Re-embedding services and resources and rethinking urban metabolism through resource ecologies

Keywords: metabolism, resource, infrastructure, urban services
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 10

Abstract

Most research referring to urban metabolism (within or without a Marxist perspective) (Castan Broto et al., 2012) has used this notion in a fairly metaphoric way to explore power issues around the circulation of environmental resources (broadly construed). Hence, urban and broader inequalities in and through the distribution of resource flows associated to the provision of essential services or amenities have been thoroughly examined, especially within an urban political ecology perspective (Heynen et al., 2006 Swyndegouw, 2015).
However, other crucial issues, fundamentally associated with qualitative and quantitative resource limitations, have so far largely escaped scrutiny. These include issues related to resource extraction and depletion, transformation and degradation, as well as waste disposal and dissemination, and the deterioration of the environment (climate, atmosphere, soils, water…) associated with these processes. Yet disembedding the study of infrastructure services (that channel metabolic flows) from the environmental resources involved in their provision amounts to ignore or neglect the problem of planetary boundaries (see Rockström or Steffen). A shift toward a more resource-sensitive metabolic approach is therefore required.
Based on an extensive literature review and on the use of secondary data, this paper discusses the theoretical and methodological consequences of this resource blind spot in infrastructures and urban studies (Haberl et al., 2020). This discussion leads to a plaidoyer to bring resource issues, in their material, political and spatial dimensions, to the centre of scientific attention.