Cleaning up the City
What happens to a city’s waste after we throw it away? Urban Radar looks at waste, sanitation and the people who keep Lagos and Mumbai moving. Listen to the latest episode.
In this month's episode, Beth and Tom reflect on UN World Clean-up Day, inviting Deji Akinpelu (Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development (CHSD) University of Lagos), and Purva Dewoolkar (School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester) to share their work rethinking waste management and sanitation in Lagos and Mumbai.
'Cleaning up the city' is easier said than done - and can also be dangerous, depending on the nature of the waste. Waste management is central to the livelihoods of millions of people in cities around the world, as well as to food chains and questions of nutrition. Together they discuss how to manage different kinds of waste in an integrated way, the roles of different individuals and groups, including residents, waste pickers and local governments, and how waste connects to wider climate resilience actions and plans.
Also on the radar:
- Why do capital cities get moved, and will Uganda be moving its capital?
- What do new UK sanctions on Israeli settlements mean for the two-state and ‘shared homeland’ solutions? And what is the potential role of cities?
- What is the history of cities seceding from nation-states?
- What are the positive and negative effects on the city of massive urban running events?
- What are the implications of AI 'superintelligence' for cities and towns, according to different generations?
- What’s in a name? With Trump renaming more geographies, does Tom know the former names of cities in Beth’s quiz?
Guests:
Deji Akinpelu is a documentary filmmaker, photographer and advocate for inclusive urban development whose practice documents architecture, heritage and everyday urbanism across Lagos and West Africa. He founded the Rethinking Cities Initiative (RCI) in 2017, following the forced eviction of the waterfront community at Otodo Gbame, and has since built a body of work that treats the recording of the city, its buildings, its cultural traditions and its threatened settlements, as an act of advocacy for their survival.
Purva Dewoolkar is Bicentenary Research Fellow in the School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester. Dewoolkar’s research integrates human geography, urban studies, critical development studies, and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), collaborating with Mumbai's campaign for Universal Access to Water and Manchester's cultural institutions to develop care-centred, community-led approaches for documenting and understanding urban infrastructural struggles in the Global South, centring the lived experiences and vocabularies of resistance.
Recommended Reading:
- Jaim Yacobi and Omar Dajani - 'Shared Homeland Paradigm' ESRC project
- Jane Jacobs - Cities and the Wealth of Nations
- Charles Tilly - Cities and States in World History
- Edensor & Larsen - Rhythmanalysing marathon running
- How to be an Anti-Capitalist City
- David Robinson - The Intelligence Trap
- Cugurullo et al - The Rise of AI Urbanism in Post-Smart Cities
- The Conversation - ‘Gen Z is pushing back against AI’
- Prerona Das - Smart Cities Beyond Methodological Cityism
- Prince Guma - The Temporal Incompleteness of Infrastructure and the Urban
- Gabriella Bennett - How to Build a City
Credits
- Guest: Deji Akinpelu (Filmmaker)
- Guest: Purva Dewoolkar (Bicentenary Research Fellow in the School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester)
- Podcast Production, Presentation & Editing: Tom Goodfellow (Professor of Urban Studies and International Development at the University of Sheffield)
- Podcast Production, Presentation & Editing: Beth Perry (Professor of Urban Epistemics at the University of Sheffield and Director of the Urban Institute)
- Post-Production Editing & Marketing: Dr Sam Burgum (Urban Institute Visiting Fellow at the University of Sheffield)
- Training & Production Support: Jack Clayton (Creative Media Service Support Adviser at the University of Sheffield)
- Distribution, Promotion and Marketing: Vicky Simpson (Research Manager at the University of Sheffield)
- Podcast Cover: Dan Farley Designs
- Music: Horizon (Music by Tom Goodfellow, Recorded & Produced by Alan Thomson), Falling Down (Music by Tom Goodfellow, Performed by the Dice, Produced by Alan Thomson)
- Image Credit: Deji Akinpelu
- Special Thanks: Supported by the Faculty of Social Science and the Creative Media Suite at the University of Sheffield
