Rethinking Waste(d) Realities

Abstract

Historically marginalized in urban consciousness, waste in the Global South occupies a complex and layered terrain visible in its overwhelming presence, yet systematically excluded from narratives of progress, design, and planning. In New Delhi, this contrast is embodied in Ghazipur’s so-called “trash mountain” - a towering monument to systemic negligence and infrastructural collapse. A measure first conceived as a temporary solution has evolved into a permanent fixture, reflecting the city’s dependence on centralized, extractive waste systems. The precarious and undervalued labor of informal waste pickers, the toxicity of the air, and the stagnation of land without a future all demonstrate how the silence around waste is not only logistical but deeply spatial, ecological, and political. This thesis reframes waste as a spatial urban condition and explores overlooked opportunities for renewal. It proposes a decentralized, multi-scalar system where linear waste streams become circular and burdened sites become catalysts of transformation. The transformation of the Ghazipur trash mountain is envisioned as a gradual unmaking rather than erasure. Through temporal and ecological interventions, the site shifts from dumpsite to regenerative landscape. Currently a monument to systemic failure, Ghazipur is reimagined through a multi-scalar strategy consisting of citywide zoning and redesigned waste infrastructure with localized material recovery facility, a neighborhood pilot combining waste infrastructure and public commons, and site-specific remediation of the 70-meter-high landfill through bioremediation, phytoremediation, and constructed wetlands. Together, these interventions restore ecology, recover resources, and reinsert the site into public life, while making visible the labor that sustains it.

Rethinking Waste(d) Realities builds on currents already visible in Indian cities beyond Delhi. Biomining initiatives, decentralized collection systems, and growing legal and civic pressure to remediate landfills point to a real appetite for systemic change. This thesis positions design within that momentum, showing how architecture and landscape can help reorganize waste from crisis to resource.