Social Power and the Urbanization of Water

About one billion people wordwide are lacking safe and reliable access to potable water. This fundamental environmental problem takes acute forms in the cities of the developing world. Taking the case of Guayaquil in Ecuador this book shows, both theoretically and empirically, how access to and control over water, and, consequently, urban socio-environmental conditions are shaped by social, economic, and political power relations. The urban political-ecological perspective developed in this book examines critically our understanding of both the city and the environment and develops a perspective that relates urban environmental questions to issues of uneven social power and control.