Making a Living: A Framework for Community-Based Waste Management in Jamaica

Abstract

Jamaica has a history of resistance from tyrannical systems that no longer serve the vulnerable and oppressed. The uneven geographical development in Jamaica, influenced by Colonialism, and promulgated by Industrialization and rapid urbanization, has contributed to the expansion of slums, creating an outcast proletariat. This thesis investigates how Riverton City, an informal settlement overshadowed by the municipal city dump, can become a contemporary prototype for self-sufficiency in vulnerable communities by using strategies from our past and through Architectural interventions that support communal work. The principles of this thesis are based in the Marxist theory of base and superstructure. The base is a co-op system that activates the informal waste management in the community and is drawn from Jamaica’s Maroon culture of self-sufficiency. The superstructure is Architecture and the work that it facilitates.