Team Lead:
Shubhra Gururani (York University)
Team Members:
Jochen Monstadt (Utrecht University)
Research Context, Methods and Goals:
The research under this cluster began in Year 3 (2012-13). It drew on the work produced by the Infrastructure and Everyday Suburbanisms clusters and ran parallel to the South Asia and Boundaries clusters. It focused on two city-regions – Rhein-Main Area, Germany and New Delhi-Gurgaon, India.
The focus of the theme was primarily on waste – its generation, collection, transportation, treatment, regulation, disposal and reuse. Researchers i) identified how suburban infrastructure regimes shift in response to emerging wastewater problems resulting from suburban growth and demographic changes, ii) mapped the rise of new service providers (e.g. private septic tank owners, water and resource trader, international investors, technology ventures), iii) documented the influence of new actors – community level organizations (like RWAs in the case of India), urban local bodies, national level institutional arrangements, and global actors– on infrastructure provision, iv) recorded new or existing environmental regulations that inform the politics of infrastructure, v) scrutinized the initiatives to organize water and wastewater management regionally in the Rhine-Main area (e.g. through inter-municipal collaboration, regional wastewater associations or regional mergers).
Presentations & Publications:
