Many rapidly urbanising areas in the Global South are experiencing transitions in sanitation with varying sustainability outcomes. In this chapter, we draw attention to the convergence of urban planning and sanitation paradigms, focusing on China's biggest city, Shanghai. We show how changes in architectural and urban morphology are linked with changes in urban sanitation infrastructure. We draw on fieldwork in two older and under-serviced neighbourhoods in Shanghai that have been subject to different sanitation transformation interventions as part of larger urban redevelopment projects. We find that interventions transformed sanitation services within these neighbourhoods through different approaches to meet some of the sustainability criteria for sanitation. We highlight the role of local governance in the implementation of local sanitation transformations and argue that urban fragmentation and the co-existence of different types of sanitation infrastructure require a shift away from "one-size-fits-all" approaches. Instead, we call for the consideration of urban morphology, architecture and socio-cultural specificities in order to identify tailored sanitation solutions at the neighbourhood scale.
Cities of the Global South are infrastructurally diverse and entangled with multiple coexisting infrastructural formations, be they planned or unplanned. They offer unique opportunities to study, design, intervene in and develop systemic approaches related to infrastructural configurations encompassed by the processes and dynamics of urban infrastructuring. In this chapter, we draw from the contributions to this volume to propose that infrastructural scholarship and practice contribute to the production and reproduction of potentially violent forms of infrastructuring. Such infrastructuring carries implications for human health, human wellbeing and sustainability more broadly. We argue that whether and how infrastructuring can act to transform infrastructural configurations and entanglements towards greater sustainability is fundamentally an ethical question. We suggest that an ethico-politics of care should be embedded in systems approaches to infrastructuring in both research and practice. To become sustainable, infrastructuring (as a transformative process) must be aligned with the ethico-political position of caring.
China's ongoing rural transition has led to dramatic infrastructural improvements in rural areas, yet local culture continues to decline. In rural east China fengshui has traditionally informed local building practice and has been revived since the "Reform and Opening" policy of 1978. It is practiced in those regions that have not yet been subjected to wholesale demolition and renewal, where residents are able to express a distinct connection to their homes. Adhering to fengshui enables an everyday placemaking process of engagement involving both practitioner and villagers. Through ethnographic field studies in rural Zhejiang province, this paper reveals how in a period of rapid rural transition the engagement with and (re)interpretation of fengshui contribute to the preservation of local building culture and community spirit. We argue that the findings indicate a need for much greater resident involvement in rural regeneration projects.
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