About
Julia Wesely’s review of Waste and the City by Colin McFarlane has been published in Urbanisation. The book examines the deep connections between sanitation, urban infrastructure, health, and social justice, arguing that access to sanitation is a fundamental right to city life. McFarlane highlights how sanitation is often overlooked by policymakers and urban planners, despite its critical role in shaping everyday life.
The review explores three key themes in the book: the bodily dialectics between those affected by poor sanitation and those who ignore it, the role of networked and fringe practices in resisting neglect, and the challenge of counter-overlooking—ensuring sustained attention to sanitation justice. Waste and the City pushes readers to rethink urban infrastructure not just as a technical issue, but as a question of power, dignity, and citizenship.
This book review is part of a special issue edited by Isolde de Villiers and Julia Wesely, which was developed following the seminar series “Overlooked Cities: Thinking and doing global urban studies differently”. For more information on the seminar series, see https://www.overlookedcities.org/usf
