ABSTRACT
Everyday relationships with urban natures for many inhabitants in cities of the global south1 are very precarious. In Planet of Slums, Mike Davis (2006) characterizes such relationships as ‘slum ecologies’. Indeed, most households deal with polluted water, raw sewage, landslides, flooding and disease on a daily basis. Yet while the majority of urban residents struggle with such ‘ecologies’ everyday, urban geography and urban political ecology have paid little attention to understanding the complexities of these struggles and how they shape lives and social relations. This chapter attends to such complexities by looking at the everyday relations with water, sewage and garbage in an informal settlement in Managua, Nicaragua. Inspired by work in political ecology which has examined how rural communities and households adapt to, rely on and create environmental changes, I ask how households in this marginal ized urban area interact with, adapt to, rely on, and shape urban nature. I contend that paying attention to such everyday environmental relations assists in better under standing the role of marginalized communities in shaping socio-environmental processes of cities of the global south. I contend that paying attention to such everyday environmental relations assists in better comprehending the role of marginalized communities in shaping socioenvironmental processes of cities of the global south.
