Giving new meaning to "Mound City" landfills as a historical narrative of St. Louis, Missouri

This thesis presents the position that waste management policies impact the physical urban fabric of a place, as well as its ecological environment, and cultural significance. It illustrates that landfills have shaped the built environment. Landscapes are often perceived as natural, though the reality is man has shaped many of them. The physical environment and how it changes is the result of the influence of our culture. A specific example of this is landfills, which are manipulated and manufactured landscapes at a large scale. Landfills are land use anomalies in the urban fabric. This work is not about fixing or remediating landfills, but rather understanding why places exist the way they do by examining waste management policies. The St. Louis Metropolitan area is the focus area for the study to demonstrate the impact of waste management policies on landfills, and the built environment. Research was conducted on four existing landfill sites that each represent key factors in the built environment. The steps involved entailed the studying of federal and local waste management policies as an effect of landfills, showing a clear connection of the evolution of public policies being an integral role in the impact and outcome of landfills on the built environment. This pattern is supported by a series of inventory maps that illustrate the relationship of landfill development in the metropolitan area to the physical and ecological environment. Further investigation examined the relationships of individual landfills and their relationship to the physical, demographic, environmental, and cultural context