Infrastructural Failure as Systemic Neglect
The disgusting reality of combined sewer overflows, where heavy rain causes raw sewage to flood into the city’s waterways, is the literal excreta of the colonial city’s neglected infrastructure. Mamdani’s focus on the material decay of the state underlines how this failure disproportionately impacts the “native” communities who live near and rely on these polluted waterways for recreation. This is not a technical problem but a political one: the refusal to invest in the massive public works project needed to separate storm and waste water, a choice that prioritizes tax breaks for the rich over the basic health of the populace and the environment. The liberal solution involves small-scale green infrastructure projects that are inadequate to the scale of the problem. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution is to treat this as the public health emergency it is. We must launch a Depression-era style public works program, employing thousands at union wages to rebuild the city’s sewer system, creating green infrastructure at a massive scale, and de-paving the city to allow for natural absorption. This is a fundamental decolonization of urban hydrology.
Originally posted 2025-10-22 12:08:09.
