GUNPOWDER PARK: A CASE STUDY OF POST-INDUSTRIAL REINHABITATION by SHAl\TNON K. TYMAN A THESIS Presented to the Environmental Studies Program and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts September 2008 "Gunpowder Parle: A Case Study ofPost-Industrial Reinhabitation," a thesis prepared by Shannon K. Tyman in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the Environmental Studies Program. This thesis has been approved and accepted by: Dr. Louise Westling, Chair of the Exami 11 Date Committee in Charge: Accepted by: Dr. Louise Westling, Chair Dr. Ted Toadvine Leslie Ryan Dean of the Graduate School An Abstract of the Thesis of Shannon Tyman for the degree of in the Environmental Studies Program to be taken Master of Arts September 2008 111 Title: GUNPOWDER PARK: A CASE STUDY OF POST-INDUSTRIAL REINHABITATION Approved: __- -- _ Dr. LouisewestlingV- As urbanization increases, there is growing pressure upon derelict and contaminated sites (i.e. brownfields) for new development. Creatively (re)considering these post-industrial spaces is essential to ecological health. Ecology, as philosopher Felix Guattari has observed, is not a simple equation but a complex of relations. As the landscape plays a critical role in mediating the human-nature relationship, the recomposition of our landscapes may enable a new quality of (postmodem, urban) life. Just outside of Greater London, Gunpowder Park provides an example of a munitions testing site that is now a park for arts, science, and nature. The new alliances developing on this site stress an artistic perspective and thus gesture toward dwelling differently. Synthesized from bioregionalism and Guattari' s ethico-aesthetic paradigm, reinhabitation is developed as a place-engaged, politically-active, ethically-attentive, and aesthetically- inspired lifestyle through which to take responsibility for our landscapes and seek new relationships with ourselves and the world around us. CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Shannon K. Tyman PLACE OF BIRTH: Carbondale,IL DATE OF BIRTH: 22 April 1981 GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon Bryn Mawr College DEGREES AWARDED: Master of Arts in Environmental Studies, 2008, University of Oregon Bachelor of AI1s in Growth and Structure of Cities, 2003, Bryn Mawr College AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Post-industrial Landscapes Urban Ecology Avant-Gardening Landscape Urbanism Radical Ecologies Molecular Revolutions PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, Environmental Studies Program,University of Oregon, Eugene, 2006-2008. Team Leader, Urban Farm, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2008. GRANTS, AWARDS AND HONORS: Coeta and Donald Barker Research Award, University of Oregon, 2008 Coeta and Donald Barker Research Award, University of Oregon, 2007 IV PUBLICATIONS: Tyman, Shannon. "Bathtub in the Bushes." The Ecotone (Spring 2008),25. -. "Concentrics: A Photo Essay." The Ecotone. (Spring 2007),20-21. -. "Ephemeral Territories." The Ecotone (Spring 2007), 30-31. -. "Radical Movements: a review of Babylon and Beyond." Capitalism, Nature, Socialism (June 2008),121-122. -. "Review of The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved by Sandor Ellix Katz." Biodynamics (Spring 2008), 12-13. v VI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Environmental Studies Program is composed of a diverse group of individuals in a unique interdisciplinary setting; I have truly benefited from my participation in this community. I wish to express my appreciation to my committee for their participation in my thesis. Leslie Ryan inspired the initial impetus for this project and put me in touch with others who provided intellectual stimulus along the way. Dr. Louise Westling provided personal support and academic advice throughout the process. Special thanks to Newton Harrison for taking the time to dialogue with me. Thanks also to Eileen Woods, Tony Beckwith, Emma Marcello, and David Haley. Everyone at Gunpowder Park, visitors and employees