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For many urbanites, infrastructural uncertainty refers to ‘predictable shocks’ rather than constituting a quotidian experience. By contrast, for the peri-urban poor, the sources of uncertainty underpinning water and sanitation services are endless: uncertainty about cost, about being evicted and indeed about ever becoming connected to networked systems. Drawing on a number of case studies, we argue that across the urban global south, the future is not one of networked systems but rather one of ‘infrastructural archipelagos’ that need to be thoroughly understood in order to bridge the growing gap between everyday and large infrastructural planning practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sites of urban agriculture are often contested urban open spaces. In the current dominant ideal of the ‘competitive’ and ‘global’ city, little recognition is given to the potential benefits of urban agriculture, beyond beautification, subsistence or therapeutic purposes. In this context, urban agriculture is often viewed as an activity performed by ‘gardeners’, either contributing to individual well-being or reducing the costs of maintenance of public spaces. A less ‘tolerant’ perspective perceives such ‘gardeners’ as squatters inhibiting cities' productivity. By contrast, urban agriculture enthusiasts advocate the recognition of the right to farm in the city as an essential condition for either food security or food sovereignty. This paper argues that urban agriculture can also be interpreted as a means to claim, nurture and propagate alternative views on spatial justice, place and citizenship-making, defying the maldistributional and misrecognition patterns that typically produce and reproduce unequal urban geographies. Drawing from a four-year research collaboration in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) undertaken by the authors at the Development Planning Unit (DPU) with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), People's Dialogue and the Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor, the analysis examines the trajectories of female and male farmers working under different and fast-changing land tenure systems across the Accra–Ashaiman corridor. Adopting an environmental justice perspective, the analysis explores the extent to which urban agriculture might constitute a practice through which marginalised groups might actively claim spaces of daily sociability and political articulation within the city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the author's views on urban water poverty. According to the author, it is important to consider urban water poverty as different from water scarcity. The author also suggests that attention should be draw attention to the need for political, social, economic as well as institutional change to improve urban water provision.

As a result of the internal and external reforms introduced in the last two decades in Argentina, as in most Latin American countries, urban-based manufacturing activities have experienced a dramatic process of restructuring, which has prompted new social and environmental conflicts. In a context where macro-economic strategies are resulting in long-term restructuring of production patterns and local conflicts, it is important to assess the sustainability of current urban development trends. Focusing on a case study of the city of Mar del Plata, this paper looks at how the fishing industry has been restructured from a nationally confined to an internationally open system. The paper examines how and why governance frameworks regulating the appropriation and transformation of nature have changed during the restructuring process, and have consequently reshaped the ability of the local state, firms, and citizen-workers to protect the natural resource base on which the local economy depends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]