Forest as hazard,forest as victim: Community perspectives and disaster mitigation in the aftermath of Kelowna's 2003 wildfires

Situated within the political ecology of hazard, this article is an extended case study of the devastating 2003 wildfires in and around Kelowna, British Columbia (also known as the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire). This article reveals how compliance (or lack thereof) with fire mitigation strategies recommended by provincial, regional, and municipal agencies is complicated by differing social constructions of what constitutes ecologically sustainable forest management and community safety. Three perspectives emerge regarding the urban forests: “nature as hazard”—a volatile force to be controlled; “nature as instrumentally valuable”—a contribution to the character of one's surroundings and subsequent sense of place; and “nature as intrinsically valuable”—a distinct entity to be preserved and protected for its own sake. The article also examines how experiences of disaster influence community perceptions and result in a greater willingness to engage in fire mitigation strategies due to perceptions of heightened vulnerability. Forestry and fire mitigation agencies need to determine multiple courses of action among the varied and valid range of residents’ nature perspectives. The role of human agency in disaster mitigation must be examined, particularly as the risk of fire at the wildland‐urban interface continues to be exacerbated by encroaching human settlements and climate change.     

An Uncomfortable Responsibility: Ethics and Nuclear Waste

This article discusses the ethics of nuclear waste management in terms of the concept of responsibility for the harmful effects of modern technology. At present, the principle that every country and new generation should assume responsibility for the nuclear waste they produce is challenged by a globalised industry and the repositories of nuclear waste that have accumulated over the past fifty years and been left for future generations to manage. The basic premise of the article is that modern technology, particularly nuclear power, calls for a new kind of responsibility that extends to future generations as well. This new concept of responsibility and the principles of long-term management of nuclear waste are set out and discussed in detail, with reference to Kant, Jaspers, Jonas, Peter Kemp and others.     

Women's ecological oral histories of recycling and development in coastal Yucatán

This article addresses the formation of the Chen Kole ‘Lob women's recycling cooperative and its relationship to urbanization, plastics consumption, and the exclusionary spaces of conservation-as-development in coastal Yucatán, Mexico. Increasing amounts of plastic containers and other nonorganic garbage contaminate backyards, protected wetlands and marine areas, and individual homes located in low-lying floodable areas. However, in this region, the majority of sponsored economic development programs are directed at managing men's activities in sustainable fishing and ecotourism within natural protected areas. Both women's work and urban issues such as recycling and waste management have frequently been excluded from state policies and development practice. I draw from oral histories of women's experience in the home, in conservation space, and as participants in grassroots plastics recycling to underscore what motivated women to become involved in recycling and garbage cleanup, and how women came to be considered local professionals who maintain clean spaces. These histories underscore the links between gendered work, urban practices, and conservation-as-development, and how women's urban recycling work affects social differences and ecological decline within vulnerable coastal areas.     

南京城市扩展与其空间增长管理的研究

城市的空间扩展是城市化发展的直接体现,透过对城市扩展的分析研究,可以加深对城市化本质的理解,并可为城市可持续发展提供有效的空间决策资讯。本文选取南京城市扩展作为分析的具体案例,在充分认识和剖析自然景观、区域经济及城市用地结构特征等条件基础上,揭示了南京城市扩展的空间动态过程及其诱导性因子。基于对城市总体规划的概念性理解,论文概括了南京城市空间增长的基本管理措施:即,外围总体控制--框定主城区;主城内部空间的分片管理-结构优化;区域层面的都市发展区空间组织-外围空间引导。     

Loosening/tightening spaces in the geographies of hanging out

The article is based on research conducted with young people who spend their free time hanging out in a shopping mall and its surroundings in the city centre of Helsinki, Finland. ‘Geographies of hanging out’ is understood here as an interaction between the location and young people: the space offers affordances to the young people and thus affects their ways of being. At the same time, they give new meanings to the space by hanging out and thus take part in the production of that space. Empirical material gathered in the project includes the researcher's observations, in-depth interviews conducted with young people, youth workers, the police and the management of the mall and the photographs taken by the young participants. In this article, hanging out is interpreted as a process where ‘looseness’ and ‘tightness’ of space are negotiated and re-defined. Shopping malls are seen as spaces where boundaries between public and private are often blurred. The presence of young people can make these commercial spaces tighter or looser and thus change the nature of urban space not only for the young people, but for other urban dwellers, too.     

