Over the last few days, the image of ¡Madrid Limpio! (Madrid Clean!) has suffered some tough attacks by the cleaning service of the city Metro system. The first day I went down to the underground since the stroke started, I couldn’t believe what I saw. It looked like a late 1970’s movie set on the rough streets of New York, where rival gangs were fighting. Infected. It’s bizarre to realise how dependant we are of invisible services. These services have become strong and visible this week. We depend on services we don’t know anything about. On the other hand, we see how much waste we produce in the Metro everyday.

Al Gore, Nobel 2007, has turned climate change into an excellent business, according to an article published in ELPAIS this Sunday. The fortune of the former vice-president of USA is calculated to be around 100 million dollars (when he started the campaign it was calculated to be 2 million). He gets 100 000 dollars or more per conference and he has consolidated a few companies working on the environment. It makes you think.

We want to show you this interesting initiative in the African area of XVIII arrondissement in Paris. Three Swiss artists have lived in this area for a month and have taken action, each according to her ideas.

Rahel Hegnauer has acted on an empty plot at number 5 Laghouat street, creating a temporary garden. You can see the whole creative process from her website. You can even download African recipes for cooking the vegetables cultivated in the garden.

We believe these initiatives are very necessary for optimising residual spaces in large cities, where citizens suffer a lack of everyday resources.