Dr David Garbin has been awarded a £299k grant under the British Academy Cities and Infrastructure of Well-Being Programme which is part of the UK Government’s £1.5 billion Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).
Through the project Dr Garbin will explore the role of waste tyres in the urban environmental sustainability, informal economy and road ecology in the context of African mega-urbanisation. The project is a partnership between the universities of Kent, York, Toronto (Canada), Lagos (Nigeria) and Mohammed V (Morocco) and will combine Urban Anthropology, Sustainability Science, Material Engineering, Urban Planning and Sociology of Work. It will also involve Lagos-based award winning visual artist and photographer Andrew Esiebo who will document the urban aesthetics of road ecologies and informal tyre-related work.
The ‘Pneuma-city’ project addresses a global environmental challenge that is visibly dominant in African streetscapes: the ubiquity of end-of-life tyres (ELTs). It will be the first project to explore the multifaceted impact of used tyres on road ecologies, while also promoting social and technical solutions aimed at creating more sustainable urban environments that in turn improve the well-being of workers and residents. Specifically, the project seeks to explore (1) the gendered informal cultures, livelihoods and technologies of tyre-related work; (2) the complex place of waste tyres in street/road ecologies; and (3) the circular economies of repurposing. The project bridges formal and informal infrastructures by conceptually tracing the role of tyres as ‘frictional’ within urban contexts where automobile transport is hegemonic, with the ambition to put ELT challenges and opportunities at the heart of a vision for a sustainable future.
For more information, visit the British Academy website.