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This article introduces plastic recycling networks in Kolkata, India, as a case to illustrate the contradictory entanglement of economic and environmental change in urban informal contexts of the Global South. In light of the prevailing environmental critique of informal plastic recycling in India, this article discusses plastic recyclers’ environmental impact and contribution as well as the potential to enhance the environmental and economic performance of their business. Network and chain approaches in the emerging field of Environmental Economic Geography are combined with the notion of social metabolism to conceptualize the entanglement of environmental and economic processes as well as socio‐environmental inequalities entailed in recycling networks. The analysis reveals the impact that the heterogeneity and fluctuation of plastic waste supply has on the economic organization of recycling networks, giving rise to distinct forms of governance in its intermediate and down‐stream segments. Such an integrated perspective also serves to explain why environmental upgrading is hard to achieve under prevailing circumstances by plastic recyclers in Kolkata. Based on an assessment of the social and political conditions of informality under which plastic recyclers operate, the adoption of common assumptions about ecological modernization imbuing parts of Environmental Economic Geography is called into question.

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Against the backdrop of multiple ongoing crises in European cities related to socio-spatial injustice, inequality and exclusion, we argue for a smart right to the city. There is an urgent need for a thorough account of the entrepreneurial mode of technocapitalist smart urbanism. While much of both affirmative and critical research on Smart City developments equate or even reduce smartness to digital infrastructures, we put actual smartness—in the sense of social justice and sustainability—at centre stage. This paper builds on a fundamental structural critique of (1) the entrepreneurial city (Harvey) and (2) the capitalist city (Lefebvre). Drawing upon Lefebvre’s right to the city as a normative framework, we use Smart City developments in the city of Graz as an illustration of our argument. Considering strategies of waste and mobility management, we reflect on how they operate as spatial and technical fixes—fixing the limits of capitalism’s growth. By serving specific corporate interests, these technocapitalist strategies yet fail to address the underlying structural causes of pressing urban problems and increasing inequalities. With Lefebvre’s ongoing relevant argument for the importance of use value of urban infrastructures as well as his claim that appropriation and participation are essential, we discuss common rights to the city: His framework allows us to envision sustainable and just—actually smart—alternatives: alternatives to technocapitalist entrepreneurial urbanisation. In this respect, a smart right to the city is oriented towards the everyday needs of all inhabitants.

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In politisch-ökonomischen Ansätzen der kritischen Stadtforschung nehmen die Arbeit als Quelle der Mehrwertproduktion, der Arbeitsplatz als Ort der Ausbeutung und die Urbanisierung als Prozess der Reproduktion von Klassenverhältnissen theoretisch die Hauptbühne ein. Praktisch zeigt sich diese theoretische Inklusion von Arbeit und Klassenverhältnissen jedoch häufig als unvollständig und widersprüchlich, da Kapital und Staat ontologisch priorisiert werden. Wir nehmen jüngere städtische Arbeitskämpfe zum Anlass für ein Plädoyer, Arbeiter_innen, ihre Arbeit, soziale Reproduktion, organisatorische Praxis und damit einhergehende Raumproduktionen stärker in der Stadtforschung mitzudenken: Herausforderungen wie die Pandemie und die Klimakrise spitzen städtische Konflikte um Fragen der sozialen Reproduktion – etwa um öffentliche Infrastrukturen wie Krankenhäuser, Wohnen und ÖPNV – zu einem Zeitpunkt weiter zu, da die Arbeiter_innenschaft so urban ist wie noch nie. Es ist daher wichtiger denn je, Stadt, Raum und Arbeit stärker zusammenzudenken.