Fugitive Dust: The Indeterminate Trajectories of Urban Development’s Present Past

Elsa Noterman

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2023, vol. 113, issue 4, 857-872

Abstract: As Philadelphia’s postindustrial River Wards landscape undergoes a development boom, dust from construction projects settles on surrounding parks, gardens, and homes, and in the lungs of residents. Concerned about the reemergence of the area’s toxic history—especially the material legacies of lead refineries—and its impacts on their children’s health, local parents are organizing to understand and address the risks associated with the circulation of this “fugitive dust.” In this article, I examine latent and emergent risks of urban redevelopment by tracing the indeterminate, intimate trajectories of toxic dust as it traverses the spatial and temporal boundaries of property and proprietary subjects. In doing so, I consider the ways it disrupts racialized notions of improvement and refigures questions of socioenvironmental justice. Finally, in considering the possibilities for more just urban futures informed by present pasts, I attend to the fugitivity of dust: how its indeterminacy not only unsettles, but potentially escapes, the improvement–waste dichotomy in urban development praxis.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/24694452.2022.2137454 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:raagxx:v:113:y:2023:i:4:p:857-872

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/raag21

DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2022.2137454

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of the American Association of Geographers is currently edited by Jennifer Cassidento

More articles in Annals of the American Association of Geographers from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().