Reconceptualising sustainability-oriented transitions in the delivery of urban infrastructure services: The role of community-based organisations in municipal solid waste management in Southern cities

Keywords: Global South, urban basic infrastructure services, heterogeneous infrastructure configurations (HICs), community-based organisations, sustainability transitions
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 27

Abstract

Studies of sustainability-oriented transitions in the delivery of urban infrastructure services have focused on upscaling and commercialising innovations, economic efficiency, and long-term management approaches. In contrast, the notion of heterogeneous infrastructure configurations (HICs) builds on a growing body of work that reframes infrastructure and the services it provides as hybrid, place-based and lived (Lawhon et al., 2018). This is particularly relevant for the rapidly growing urban centres of the so-called Global South, where the delivery of infrastructure services has long involved multiple formal and informal systems in varying degrees of coexistence.

Using HICs as an heuristic device, this paper explores the municipal solid waste management regimes of two Southern cities – Kampala, Uganda and Ahmedabad, India – with a focus on the roles played by diverse community-based organisations. Drawing on qualitative empirical data, it argues that infrastructure services should be assessed not only by their economic viability, but also by the range of non-economic co-benefits they generate. This may include maintaining or improving the wellbeing of their owners and workers; serving as a safety net that prevents people from falling (further) into poverty; and delivering critical and often life-sustaining services, particularly to vulnerable populations and in places where little or no formal provision exists. Academically, this research builds upon existing theorisations of urban sustainability transitions, making a conceptual extension that better accounts for the heterogeneity in the types of transitions needed, the ways in which those transitions could be achieved, and the actors that could be involved in transition processes.