People power in Puerto Rico: how a canal community escaped gentrification

How do you improve a neighbourhood without causing land prices to rise? Residents along a polluted waterway in San Juan set up a community land trust to help save their homes, as well as the environment

For years a graffiti message has appeared throughout San Juan, Puerto Rico's capital, as an urgent demand: Dragado ya! (meaning "dredging now!").

Even passersby who have never set foot in the eight barrios making up the Cano Martin Pena community - a large informal settlement along 3.75 miles of canal in the central city - know the message points to the dire need to dredge the waterway, which has become so clogged with refuse that those driving by with the windows down can immediately smell the stagnant waters.