ancient cities

around efficiency and waste minimization
but which then failed to make provision for toxic
by-products, which ended up stockpiled and
unprocessed.
Currently, many Western countries are adopting
governance regimes that problematize disposal
and instead emphasize diversion for reuse and
move to seeing waste as a resource. These governance
regimes affect different state actors at different
scales in different ways. For cities, the implementation
of this may affect whether they segregate
waste at collection, which is expensive but creates
higher potential resource values, or whether households
have obligations to segregate waste streams.
For urban governments, segregating waste can
involve issues of housing stock—with large multidwelling
units being physically less amenable to
segregated waste stream collection if, for example,
they use communal waste disposal chutes.
These different systems of governing waste
make visible new forms of rationalities and rely on
their being encoded in the urban fabric in different
ways. As seen in the case of Hungary, these rationalities
render certain kinds of practices and materials
as models and some as problematic. They also
increasingly form means of governing the behavior
of urban citizens, with new schemes being suggested
(such as Pay-as-You-Throw charges for waste disposal)
designed to alter conduct and senses of
waste.
Mike A. Crang
See also Benjamin, Walter; Environmental Policy;
Governance; Sewer; Sustainable Development; Toilets
Further Readings
Benjamin, W. 1976. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in
the Era of High Capitalism. London: Verso.
Bulkeley, H., M. Watson, and R. Hudson. 2007. “Modes
of Governing Municipal Waste.” Environment and
Planning A, 39:2733–53.
Collin, R. M. and R. W. Collin. 2005. “Waste and Race:
An Introduction to Sustainability and Equity.”
Pp. 139–52 in Space in America: Theory, History,
Culture, edited by K. Benesch and K. Schmidt.
Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Douglas, M. [1966] 1984. Purity and Danger: An
Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo.
London: Routledge.
Women and the City
963
Frosch, R. 1996. “Towards the End of Waste: Reflections
on a New Ecology of Industry.” Daedalus
125(3):199–212.
Gill, K. 2007. “Interlinked Contracts and Social Power:
Patronage and Exploitation in India’s Waste Recovery
Market.” Journal of Development Studies
43(8):1448–74.
Gille, Z. 2007. From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap
of History: The Politics of Waste in Socialist and
Postsocialist Hungary. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Gregson, N., A. Metcalfe, and L. Crewe. 2007. “Moving
Things Along: The Conduits and Practices of
Divestment in Consumption.” Transactions of the
Institute of British Geographers 32(2):187–200.
Lupton, E. and J. A. Miller. 1992. The Bathroom, the
Kitchen and the Aesthetics of Waste: A Process of
Elimination. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Mayhew, H. 1861–62. London Labour and the London
Poor. London: Griffen, Bohn and Company.
Watson, M. and H. Bulkeley. 2005. “Just Waste?
Municipal Waste Management and the Politics of
Environmental Justice.” Local Environment
10(4):410–26.
Wo m e n a n d t h e Ci t y
As long as there have been cities, women have
lived in them. The ways that cities shape women’s
lives, however, and the ways women shape cities
have changed over time. Urban life initially had a
liberating effect on women’s lives. In the city,
women could become anonymous, and that freed
them from restrictions and the public view in
more rural communities. In the context of industrialization
and more recent history, the fate of
women in cities changed drastically. Issues of
safety, housing, economics, and the environment
have become central to women’s survival in cities.
In response to increased poverty, deteriorating
infrastructure and environments, and increased
gender-based violence, women have organized
and used their community resources to challenge
the urban form of cities and the social and political
policies and processes that impact their lives.
One of the important factors in understanding
shifts in cities and the agency of women are the
transnational and cultural changes that have
occurred in cities. During the great migration from