Angie Oberg
Assistant Teaching Professor
Rutgers University, Department of Human Ecology
Biography
Angie Oberg currently serves in two roles at Rutgers University: Associate Director for the Office of Climate Action and Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Human Ecology. She is an urban environmental planner whose work aims to make cities more livable and sustainable. Using the concepts of urban metabolism, Angie’s work investigates how the everyday lives of urban residents shape, and are shaped by, urban political ecologies. In particular, she studies the urban political ecology of sewage.
Before coming to academia, Angie practiced professionally as an environmental planner in California, Texas, and Pennsylvania on projects in the United States, Italy, United Arab Emirates, and Sudan. She holds a Ph.D. in planning and public policy from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers and a Master of Landscape Architecture from Cal Poly Pomona.
Rutgers Climate Bridge Panel1: Impact on People
Moderator
Rutgers Climate Bridge Panel 7: Vision for People
Abstract
Recently, the United States Congress has been debating large spending bills, which include a raft of measures to expand the social safety net. This has led to fierce public debates around what counts as infrastructure. In this talk, I suggest such framing misses the point entirely by turning away from the discourse of service delivery to place infrastructure at the center of debate. I use examples of sewage in urban India to argue that a myopic focus on infrastructure has led to tremendous investment of resources and leaves services undelivered. Renewed attention to the goal of service delivery forces planners, policy makers, and advocates to ask questions about people and not just hardware.