Page 95 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

6 FROM “WASTE VILLAGE” TO “URBAN CIRCULAR ECONOMIC SYSTEM”… 81

On the other hand, the cheap recycling service provided by migrant
recyclers creates severe environmental and social externalities, such as
environmental degradation and health hazards in waste villages, which
continue to expand despite opposition from the local administration.
Waste villages illustrate the persistent problems of China’s transition.
The urban administration mainly approached the waste problem from the
perspective of environment and resource conservation and failed to take
full account of the social situation of the people who worked in this sector,
but who could not be accepted as local citizens, and the tensions this
exclusion generated. Nor did they confront the push to acquire land for
profitable development that often underpinned the demolition of waste
villages, concealed behind complaints over unpleasant social-environmental
conditions.
As the urban centre has expanded rapidly the problem of waste villages
has become increasingly firmly embedded within the deep urban-rural
segmentation of the Chinese society, which structures the complex social
dynamics of contemporary transition. As a result we would argue, the waste
problem will remain highly resistant to solutions if the actors involved only
approach it with a limited technical perspective of optimization.

DISCUSSIONS:ADAPTIVE OR INCLUSIVE?

The paradox of wicked problems is that strategies for solving them are
informed by the way one looks at them (Rittel and Webber 1973). The
construction of an “urban circular economic system”, which focuses on
capital intensive recycling facilities and logistic infrastructures is based
on “linear approaches and partial skill sets” (Xiang 2013). Effective action
needs to take account of the complex realities of diverse waste management
processes, and multiple forms of reuse and recycling.
As wicked problems have no ‘stopping point’, we believe that ‘addi-
tional efforts might increase the chances of finding a better solution’ (Rittel
and Webber 1973). Community-based tools call for urban designers to
review recycling activities as a part of a complex web of social interactions
in the common space of the city. In our research, we witnessed positive
interactions between migrant recyclers and residents in some communities,
while tensions existed in others. Those recyclers who secure an indepen-
dent space of their own in the residential communities are more confident
and relaxed when interacting with other people. In designing such spaces,
we need to stop seeing recyclers as ‘the other’, alien and separate from the