The inclusion of sustainable drainage systems in flood management in the post‐industrial city: A case study of Glasgow

The management of urban stormwater and flooding is challenging, particularly within older, post‐industrial urban environments where infrastructure, housing and businesses already operate. The urban environment constrains opportunities for the development and integration of new approaches to drainage management, particularly the use of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS). These issues are investigated through a case study of Glasgow. The northeast of the city suffered significant urban flooding in July 2002 following an intense con‐vective summer storm. This event overloaded the urban drainage system, which was heavily integrated and led to the back flow of foul water into streets and homes. This study examines the response to this event and the construction of an integrated drainage management plan for the city, the Glasgow Strategic Drainage Plan (GSDP), which includes greater use of SuDS in tackling the city's capacity problems. Reflecting on the interdisciplinary nature of urban drainage management, this study adopts a social science method, undertaking semi‐structured interviews with key actors involved in producing the GSDP.     

The legacy of past urban waste disposal on local soils

Many attributes of present day soils can only be explained by reference to land management in the historic past. This is particularly well expressed in the plaggen soils which occur extensively on the north European plain. These deepened soils owe their dominant characteristics to the application from the 12th century of turf materials, often impregnated with dung. Similar deepening of soils can result from the disposal of urban waste. This paper discusses the results of soil research focused on a small Scottish town (Nairn). A soil survey revealed topsoils of over 1 m overlying fluvioglacial sands and gravels; such deepening is explained by the use of town waste on the burgh's arable lands from at least the 17th century up until the mid-19th century when an integrated sewerage system was installed. Micromorphological study of this deepened topsoil revealed the presence of many small black carbonaceous particles. Oxygen:carbon ratios were calculated from microprobe results as a means of confirming the carbonaceous nature of these particles. Soil phosphorus was primarily concentrated on the perimeter of these particles. The high quality of present day soils on the edge of the town is explained by the disposal of waste material, which included much carbonised material. This paper is the first to highlight the importance and potential of examining the gradation in soils from urban to rural contexts.     

Integrating Archaeological Heritage into Towns and Settlements

ABSTRACT

This article explores factors concerning the urban integration of archaeological heritage in towns and settlements. Archaeological heritage refers to visible, immovable archaeological remains (such as the remains of buildings or structures), sites, and areas (larger complexes). As part of the multidisciplinary process of archaeological heritage management, based on understanding the significance of a site and the goal of enhancing and preserving archaeological heritage in situ, urban integration and its determining factors have not been the subject of systematic research. The present study is derived from the application of deductive research based on theoretical assumptions validated by a qualitative survey. Research has identified 17 factors as the basis for the urban integration of archaeological heritage in towns and settlements. These factors represent a theoretical and practical contribution not only to urban planning but also to archaeological heritage management.     

Addressing sustainability challenges in micro-municipalities: Insights from the study of Quebec's smallest municipalities

Many empirical studies on large municipalities, ranging from thousands to millions of inhabitants, have helped shape the knowledge of sustainability management in developed countries. However, issues and approaches specific to micro-municipalities with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants have been relatively less covered. In this context, this study presents an empirical content analysis of sustainability-related instruments used in the 487 smallest municipalities of Quebec. A total of 1,962 instrumental documents were identified, and their characteristics (e.g., accountability-based vs. informative-based approach) and scope (e.g., land-use planning and pollution reduction) were assessed. The results are threefold. First, informative-based instruments (e.g., flyers and project presentations) are generally preferred to those with accountability mechanisms (e.g., policies and plans). Second, 90% of the municipalities address sustainability issues, but in pieces and parsimoniously rather than comprehensively; hence, initiatives vary significantly from one municipality to another. Third, because of their mandatory nature, initiatives such as sorted waste collection and pro-environmental zoning are common among municipalities. In contrast, non-mandatory services such as transportation planning have only a few adopters. These findings have policy implications for urban sustainability management in micro-municipal organizations.     

