At home in the watershed: Environmental imaginaries and spatial politics in Los Angeles

• Main Author: RANDLE, Sayd
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2016
• Subjects: green infrastructure; Los Angeles; stormwater; labor; groundwater; political ecology green infrastructure; political ecology; Environmental Policy; Environmental Sciences
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/117; https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198758662.003.0009
• Institution: Singapore Management University

In Los Angeles, local environmentalists have long advocated for the city to embrace distributed green infrastructure installations to manage stormwater flows and recharge local groundwater supplies. This chapter uses an urban political ecology lens to examine the processes that have aided (and stalled) the adoption of these techniques into the cityscape. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among NGOs building and helping maintain these installations, I explore the political implications of this “watershed approach” to water and landscape in the city. Particular attention is paid to the human labor that maintaining this kind of infrastructure requires, and the different frames through which this kind work has been represented over the years.