Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Abbreviations
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- one Introduction: narratives of organising waste in the city
- Part I Spaces, places and sites of waste in the city
- Part II Global waste discourses and narratives shaping local practices
- Part III Waste governance and management practices
- Part IV Waste and environmental, economic and social justice
- Index
two - The ecological and environmental significance of urban wastelands and drosscapes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Abbreviations
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- one Introduction: narratives of organising waste in the city
- Part I Spaces, places and sites of waste in the city
- Part II Global waste discourses and narratives shaping local practices
- Part III Waste governance and management practices
- Part IV Waste and environmental, economic and social justice
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Waste is a major theme in urban planning and landscape design. However, while the majority of chapters in this book focus on urban waste in the form of household and industrial waste, this chapter examines waste and more particularly wastelands in the urban spatial context. Waste is a difficult concept to define yet, as Blaustein (2011: 5) observes, ‘our cultural definitions and regulations of waste are central to the ordering of our environments and ourselves’ (see also Kennedy, 2007). Blaustein (2011: 5) argues that ideas of waste are ‘registered in terms of space (blight, sprawl, vacancy), time (waiting, boredom, drudgery), resources (refuse, trash), and increasingly in terms of digital information technologies (e-waste, obsolescence, “delete”), waste marks the residue, the left-over, the cast-off, the remainder, the damaged, the unclassifiable, the useless’. According to Lynch (1990a: 146), waste ‘is worthless or unused for human purpose. It is a lessening of something without useful result; it is loss and abandonment, decline, separation and death. It is the spent and valueless material left after some act of production or consumption, but can also refer to any used thing: garbage, trash, litter, junk, impurity and dirt. There are waste things, waste lands, waste time and wasted lives.’ Similarly, Berger (2006a: 203) argues that:
contemporary modes of industrial production driven by economical and consumerist influences contribute to urbanization and the formation of waste landscapes – meaning actual waste (such as municipal solid waste, sewage, scrap metal, and so on), wasted places (such as abandoned and/or contaminated sites) or wasteful places (such as oversized parking lots or duplicate big-box retail venues). (emphasis in original)
The description of parts of the city as wasteland is often seen in terms of the social construction of the urban environment (Hough, 2004). While such a perspective is important for understanding how landscapes are perceived, it may tell us little about the urban ecological significance of such locations. This chapter provides an ecological perspective on supposed urban wastelands by identifying their environmental functions. It first examines the way in which wasteland has come to be regarded as urban wilderness, before looking at issues of urban biodiversity. It then discusses the ecological value of wastelands that are some of the most species-rich environments in many cities. However, although ecologically significant, wasteland is not necessarily socially valued.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Organising Waste in the CityInternational Perspectives on Narratives and Practices, pp. 21 - 40Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2013