The City in a Glass of Water: Circulating Water, Circulating Power

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Swyngedouw
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Hydrological Cycle ◽  
Urban Sustainability ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Water ◽  
Urbanization Process ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Ecological Criteria ◽  
The City

In recent years, an impressive body of work has emerged in the wake of the resurgence of the environmental question on the political agenda, addressing the environmental implications of urban change or issues related to urban sustainability (Haughton and Hunter 1994; Satterthwaite 1999). In many, if not all, of these cases, the environment is defined in terms of a set of ecological criteria pertaining to the physical milieu. Both urban sustainability and the environmental impacts of the urban process are primarily understood in terms of physical environmental conditions and characteristics. We start from a different position. As explored in Chapter 1, urban water circulation and the urban hydrosocial cycle are the vantage points from which the urbanization process will be analysed in this book. In this Chapter, a glass of water will be my symbolic and material entry point into an—admittedly somewhat sketchy—attempt to excavate the political ecology of the urbanization process. If I were to capture some urban water in a glass, retrace the networks that brought it there and follow Ariadne’s thread through the water, ‘I would pass with continuity from the local to the global, from the human to the nonhuman’ (Latour 1993: 121). These flows would narrate many interrelated tales: of social and political actors and the powerful socio-ecological processes that produce urban and regional spaces; of participation and exclusion; of rats and bankers; of water-borne disease and speculation in water industry related futures and options; of chemical, physical, and biological reactions and transformations; of the global hydrological cycle and global warming; of uneven geographical development; of the political lobbying and investment strategies of dam builders; of urban land developers; of the knowledge of engineers; of the passage from river to urban reservoir. In sum, my glass of water embodies multiple tales of the ‘city as a hybrid’. The rhizome of underground and surface water flows, of streams, pipes and networks is a powerful metaphor for processes that are both social and ecological (Kaïka and Swyngedouw 2000). Water is a ‘hybrid’ thing that captures and embodies processes that are simultaneously material, discursive, and symbolic.

scholarly journals Power, Nature, and the City. The Conquest of Water and the Political Ecology of Urbanization in Guayaquil, Ecuador: 1880–1990

1997 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
E Swyngedouw
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Social Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Water Control ◽  
Urbanization Process ◽  
Supply Condition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
The City

In this paper, I seek to explore how the circulation of water is embedded in the political ecology of power, through which the urbanization process unfolds. I attempt to reconstruct the urbanization process as simultaneously a political-economic and ecological process. This will be discussed through the exploration of the history of the urbanization of water in Guayaquil, Ecuador. As approximately 36% of its two million inhabitants has no access to piped potable water, water becomes subject to an intense social struggle for control and/or access. Mechanisms of exclusion from and access to water, particularly in cities which have a problematic water-supply condition, lay bare how both the transformation of nature and the urbanization process are organized in and through mechanisms of social power. In order to unravel the relations of power that are inscribed in the way the urbanization of nature unfolded I document and analyze the historical geography of water control in the context of the political ecology of Guayaquil's urbanization. In short, Guayaquil's urbanization process is written from the perspective of the drive to urbanize and domesticate nature's water and the parallel necessity to push the ecological frontier outward as the city expands. I show how this political ecology of urbanization takes place through deeply exclusive and marginalizing processes that structure relations of access to and exclusion from access to nature's water.

Imprints: the history of water management and canals in Piacenza, Italy

Urban History ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-207
Author(s):  
CHERYL BRADBEE
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Water System ◽  
Water Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Water ◽  
Yield Information ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

ABSTRACTThe political ecology of historical urban water systems can yield information on the long-term, social organization of resource infrastructure and its management. In this article, the water system of Piacenza, Italy, is examined through its history and the documents of the Congregazione sopra l'ornato, the committee in charge of water management in the city, under the Farnese dukes, from 1545 to 1736. The documents include letters from residents, responses and orders from the committee, tax documents and engineering reports. These records tell a story of a water system and its relationship to the city residents.

The Urban Conquest of Water in Guayaquil, 1880–1945: Cocoa and the Urban Water Dream

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Swyngedouw
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Water System ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urbanization Process ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City

