Garbage mountains: the use, redevelopment, and artistic representation of New York City's Fresh Kills, Greater Toronto's Keele Valley, and Tel Aviv's Hiriya landfills

Garbage landfills are at the heart of debates over sustainable urban development. Landfills are the cheapest waste-disposal method, but have specific environmental problems and are a common target for citizen activism such as environmental justice and Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) protests. As a means of covering up the scars at recently closed landfills, it has been common for cities to redevelop landfills into parks. The ongoing redevelopment projects at New York City's Fresh Kills, Greater Toronto's Keele Valley, and Greater Tel Aviv's Hiriya landfills are uniquely ambitious and large-scale projects, because these three landfills were among the largest in the world at the time each of them closed around the turn of the twenty-first century. These three landfill-park redevelopments are positive projects, but there are more complexities involved than one would find discussed in booster rhetoric such as government press releases, local newspaper descriptions, and even museum exhibitions. The construction of Freshkills Park, North Maple Regional Park, and Ariel Sharon Park does little to address the ongoing waste-disposal policy concerns of New York, Toronto, and Tel Aviv; therefore, the redevelopments have more significance as “symbols” of a poor past policy being replaced by a “progressive” policy for a better future than as actual waste-disposal policies. Artists and landscape architects have created works based on the theme of parkland as a fresh start for these landfills, in gallery and museum exhibitions such as Hiriya in the Museum at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2000 and artwork created by acclaimed environmental artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles for Fresh Kills.