To prospect an urban mine -assessing the metal recovery potential of infrastructure "cold spots" in Norrkoping, Sweden, 2013, Journal of Cleaner Production, (55) AbstractIn conventional mining, prospecting methods are used to increase the degree of certainty with regard to the stock of metals. Similarly, prospecting in terms of "urban mining" aims to increase the information about metal stocks available for recovery in the built environment. Infrastructure systems, such as for power supply and heating, are rich in copper, aluminum and iron (including steel). For a number of reasons, pipes and cables remain in the ground after being taken out of use or disconnected. This is also true for entire obsolete systems. In this paper, these infrastructures "cold spots" are viewed as hibernating stock with a significant potential for urban mining.The infrastructure systems for AC and DC power, telecommunication, town gas and district heating in the city of Norrköping, Sweden, have been quantified and spatially allocated with a GIS-based approach of Material Flow Analysis (MFA). About 20% of the total stock of aluminum and copper in these systems is found to be in hibernation. The findings also indicate that cables have been disconnected to a larger extent than pipes. As an example, cables for DC power, taken out of use in the late 1930s yet still in the ground, consist of 230 tonnes of copper. The results illustrate a clear tendency for larger stocks of hibernating copper and aluminum to be found in the central rather than the outer parts of the city. A reverse, ring-like pattern is true for iron, mostly because the central parts of the town gas pipes are used for fiber optics.Particular focus has been placed on the industrial area of Södra Butängen, which is slated for redevelopment and re-zoning from industrial to residential. Since the ground will be dug up for sanitation purposes anyway, the entire metal stock can be taken into prospecting consideration. Analysis shows that the chances of finding aluminum here are 28 times higher than in the rest of the city.We argue for an increased MFA focus on the heterogeneous complexity found in the details of the specific locale, rather than striving for generalized assumptions about the broader picture. In doing so, MFA could very well provide a tool for a future business line of urban mining of hibernating metal stocks.

No abstract

Summary Material flow analysis (MFA) has been an effective tool to identify the scale of physical activity, the allocation of materials across economic sectors for different purposes, and to identify inefficiencies in production systems or in urban contexts. However, MFA relies on ignoring the social drivers of those flows to be able to perform its calculations. In many cases therefore, it remains detached from the processes (e.g., urban) that underpin them. This becomes a problem when the purpose of research is to inform the design of detailed recycling schemes, for which micro‐level practice knowledge on how material flows are mediated by human agency is needed. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how a particular social science approach, namely, infrastructure studies (IS), can be combined with MFA to enhance the latter's potential as a decision support tool. To achieve a successful combination between IS and MFA, the object of inquiry must be carefully defined to function as a ‘boundary object,’ which allows academic approaches to work together without the need for consensus. This approach is illustrated with a case study example in urban mining research that assesses the hibernating stock of subsurface urban infrastructure in Norrköping, Sweden. It provides an example of how a well‐calibrated MFA and a complementary social science approach can provide hands‐on advice for private as well as public actors in a local and place‐specific context. The article aims to advance the integration of social science and the study of the physical economy to contribute to the emerging field of social industrial ecology.

In this paper we use a case of resistance towards a proposed limestone quarry in Sweden to raise certain theoretical points regarding environmental politicization. Departing from ideas about depoliticization and neoliberal environmental governance, we first analyze the case in terms of scaling-up of the local conflict through actor alliances, discourse coalitions and through the juridical process. We then discuss how this case may indicate effective ways to politicize areas that have been depoliticized through neoliberal environmental governance. Most particularly, the chosen case highlights how depoliticization may be reversed through the politicization of the very channels through which depoliticized forms of environmental governance occur, here the juridical, formalized and nominally neutral processes of environmental planning.

In this article, we suggest a methodology that combines Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and material flow analysis (MFA) into a secondary reserve-prospecting tool. The approach is two-phased and couples spatially informed size estimates of urban metal stocks (phase 1) to the equally spatially contingent efforts required to extract them (phase 2). Too often, even the most advanced MFA assessments stop at the first of these two phases, meaning that essential information needed to facilitate resource recovery, i.e. urban mining, is missing from their results. To take MFA one step further, our approach is characterized by a high resolution that connects the analysis of the stock to the social practices that arrange material flows in the city, thereby enabling an assessment of the economic conditions for secondary resource recovery. To exemplify, we provide a case study of the hibernation stock of copper found in disconnected power cables in Linköping, Sweden. Since 1970, 123 tonnes of copper or ≈1 kg per person have accumulated underneath the city, predominantly in old, central parts of the city and industrial areas. While shorter cables are more numerous than long ones, the longer ones contribute to a larger share of the stock weight. Resource recovery in specific projects reliant on digging comes at great costs, but integrating it as an added value to ordinary maintenance operations render eight locations and 2.2 tonnes of copper (2% of the stock) profitable to extract. Compared to the budget sizes of regular maintenance projects, a significant share of the stock comes with relatively small economic losses. Therefore, we suggest integrated resource recovery and regular maintenance as an interesting environmental measure for any infrastructure provider to engage with. 2