The problems outlined in the previous chapter evolve from particular historical political ecological processes. As the urbanization process is predicated upon the mastering and engineering of nature’s water, the ecological conquest of water is an integral part of the expansion and growth of the city. At the same time, the capital required to build and expand the urban landscape is itself, at least in the case of Guayaquil, generated through the political ecological transformation of the city’s hinterland. In this and the following chapters, we shall explore the historical dynamics of the urbanization process through the lens of this double ecological conquest. The city’s growth created the need for water systems, which stretched further and further from the city in order to tap additional water resources. Foreign capital had to be generated to finance the imported technology of these projects. This necessitated a sound export-based economy, initially driven by cocoa (until the early twentieth century), bananas (from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s), and oil (from 1973 onwards). The urban process was consequently embedded in a double ecological conquest: ever greater flows of water became urbanized, while the city’s hinterland was socially and ecologically transformed. The latter conquest, in turn, plugged the Ecuadorean economy into the international division of labour. Guayaquil was the arena and medium through which those circuits of transformed nature and money were organized. The contemporary social struggle around water is evidently the result of the deeply exclusive and marginalizing ways in which political, economic, and ecological power have been worked out. The current water system and water politics exemplify the wider socio-economic and political processes that characterized Guayaquil’s urbanization process. Until the mid-nineteenth century, Guayaquil was just a large port village on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, surviving in the shadow of the political and former colonial centre of Quito and the economically dominant Sierra (Andean highland) hacienderos. In 1780, Quito had a population of 28,500 compared to 6,600 in Guayaquil, and by the mid-nineteenth century these figures had risen to 36,000 and 25,000 respectively.

scholarly journals Parchedness, politics, and power: the state hydraulic in Yemen

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Moore
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Water Systems ◽  
Groundwater Depletion ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Water ◽  
Groundwater Abstraction ◽  
The Arab Spring

Historically, Yemen was noted for its sustainable, locally-adapted system of water management. Today, however, it faces one of the world's most acute shortages of water, driven chiefly by unsustainable rates of groundwater depletion. This article seeks to explain Yemen's present water crisis as the result of a political ecology dominated both by an expansionist Yemeni state and rural elites. By adopting intensive groundwater abstraction as a key development strategy, Yemen has produced an unsustainable basis for future economic and social development. The Yemeni case confirms both the importance of states and elites in the political ecology of water systems, and indicates that rural as well as urban water systems are characterized by patterns of exclusion and marginalization. As Yemen attempts to reap the fruits of the Arab Spring, it must adopt reform of its broken system of water management as one of its most pressing national objectives.Key Words: Yemen, groundwater depletion, developmental state, hydraulic civilization, water scarcity

scholarly journals A Framework for Measuring Urban Sustainability in an Emerging Region: The City of Duhok as a Case Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 5402
Author(s):  
Azad Hassan ◽  
Zeenat Kotval-K
Keyword(s):  
General Trend ◽  
Urban Sustainability ◽  
Sustainability Indicators ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Sustainable Practices ◽  
Urban Policies ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban Sustainability Indicators

The City of Duhok in Iraq, as one of the Kurdistan Region’s (KR) main cities, is concerned about sustainability but lacks the measures to guide urban policies. This study bridges this gap and offers an example of the use of urban sustainability indicators in an emerging region that experiences rapid urbanization and growth. The substantial objective of this study was to develop a functional framework of indicators to assess and measure urban sustainability for the city after KR’s declaration of autonomy in 1991 until 2010. That is, we limited our investigation to examining previous research, which decisively contains the approach to “measuring urban sustainability”. The study followed a three-step approach to examine urban sustainability as an integration of a few other relevant studies. The study concluded with two facts: First, the lack of progress on urban sustainability in the first decades resulted from the destabilized era that left the city administratively fragmented. Second, the political and economic watershed led to steady progress towards urban sustainability post-2005. The study highlights nine urban sustainability indicators, from a total of 39 indicators, that played an important role in navigating the general trend of urban sustainability in the city and how they can be used to promote future sustainable practices.

scholarly journals Slope Matters: Anti-Sprawl and Construction of Urban Nature in Yongin, South Korea

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12401
Author(s):  
Jewon Ryu ◽  
Sang-Hyun Chi
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Urban Sprawl ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
Environmental Conservation ◽  
Accelerated Expansion ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Nature ◽  
City Development ◽  
The City

Nature in urban areas is defined, recognised, and used by various actors, such as residents, politicians, construction industries, public officials, civic activists, and tourists. These actors engage in alliances and confrontations to construct urban nature as they imagine and want it. Existing research has shown the role of actors and the relationship between them. However, the position and the role of actors can change over the course of urban development as well. The history of development in Yongin shows the process of the political construction of urban nature by illustrating the conflict between development and the environment. From the late 1980s, large-scale apartment complexes have been built. Development ordinances have supported this incessant expansion of the city by easing regulations on the conversion of forest into residential areas. The result of accelerated expansion of the city without comprehensive urban planning of the city is called ‘the epitome of urban sprawl’. From the late 2010s, the orientation of city development began to change. The relaxed slope ordinance was restored to curb further development. This study explores the background of this amendment from the perspectives of urban political ecology. In order to examine how Yongin’s ‘nature’ was imagined and reconceptualised, we explore how the perception of nature is differentially constructed among various urban actors, especially residents from different districts. Next, we focus on the political strategies of urban actors who developed environmental conservation and public asset discourses from individualised and fragmented complaints. Through this process, this study explored how ‘unchecked urban sprawl’ is imagined, recognised, defined, and, more importantly, prevented. Additionally, the public support for the anti-sprawl shows that actors in urban politics change in the process of urban sprawl.