Local Control Wasting Away

Municipal solid waste management and planning traditionally have been regarded as the responsibility of local government. However, the legal climate surrounding solid waste management has become more constrained, placing local government at the mercy of the private waste management industry, and eroding the effectiveness of local waste planning efforts. This article provides an overview of recent court decisions impacting local government solid waste management. It also discusses current congressional activity relating to interstate waste transport and flow control, and assesses the potential effects of such legislation on public solid waste management and on privatization issues raised by critics of local control.     

Takeaway food,waste, and their geographies in workplaces

This article draws on empirical research to develop an understanding of the social and cultural geography of food and its waste in the workplace. Our aim is to contribute to the wider body of literature on everyday geographies of waste and wasting in relation to food, paying attention to the complex trajectories of the disposal of the waste produced by food consumption beyond the scale of the household. On that basis, the work explores the distinct ways in which the waste produced by takeaway food consumption is managed in workplaces and examines how food consumption and wasting manifest in relation to both workplace contexts and wider sociocultural and material factors in urban China. Such matters are still under‐researched there. Specifically, we identify the different conduits through which food and food packaging become waste in workplaces. Food is transformed into waste soon after it becomes surplus, whereas food packaging becomes waste through two conduits: the conventional way of binning and the alternative way of reusing.     

Translocal Householding: Care and Migrant Livelihoods in a Waste‐trading Community of Vietnam's Red River Delta

This article examines the shifting household organization of care and livelihoods in a community of Vietnam's Red River Delta that has a history of migrating to work in the urban waste trade, and has been doing so increasingly since the socialist country embraced a market economy in the mid‐1980s. In Spring District, household care and livelihood activities have been taking place across the city and the countryside for decades, indicating the degree to which the rural household reflexively opens up its spatial and social boundaries in response to broader processes of change. Their trajectories reveal fluidity in terms not only of spatial mobility but also of the gendered configuration of paid work and care, and complex dynamics between household care practices and the development of waste trading as a particular migrant livelihood activity. The analysis draws on and advances the concept of ‘householding’ emerging from recent discussion of the globalization of social reproduction.     

The Poolitical City: “Seeing Sanitation” and Making the Urban Political in Cape Town

In an urbanizing world, the inequalities of infrastructure are increasingly politicized in ways that reconstitute the urban political. A key site here is the politicization of human waste. The centrality of sanitation to urban life means that its politicization is always more than just service delivery. It is vital to the production of the urban political itself. The ways in which sanitation is seen by different actors is a basis for understanding its relation to the political. We chart Cape Town's contemporary sanitation syndrome, its condition of crisis, and the remarkable politicization of toilets and human waste in the city's townships and informal settlements in recent years. We identify four tactics—poolitical tactics—that politicize not just sanitation but Cape Town itself: poo protests, auditing, sabotage, and blockages. We evaluate these tactics, consider what is at stake, and chart possibilities for a more just urban future.     

城市生态管治:城市化压力的政策响应

缺乏制衡的城市化行为对城市生态系统造成的压力不断增大,成为城市可持续发展的瓶颈。城市生态管治是将"管治"和"生态城市"的理念引入到城市研究中,运用P-S-R概念模型研究城市生态系统,通过分析城市化的生态压力,以及由此引起的生态系统的非健康状态,进而采取城市生态管治的政策响应,以形成反馈机制,缓解压力,使得城市生态系统产生新的输出,即良好健康状态的城市生态系统。城市生态管治政策响应体系包括政策一体化(核心),支撑能力建设和协调发展机制。     

Being(s) in relation at home: socio-natures of patio ‘gardens’ in Managua,Nicaragua

Human–nature relations of home have been gaining more attention in geography, especially in the study of gardens. This article contributes to this growing literature, but in contrast to much research, it examines human–nature relations in the patios (garden) of homes in a marginalized barrio (slum) of Managua, Nicaragua. I suggest that the human–nature relations in these patios need to be understood differently than those in North American and European gardens. Based on research carried out in Managua, I argue that such relations are at the centre of everyday domestic activities and are critical in producing home as a liveable space in the city. The article draws on feminist geographic understandings of home and current work around human–environment relations, and identifies three different sets of socio-ecological relations: corporeal, aesthetic and economic. It argues that these three different relations between humans and the plants and trees in their patios are critical in the imaginaries around home and in the production of habitable spaces in cities, as well as to our understanding of urban natures.