Residual Spaces

In terms of theoretical engagement in urban studies, I have been exploring what I refer to as residual space, but has alternatively been characterized by terms such as urban voids, wastelands, terrains vagues, indeterminate spaces, no man’s lands, leftover spaces, and a multitude of other classifications. My interest is largely in the way that discourses around particular types of urban landscapes serve to emphasize an illusory emptiness and to justify their reconfiguration and greater reintegration into the circuits of capital. I also argue that there is a longstanding relationship between urban industrialization and the outlaying of successive layers of urban infrastructures (especially of transport), and that the dual presence of such infrastructure (canals, highways, railways, etc.) and former industrial land interact in order to create indeterminate spaces within cities which are now perceived as new development frontiers.

These spaces have also have become aestheticized (a process I admit that I take part in), and the indeterminate spaces created by infrastructures and deindustrialization have also become key sites of practice for architects, landscape architects, and urban designers. Thus, the contemporary fascination I identify with such spaces/landscapes is in part driven by a desire of urbanists to emphasize the design (and by extension economic) potential of such sites, with others emphasizing the unruliness and possibilities embedded within them.

One of my publications that deals with this theme more directly was a chapter in the book Global Garbage entitled “Waste and Value in Urban Transformation.” It explores the concept of the urban wasteland within broader conceptions of waste, then looking at the relationship between infrastructure and “leftover” urban spaces through an examination of the former dockland of Pomona in Manchester, England. It considers how the flight of industrial capital from cities like Manchester has generated the production and perception of urban wastelands. Proliferating in the terrains vagues of deindustrialization and fragmented spaces of infrastructure, wastelands are defined by their disorderly or unmaintained appearance, their functional or perceived obsolescence, the anxiety they inspire (in some), and their economic underperformance. Therefore, their wastefulness is defined, first, through an apparent lack of social or economic value, and second, through the presence of waste matter, ruination, transgressive social behavior, and ‘wild’ nature. But, ultimately, I argue that there are multiple values embedded in waste spaces, and concerns for the supposed valuelessness of urban wastelands often subsume social and cultural values and ecological value against economic value. From this perspective, the mobilization of the term “wasteland” in public discourse is a normative instrument, utilized to justify the reconfiguration and profit-making potential of a site and to de-emphasize any values that conflict with this goal.

Due to my focus on the theme of urban infrastructures, residual spaces, and territorial inequality, I current consult as an Ad Hoc Expert for the European Union-funded program URBACT, advising the project RiConnect, “an Action Planning Network of 8 metropolises… to rethink, transform and integrate mobility infrastructures in order to reconnect people, neighbourhoods, cities and natural spaces” led by the Área Metropolitana de Barcelona. As part of this project, in December of 2020 I gave a webinar entitled “When is a Wasteland? A Critical Understanding of Infrastructure and Residual Space” to participating teams from the 8 cities involved, coordinated by the project’s Lead Expert, Vienna-based planner Roland Krebs. A summary of these arguments can be found in this short article on the URBACT website.