Places NW+NE: March 2011

I was watching a TED talk on shadow cities today and I realized, "hey, I've been in places like that!" It was called El Bañado near Asuncion, Paraguay and was a city of its own form, with its own rules, economy and culture. Centered around a trash dump on the banks of the Parana river, El Bañado was a world apart from the relatively affluent houses just up the bluff. All over Paraguay there were shanties, but this was a concentration of poverty and lawlessness. Police wouldn't go down there at night typically, for good reason. People earned income by digging through the enormous trash pile for recyclables, then sold them to collectors who would serve as middle men for the recyclers. There were few collectors and they held significant power. Each time I visit the city dump, the smell makes me oddly nostalgic. These shadow cities are massive in most developing countries and are growing into the cities of the future. These pictures below, from other blogs, are good examples of the garbage. I climbed Cerro Lambare to the right.

I searched google for awhile and found that it seems things have progressed in El Bañado since I was there a decade ago. There was some comfort in that.

Afterward, I was thinking about my possible future in planning and what experience I would bring to the table; what places have I experienced? I've tried to list them here—more as a personal reassurance that I might have something unique in experience and perspective to offer the field.