Saturday, May 02, 2009

the global landfill material

In communities all over the world, squatters fill in rutted streets, level the ground beneath their homes, and reclaim land from lagoons and shorefronts using one extremely common material: garbage. The New York Times reports on the dangers of garbage streets in Médina Gounass, a squatter neighborhood just outside Dakar, Senegal.

2 comments:

James Bucknam said...

I am currently working toward prototypical hydroponic gardens made from discarded plastic buckets and pipes to be used in informal settlements. Have you seen anything of this sort in your years of living there?

rn said...

JB: No, I haven't seen anything like what you're working on. My sense is it would have to be immediately useful to people and not cost too much (can hydroponics work simply with rainwater?) to gain traction. It's an interesting idea. Keep us posted.