Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Movements Impacts on Urban Waste Systems

这项拟议的研究将调查推动美国一个主要城市解决食品回收和堆肥计划的社会运动。该研究将确定哪些条件有利于相互竞争和不同的行为者和战略共同努力，以改造大型城市废物系统。调查结果将对管理、更新和维护城市废物系统的社区组织者、政策制定者、城市城市设计者和规划者感兴趣。这项研究将问一个巨大的，顽固的社会技术系统会发生什么，当它受到众多替代解决方案的挑战。 该研究将研究自上而下和自下而上的设计如何通过开发替代食物浪费系统的人们对未来预测的部署来协调。 该研究将使用混合方法，多站点设计，以了解在纽约市建立替代食物垃圾系统的参与者如何在创建新基础设施时想象和协调预测的未来。数据收集将包括：1）参与者观察替代食物垃圾基础设施的设计，建造和维护; 2）参与者观察规划和政策活动; 3）与组织者，志愿者和系统用户的半结构化访谈;以及4）日常使用，以及与新兴食品基础设施的互动。这项研究将展示非正式的城市化如何为复杂的废物问题创造分散的解决方案。深入了解这种社会技术转型方法的有效性和缺陷，将有助于决策者和设计者了解如何有效地将集中式和因地制宜的方法结合起来，实现绿色基础设施。调查结果将在学术和流行的场所报告，并与食品回收和组成从业人员分享。

The proposed study will investigate the social movements that are driving one major US city to address food recovery and composting initiatives. The study will identify what conditions are facilitating competing and diverse actors and strategies to work together in order to transform a large city waste system. The findings will be of interest to community organizers, policy makers, city urban designers and planners who are managing, updating and maintaining urban waste systems. This research will ask what happens to a huge, obdurate sociotechnical system when it is challenged by numerous alternative solutions. The research will examine how top-down and bottom-up designs are coordinated through the deployment of future projections by people developing alternative food waste systems. The study will use a mixed-methods, multi-sited design to understand how actors building alternative food waste systems in New York City imagine and coordinate projected futures as they create new infrastructures. Data collection will include: 1) participant observation of design, building and maintenance of alternative food waste infrastructures; 2) participant observation at planning and policy events; 3) semi-structured interviews with organizers, volunteers, and users of systems; and 4) daily use of, and interactions with, emerging food infrastructures. This study will demonstrate how informal urbanism can create decentralized solutions to the complex problem of waste. Insights about the effectiveness and pitfalls of this approach to sociotechnical transformation will help to inform policy makers and designers seeking effective ways to weave together centralized and situated approaches to green infrastructure. Findings will be reported in both scholarly and popular venues and shared with food recovery and composing practitioners.