Short-Term Occupations in La Cuenca del Riachuelo-Matanzas La Cuenca del Riachuelo-Matanzas in Buenos Aires is one of the 30 most polluted urban sites in the world, with a population of nearly 5 million people and an asymmetric distribution of resources. La Cuenca del Riachuelo-Matanzas is a “grey” zone (vacant land, industrial zones in decline, zones of uncertain legal use, large infrastructures, hybrid use etc.), presents 4 political environmental effects. - The collision between the State, the population, industry and technology does not generate just friction but also fields of indifference and invisibility. - The form of this debate is that of a disseminated and multiform assembly to discuss for example the statute of private property, the differences between refuse and product, how to erase the limit between nature and society. - There is an effect of mixing the local and the global in this “grey” zone, the discarded materials with which temporary homes are built are part of a global logistics system. The industrial policies of the Cuenca are also an effect of the interplay between the local and the global. - Modern technological processes generate a whole landscape of collateral material and forms, their utility and ownership being debated in the temporary ways of occupying these “grey” areas. This is a critical way of using technology.