CLEANING UP THE CITY: Waste-lands in Mumbai and Lagos
The lastest episode of the Urban Radar Podcast is ready! In this month's episode, Beth and Tom reflect on UN World Clean-up Day.
Beth and Tom invitie Deji Akinpelu (Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development (CHSD) University of Lagos), and Purva Dewoolkar (School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester) to share their work rethinking waste management and sanitation in Lagos and Mumbai.
'Cleaning up the city' is easier said than done - and can also be dangerous, depending on the nature of the waste. Waste management is central to the livelihoods of millions of people in cities around the world, as well as to food chains and questions of nutrition. Together they discuss how to manage different kinds of waste in an integrated way, the roles of different individuals and groups, including residents, waste pickers and local governments, and how waste connects to wider climate resilience actions and plans.
Also on the radar:
- Why do capital cities get moved, and will Uganda be moving its capital?
- What do new UK sanctions on Israeli settlements mean for the two-state and ‘shared homeland’ solutions? And what is the potential role of cities?
- What is the history of cities seceding from nation-states?
- What are the positive and negative effects on the city of massive urban running events?
- What are the implications of AI 'superintelligence' for cities and towns, according to different generations?
- What’s in a name? With Trump renaming more geographies, does Tom know the former names of cities in Beth’s quiz?
Guests:
Deji Akinpelu is a documentary filmmaker, photographer and advocate for inclusive urban development whose practice documents architecture, heritage and everyday urbanism across Lagos and West Africa. He founded the Rethinking Cities Initiative (RCI) in 2017, following the forced eviction of the waterfront community at Otodo Gbame, and has since built a body of work that treats the recording of the city, its buildings, its cultural traditions and its threatened settlements, as an act of advocacy for their survival.Challenges and opportunities for inclusive water delivery in Lagos
Purva Dewoolkar is Bicentenary Research Fellow in the School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester. Dewoolkar’s research integrates human geography, urban studies, critical development studies, and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), collaborating with Mumbai's campaign for Universal Access to Water and Manchester's cultural institutions to develop care-centred, community-led approaches for documenting and understanding urban infrastructural struggles in the Global South, centring the lived experiences and vocabularies of resistance.
- On shaky grounds: situating safe sanitation in Mumbai’s sub-surface legacies of waster
- Habitation counter-stories: thinking from the autoconstructed basti-Cheeta Camp, Mumbai
- Sewers and sewage treatment in Mumbai: Temporality, difference, competing universals and infrastructural entanglements.
Links
Sponsor Beth to raise money for War Child UK
Off the Shelf – Festival of Words, Sheffield 2026
Doubling Down Not Ducking Out: Why Co-production of Research Matters Now
References:
Jaim Yacobi and Omar Dajani - 'Shared Homeland Paradigm' ESRC project
Jane Jacobs - Cities and the Wealth of Nations
Charles Tilly - Cities and States in World History
Edensor & Larsen - Rhythmanalysing marathon running
How to be an Anti-Capitalist City
David Robinson - The Intelligence Trap
Cugurullo et al - The Rise of AI Urbanism in Post-Smart Cities
The Conversation - ‘Gen Z is pushing back against AI’
Prerona Das - Smart Cities Beyond Methodological Cityism
Prince Guma - The Temporal Incompleteness of Infrastructure and the Urban