One Size Does Not Fit All: Sanitation Solutions in Shanghai’s Older and Under-Serviced Inner-City Neighbourhoods

Abstract

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.

Socio-metabolic practices and heterogeneous sanitation infrastructures in urbanizing China

“…This approach is also helpful for minimizing the potential conflicts and social exclusion entrenched in the embodied experiences of uneven metabolic urbanization, shifting public debates on sanitation from ‘urban poverty to be sanitized’ to ‘urban neighborhoods to be provided with sanitation’ (McFarlane et al, 2014: 1008). The persistence of, and innovation in, sanitation systems indicate that their sustainability is an ongoing challenge that requires flexible, tailored measures based on contextual scenarios (Ren et al, 2022) and moving beyond dichotomies along the lines of ‘small and appropriate’ versus ‘modern and advanced sanitation solutions’ (van Vliet et al, 2010: 5).…”

“…Iossifova, 2015; Pow, 2017). The complexity of embodied practices also reminds policy makers to appreciate existing socio-material contexts and the creativity of local communities, rather than solely promoting the paradigm of networked infrastructures in planning densely populated and fragmented cities (Coutard and Rutherford, 2016; Dombroski, 2015; Lawhon et al, 2018; Ren et al, 2022; Schramm and Mai, 2019).…”

“…Sanitation in urban China is undergoing a transformation from closed-loop, service-networked sanitation, which allowed night soil produced by urban households to be composted and used as fertilizer in the countryside, to sewage-based, water-borne sanitation that is resource-intensive, wasteful, and potentially harmful to the environment due to the indiscriminate discharge of fecal sludge (Iossifova, 2020). Such sanitation transitions have been identified to correlate with rapid urbanization in older neighborhoods in Chinese cities (Ren et al, 2022). Urban sanitation standards have improved due to significant events, such as the Shanghai Expo and Beijing Olympic Games, resulting in intended advances to urban landscapes and hygiene.…”