The construction and maintenance of infrastructure depend on labour. However, those who physically interact with muncipal spaces, facilities and infrastructure are generally excluded from planning and policy making…
Take a seat in a city park, perhaps in the City of Edmonton. How many pieces of infrastructure do you see? A bus stop might catch your eye, maybe you consider the pavement that runs through the park to be infrastructure. But, do you consider all the labour that goes into maintaining the operation of the park? Take a closer look at the curated components in a park. The trees are planted and maintained by an Urban Forestry Operations Department. The flower bed at the base of the park sign is planted, watered, and weeded by a horticulture crew. The grass is mowed and trimmed by turf operations in which labourers operate a fleet of lawn mowers. The sidewalks are managed by an “Active Pathways Removal Team” in the winter. The playground is checked and repaired by a playground maintenance crew. Spray Parks are cleaned by a small crew running a leaf blower and pressure washer. Pest control sprays green spaces to prevent large populations of bugs. Perhaps the most stigmatized point of maintenance is handled by a site servicing crew. This crew manages the removal of garbage from city parks.
This is not just “light maintenance.” Take a closer look at the site servicing department through the eyes of a labourer. Most city workers follow the same daily routine which helps them remain in the “backstage” of cities. The day starts in the yard at 7:00am with a group meeting in the yard and truck assignments. In the summer, additional labourers are hired to manage the increased workload. Citizens are able to submit notifications to a public “forum” to be addressed by the respective departments. These are referred to as notifications and are assigned based on which district they belong to. Each morning, I check my truck to make sure I have all the necessary equipment to carry out the day’s work. Packing the truck for the whole day means I can spend more time on my route, which limits disruptions to the service. In site servicing, a chart serves as a map to each can in the district. The chart shows the background of parks, outlining the often overlooked litter. Additionally, I use a digital map to identify the GPS coordinates of hard-to-find locations. I rely on a satellite view to locate park paths and access points into a park as Google Maps does not direct off road, but the paths are my roads, or at least an extension of them, and the static chart does not account for the fact that litter moves. Often, trash cans will be moved from their listed locations, or removed by our department due to vandalism rendering the chart useless. Litter is not listed on the chart but is left behind by park visitors or “residents,” so it is important to personally mark the location of transient garbage.
Although I’m physically capable, when I started my position, my male co-worker would not let me perform physical tasks such as lifting garbage bags. Social expectations and discriminations around gender, age, race, religion and one’s background pervade interactions in many service departments.
The summer brings more tasks such as renovating and opening public washrooms and putting out additional cans to manage the increased flow of patrons to the parks. The site servicers act with efficiency and speed to ensure that their job is carried out without disrupting park goers more than necessary. Proper weather material is not provided by the city, and in the case of “inclement weather” the labourers are given the choice of going home without pay or working in the unfavorable conditions. Rather than providing the labourer gear to withstand heavy rain or snow, the city puts the burden of interrupting the flow of maintenance on the labourer, who then must deal with the public complaints after.
“Equipment” Needed for a Day of Maintenance:
- Lunch and Snacks
- Water Bottles and Electrolytes
- Jacket for the morning, T-Shirt for the afternoon
- Rain jacket
- Keys for the locked cans and public washrooms
- Sanitizing Wipes
- Hand Sanitizer
- At least three boxes of Garbage bags (300 bags)
- 2 Boxes of Dog Waste bags (200 bags)
- Sharps container and tongs for Needle clean-up
- Shovel, Rake, Broom
- Picker and Picker bags x2
- Pruners
- 2 boxes of Nitrile Gloves
- 2 pairs of Leather gloves
- Spool of Chain
- Chain cutters
People pass by and some say hello as I empty the cans, but most just keep walking. The cans are changed often on a schedule to ensure that people always have access to an empty can. People do not notice the can until they need it, or it is overflowing. It is a dance in the backstage of the city, changing out props in the shadows of infrastructure. The high-vis vests and steel-toe boots identify me, the labourer, as someone who can be ignored or looked over. Occasionally a citizen will see me as their key to gaining insight into city operations, such as will potholes be filled, or more parks built? But, we have little to no knowledge of these things, and even less influence on the outcome. So, we try to stick to our roles and hide in the shadows of the city. Our day-to-day operations are planned to best avoid the public and maintain the flow of operations. Even the yards where the labourers report to are hidden from the public.
Although this is just a view of one department, each infrastructural labourer operates in a similar way, following a schedule which maps the bones of the city and staying in the shadows of infrastructure. Such is the design of the job. Citizens expect consistent access to public services and the labourers work to ensure this access is maintained without disruption. This routine is not seen, and thus is not recognized in the planning process. The dance is not written into the job description, but something that the labourer embodies after coming to the understanding that their place is backstage.In his classic book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Alberta-born sociologist Erving Goffman observed:
“Since the vital secrets of a show are visible backstage and since performers behave out of character while there, it is natural to expect that the passage from the front region to the back region will be kept closed to members of the audience or that the entire back region will be kept hidden from them.”
“Backstaging” infrastructural labour allows it to be overlooked in comparison to the “frontstage” of smoothly and invisibly functioning infrastructures. In this backstage, stigmatized and even taboo functions are tucked away from public attention. There is little research, data is analysed nor in the hands of those who make policy. Lack of input from those who do “the dirty work” means they are excluded and disempowered; the city is less efficient.
-Maia Hoogers (Univ. of Alberta)
An online policy paper on this research commissioned by the University of Toronto School of Cities is forthcoming on their website.