Introduction: The Embeddedness of Circularity in Everyday Slum Living in Global South Cities

Abstract

The reality of informalization and ‘slummification’ of Global South cities has garnered much interest in academic and policy circles at international, national, and local levels, as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals, the New Urban Agenda, and even broader issues around Sustainable Futures. Here, the Circular Economy (CE), which encompasses questions around material production, use, re/de-compositions, and their environmental impact, is gradually gaining a foothold in sustainability discourses in southern cities. Yet, the gradual insertion of CE in the Global South often perceives urban slum dweller activities and livelihoods as detrimental to the circular cities and sustainable futures agenda. This introductory chapter sets the context for rethinking this conventional pathological view of the urban slum–CE nexus. It briefly synthesizes urban transitions, circular economy, and urban slums. It then provides an overview of the collection of insightful essays in this volume that foreground the synergies between everyday activities in slums (livelihoods, housing, and space) and the core principles of the circular economy. In doing so, it opens the door for systematic, pragmatic, and locally situated theoretical and policy directions to explore the role of urban slums in the circular cities agenda.