Rejected landscapes-Recycled landscapes. Waste disposal and recycling sites, perspectives and contemporary approaches

This research, strategically articulated in the complex labyrinth of investigation where “not everything seems as it is”, shows the changes of the landscape in the presence of waste, reality that invades the territory in many different surprising ways in time and space. At first the issue of garbage is faced according to language of creativity that range from literature to art, to cinema…and in a second moment on how the inevitable accumulation of garbage designs our new and unexpected astonishing landscapes… in the end, how waste becomes a place. Then, through a list of projects for more or less controlled recovery altered areas, it is explained how the present territorial dimension is inexorably besieged by garbage and consequently of how it is exposed to a substantial environmental, cultural, economic and political transformation. In this way, a sort of “indicative atlas” takes form where, synthetically some interesting and modelled recovery plans are illustrated. Then a close look at Fresh Kills, in the state of New York. Then the difficult task of summarising clarifying the statistical, quantitative “numerical” aspects concerning the production of waste in order to highlight the surprising conditions that today the modern city is presented and therefore, the reasonable need to investigate. In the light of all this, the present study is dedicated, therefore, both to the merely technical, pragmatic aspects as well as the utopian and illusory ones. In any case, both are essential in this articulated labyrinth of research. With a careful, knowing eye we reach time before study, that is: to the critical, strategic and objective evaluation to report through a cartographic survey the present conditions and the effective distribution of plants for waste disposal and collection on the Italian territory, in particular and generally on the European one. We then single out a territorial section touched by the phenomena: the Lombardy region, and then the territorial morphology so altered and the inevitable environmental transformations. The study becomes more and more detailed, pro-active and conscious of the state of needing corrections, substantial improvements and experimental developments. On the light of this, the investigation along highway A4 between Milan and Brescia and more specifically the Province of Brescia where the concentration of waste disposal becomes more and more intense, unique and absolutely extraordinary is considered. Then, through a careful study of the present territorial status conceptual, indicative and synthetic models take form of possible and potential scenarios, present and future, of altered areas of the presence of waste and collection plants. Moreover, how their distribution takes place is explained, according to logical criteria, corrected, and in line with the character of the place and even how, substantially, it takes an articulated structure of actions and reactions able to design a territorial (demonstrated on the census taken) recognizable, clear and consequently, a base for future potential planning. Finally the study of these areas, make up a unique path to observe and evaluate the modern urban structure, where presently it is clear, necessary, essential to have a correct, valid and definite location, leading to territorial changes in different ways. Nevertheless, it is always true that a critical and aware point of view cannot alone resolve the present situation, but it can contribute to giving the right measure of what is at play, therefore different territorial perspectives.