KGLM 2255 - Urban Waste Management

This course explores the social, economic, material and political dimensions of urban solid waste management as a major municipal governance issue. It examines the materiality of waste systems, not only within closed urban environments but also across global waste flows. Through case studies, students will engage with the complex challenges of solid waste management and investigate how waste governance intertwines infrastructures, human labour, power relations, and urban spaces.

Key questions addressed throughout the course include:

Which scale - from local to global - is best fitted for analysing waste management and governance?

How do the locations of waste infrastructures generate inequalities and social conflict?

What are the social meanings and consequences of waste?

In what ways do urban circular economies create opportunities while reinforcing patterns of exclusion?

How to assess informal and illegal activities within the waste sector?

In what ways can various policy instruments be integrated to formulate a comprehensive local solid waste policy?

What challenges do local-level authorities encounter in complying with national regulations like Extended Producer Responsibility?

• Collective debate: 30%, session 6 (week 6)

The collective debate will take place in class during the final session. Each group will defend a proposed solution for the solid waste management system of a common city.

The debate will build on a series of short oral presentations delivered during weeks 2, 3, 4, and 5. Each week, every group will present one slide addressing a specific dimension of the city’s solid waste management system. Slides must be sent by email the day before each session.

The 5-minute in-class group presentations should address the following questions:

Week 2: How does waste move through the city?

Week 3: Why does the system function the way it does, and what enables or constrains change?

Week 4: What models from elsewhere could you benchmark?

Week 5: Why and how is your proposed intervention both transformative and implementable?

These presentations are intended to support collective discussion, share information, and progressively develop each group’s proposal for the final debate session.

• Individual take-home paper: 70%, end-of-semester (week 10)

The final paper consists of a short analytical essay (3500 words, bibliography included) examining the urban waste management system of a chosen city. The paper must develop a clear research question and argument based on course concepts, empirical evidence, and relevant academic literature. Students may choose one of the following approaches:

Analysis of an unaddressed or persistent challenge within the city’s waste management system (e.g. collection inequalities, governance fragmentation, financing, landfill dependence, etc.);

Critical analysis of an implemented policy or intervention, assessing its internal characteristics and broader implications for urban sustainability and social equity (e.g. evolution of a PPP, tensions and reconfiguration of a waste cooperative, etc.).