Buenos Aires: Wasteland
Walking down avenida Juan de Garay last week, I passed a giant black trash bag that had ballooned and burst. Orange peels, burst tomatoes, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, Coca Cola bottles, torn newspapers and used condoms had spilled over the sidewalk and mixed with mud from the recent rains, so that pedestrians had to skip over the trash or veer into the street to avoid it. At the time it struck me as oddly beautiful, like some kind of symbol—as in most urban spaces, the distinction between private and public life verges on nonexistent here, and the insides of the city were on display in all their putrefying glory. Recycling has not traditionally figured high on the political agenda in Buenos Aires, but that is changing. Under city government head Mauricio Macri, a new Ministry of Environment and Public Space was created last year, and several recycling plants are now being constructed with accelerated completion times. Macri will be a contender in the 2015 presidential election, but political exigency alone doesn’t explain the rush; those working for the ministry are genuinely concerned with improving the city they live in. Buenos Aires’ relationship with garbage and its new focus on recycling speak to mutually beneficial links between political allegiance and social improvement which, as with so much here, are more complicated than they first appear.
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| Format: | article biblioteca |
| Language: | eng |
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Cambridge. MA, Estados Unidos : Harvard University.
2016-03-03T16:20:35Z
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| Subjects: | DESECHOS, CIUDADES, ADMINISTRACIÓN DE DESPERDICIOS, ZONA URBANA, BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA), RECICLAJE, |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10469/8094 |
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