“We dredge because it doesn’t work”: urban political ecology and the uneven geographies of sediment metabolism

Abstract

As shipping companies deploy increasingly larger ships, urban ports around the world must build and maintain new infrastructure to accommodate these vessels. One subaqueous component of these urban infrastructures is the dredged fairways in port and river bottoms through which ships pass. This paper examines the urban political ecological significance of these fairways, framing the movement, governance, and politics of dredging as sediment metabolism. With an emphasis on understanding how the dredging industry produces a range of uneven geographies, the paper situates sediment metabolism in a series of current debates in urban political ecology regarding the metabolic rift, methodological cityism, and anticolonial metabolisms using case studies from multiple sites of dredging activity, especially the North Sea region and Aotearoa/New Zealand.