scholarly journals Bonificación de determinadas cuotas de la Seguridad Social en Melilla: evaluaciones y perspectivas

Aldaba ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Jesús A. García Ayala
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Subjective Character ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Parliamentary Debate ◽  
Personal Opinion ◽  
Valid Data ◽  
Sociedad Civil ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

El rechazo por el Congreso de los Diputados a la toma en consideración de la proposición de ley presentada por la Asamblea de la ciudad de Melilla, para la extensión y ampliación de las bonificaciones en determinadas cuotas de la Seguridad Social, puede haber trasladado el debate a la sociedad civil. A los actores políticos se sumarían ahora las centrales sindicales y organizaciones empresariales. La reflexión a realizar entre todos se ve dificultada por una de las carencias puestas de manifiesto: la de datos objetivos y fiables sobre Melilla que permitan evaluar los resultados de las bonificaciones vigentes. Por ello se hacen necesarios varios objetivos: el inicial es aportar datos válidos para la citada evaluación, el intermedio es que el tratamiento de los datos obtenidos permita la obtención de resultados representativos, y el final es la extracción de conclusiones y recomendaciones válidas. Las conclusiones, asociadas a hechos objetivos tratados en el curso del trabajo, tratan de anticipar, en lo posible, las consecuencias que se seguirían en el supuesto de que las bonificaciones fueran extendidas y ampliadas, siguiendo la senda de convergencia deducible del debate parlamentario. Finalmente se aportan unas determinadas consideraciones, cuyo carácter subjetivo no puede descartarse en tanto están asociadas a la opinión personal del autor.The rejection by the Congress of the Deputies to the taking in consideration of the proposal of law, presented by the Assembly of the City of Melilla, for the extension and increase of the subsidies in certain contributions to Social Security, can have transferred the debate to the civil society. To the political actors, the unions and enterprise organizations would be added now. The reflection to make between everybody is made difficult by one of the shown deficiencies: the one of objective and trustworthy data on Melilla that allows to evaluate the results of the effective subsidies. For that reason several targets become necessary: the initial one is to contribute valid data for the mentioned evaluation; the intermediate one is that the treatment of the collected data allows the obtaining of representative results; and the next one is the extraction of valid conclusions and recommendations. The conclusions, associated to objective facts treated in the course of the work, try to anticipate, as far as possible, the consequences that would be followed supposing that the subsidies were extended and increased, following the footpath of deductible convergence of the parliamentary debate. Finally certain considerations are contributed, whose subjective character cannot discard in as much are associate to the personal opinion of the author.

“ADULTS SEE POLITICS AS A GAME”: POLITICS OF KURDISH CHILDREN IN URBAN TURKEY

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 775-790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haydar Darıcı
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

AbstractThis article explores the political subjectivity of Kurdish children in urban Turkey. Often referred to as “stone-throwing children,” since the early 2000s Kurdish children have entered Turkish public discourse as central political actors of the urban Kurdish movement. I suggest that the politicization of children can be understood in the context of transformations in age and kinship systems within the Kurdish community that were shaped by the forced migration of Kurds in the early 1990s. Focusing on the experiences of Kurdish children in the city of Adana, I argue that memories of violence transmitted by displaced parents, combined with the children's experiences of urban life, including exclusion, discrimination, poverty, and state violence, necessitate a reevaluation of how childhood is conceived and experienced within the Kurdish community. In a context where Kurdish adults often have trouble integrating into the urban context, their children frequently challenge conventional power relations within their families as well as within the Kurdish movement. In contrast to a dominant Turkish public discourse positing that these children are being abused by politicized adults, I contend that Kurdish children are active agents who subvert the agendas and norms of not only Turkish but also Kurdish politics. The article analyzes the ways Kurdish children are represented in the public discourse, how they narrate and make sense of their own politicization, and the relationship between the memory and the postmemory of violence in the context of their mobilization.

scholarly journals Exploring the urban hydrosocial cycle in tourist environments

2014 ◽  
pp. 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Ridolfi
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Environmental Sciences ◽  
Urbanization Process ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Mass Tourism ◽  
Water Flows ◽  
Fundamental Part ◽  
Social Environmental ◽  
The City

This contribution attempts to examine first how different theoretical and methodological perspectives from Geography and environmental sciences explore water flows and their physical and social dimensions in the city, as well as their changes in response to the emerging urban complexities and challenges. Using in particular the framework provided by Urban Political Ecology, I look at how the physical and social dimensions of water flows unfold and influence the urbanization process and, in turn, are influenced by urbanization. In the second part, attention is paid to urban coastal areas of the Mediterranean as candidate laboratories of analysis under urban political ecology since they are subject to rapid processes of social environmental change in which water plays a fundamental part. Case studies included to examine physical and social dimensions of water flows include heritage towns (Venice) and mass tourism resorts (Benidorm).

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