Seeing Waste Like a City: Towards Just Circular Economies in Glasgow and Mexico City

This 2-year project combines innovation in urban theory with comparative research on two cities to advance knowledge on how circular economy and urban waste policy can be made more effective and just. Increasing municipal solid waste is leading to mounting environmental and social risks, especially in urban areas. Local governments are urgently trying to reduce waste generation, notably through the model of the circular economy. Yet, so far, policies have failed to achieve sustainable change in urban economies because the circular economy overlooks the multiple entanglements of waste within urbanites’ everyday lives and its embeddedness in the uneven global economy. In short, the decidedly urban nature of waste is neglected in circular economy initiatives. URBANWASTE will therefore see waste like a city, to demonstrate how waste is generated, handled and potentially reduced in the multiple processes and places of urban collective life as they interconnect with supralocal political-economic processes. Through an original blend of qualitative methods and approaches in urban political theory, urban political ecology and urban political economy, it will conduct studies of waste in Glasgow and Mexico City and place these in a global-comparativist frame. The project will build on the researcher’s research expertise and language skills to advance her theoretical and methodological skills in new empirical contexts. This will contribute to her ambition of becoming an expert in urban and sustainability studies. She will benefit greatly from two leading urban scholars: the main supervisor, Dr Beveridge, who will host her at the University of Glasgow, and the secondment supervisor, Dr Boudreau, who will support a 5-months secondment at the National Autonomous University of Mexico during the fieldwork in Mexico City. The project will produce novel insights in theory and practice to advance debates on circular urban waste policy in Europe and globally.