"Garbage in Petare, Design Brief" Summary

For the Urban Planning unit in Technology, I am researching the biggest slum from my hometown, Caracas: Petare. Petare is located to the east border of Caracas, and it is estimated that there are more than 500,000 people living there. In general, Petare is a very unsafe and unhealthy slum; and I will be focusing on the big garbage disposal issue it has been facing for so long. Caracas is located in the north of Venezuela (a northern South-American country).


Petare is living in a sea of trash. The rotting garbage attracts rats and worms to the containers (which aren't big enough to hold the enormous amounts of trash being disposed of by the inhabitants of the slum), and the people's health as well as mood is negatively affected by this issue.

I have developed 3 solution ideas for the garbage issue in Petare, 2 of which are in conjunction with each other. First, I though about building recycled trash containers, in order to increase the amount of places where people are able to dispose of their garbage. Second, I thought about engineering narrow (but tall and long) minitrucks, as the fact that Petare's streets are extremely narrow and uneven isn't helping the garbage collection issue (the idea was to build a vehicle that is manoeuvrable but strong and stable at the same time). Lastly, I have what I like to call the Electroportic Duct. This is my preferred solution idea for the problem in Petare. It is basically a big duct that goes down the hill of the slum where people can dispose of the trash without having to go to extreme places to do so. It will be very long and wide, and it will make the process of disposing of garbage easier.