LAND RESERVATIONS landfill as connector If dirt is understood as matter out of place, onsite 26 presents us the opportunity to examine our relationship with dirt’s immediate parallel –waste. Traditionally understood as unusable or unwanted material, is it possible to reframe our relationship with waste, specifically its management through landfilling, in order to load it with agency and to reactivate and organise its potential? another open-space industry that preserves land use to regain some of that lost connectivity? Why not use the landfill as part of a land reservation system? Landfills inadvertantly preserve open space since they cannot be built upon. What is not inherent in the execution of a landfill is its capacity to structure, organise and connect. Land Reservations presents a call to extend the agency of landfills to organise open space networks. n In Southeast Michigan, the open space network is defined as being composed of four primary types: wetlands, cultural parks, grasslands and active agricultural land.While wetlands and cultural parks have a safe-guarded status, grasslands and active agricultural fields are in a more vulnerable position. The region’s current development plan releases grasslands and active agricultural land from any protected status. With this removal, the open space network experiences a significant reduction in its continuity. At the moment of their conception, landfills are located at a point of equilibrium where their distance from developed regions minimises operational impacts while maintaining an economic proximity to sources of waste. When we examine the outward growth of urban centres such as Detroit, this rationale fails to hold. Ironically, four of the six active landfills within Wayne County are now surrounded by development that emerged after the landfills were opened. Thus, the existence of a landfill does not preclude development around it. Just as active agriculture once reserved open space, why not now deploy
industry reorganisation land-use
waste economies detroit by maya przybylski
continuity networks
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Maya Przybylski
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