alike, was helpful and willing to answer my many questions. Also, my appreciation to Peter Marshall for permission to use his photographs. Finally, my deepest gratitude for the companionship ofmy cats, Nube and Sonsie, and Andrew. Thanks for all the late night talks, walles, and soft subversions. To Turcot Yards, Montreal. VB Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: SITUATING REINHABITATION 1 Methodology 3 Philosophical Foundations 7 La Borde 7 Chapter Overview 9 II. THE POST-INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE 11 (A Note on) Post-Industrial Society 11 (A Note on) Tenninology 13 From a Landscape Perspective........................ 15 The Post-Industrial Landscape 16 The Post-Industrial Cityscape 19 Public Landscapes in Post-Industrial Cities 22 The Dangers and Joys of Public Space: Art, Leisure, Heritage 24 Total War 26 III. GUNPOWDER PARK: A PARK UNLIKE ANY OTHER 30 Post-Industrial City: London, England in the Twenty-First Century........... 30 Lea Valley: History and Context 32 Contemporary Landscape 36 Lee Valley Regional Park Authority 38 Gunpowder Park 42 Landscape, Design, and Construction. 45 Environmental Ecology 51 Operations Ecology..................................... 53 Bright Sparks, Rising Waters 55 The Art of Common Space 57 IX Chapter Page Park Use 58 Arts, Science, and Nature.......................................................................... 63 Making Place, Creating Identity 64 The Future of the Lea Valley: The Olympics and Beyond............................ 66 IV. A METHODOLOGY OF REINHABITATION 68 Guattari's Ecosophy 69 Reinhabitation 74 Dwelling 75 Beyond Bioregionalism: The Dangers of Militant Particularism 78 Why Reinhabitation? 81 (A Note on) Methodology 83 Responsible Aesthetics 86 Ethical Relations....................................... 88 Thinking Like An Artist 91 The Ethico-Aesthetic Politics of Reinhabitation: A New Art of Living 95 V. CONCLUSION: MUTANT ECOLOGIES AND METAMORPHOSES 98 New Universes of Reference 98 APPENDIX: GUNPOWDER PARK MANAGEMENT MAPS 103 BIBLIOGRAPHY 107 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 2.1 Urban Landscapes....................................................... 20 2.2 Turcot Yards, Montreal 28 3.1 Map of London 31 3.2 Lee-Enfield Rifle 34 3.3 Enfield Island Village 35 3.4 Lee Valley Regional Park 37 3.5 Entrance to Gunpowder Park 42 3.6 Gunpowder Park and Immediate Area 43 3.7 Warehouse Horizon 44 3.8 WWII Ammunitions Dump 45 3.9 Map of Gunpowder Park............................................................................. 47 3.10 Gunpowder Park in Photos 48 3.11 Bird Hides, Wooden Bridge 49 3.12 Memory in Stone 51 3.13 Diverse Flora and Fauna 53 3.14 Warning Signs at Gunpowder Park............ 58 3.15 Site of the 2012 Olympics 66 4.1 Terraforming The World 83 x Xl LIST OF TABLES T~k P~e 3.1. Gunpowder Park Visitor Interview Responses 60 1CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: SITUATING REINHABITATION It's sometimes necessary to jump at the opportunity, to approve, to run the risk ofbeing wrong, to give it a go, to say, 'yes, perhaps this experience is important. ' Felix Guattari1 Hwnan use of land has, arguably, been the single greatest violence wrought upon the natural world. In one way or another, our current tenuous ecological position is founded upon our (mis)use of this valuable and non-renewable resource. Land, though, is more than simply a resource. In fact, it is a borderline insult to describe it as such; land is the foundation of both spaces and places. In conjunction with air, warmth, and water, it is the comerstone oflife, the basis of agriculture, and the foundation of our homes. The human relationship to land is thus one of utmost importance as we enter the increasingly urban Age of Global Warming and the' greening' of consumption. Decommissioned military sites, abandoned inner-city factories, and former steel mills have left in their wake the post-industrial landscape, a "surreal spectacle of abandonment and decay."z These sites play an important role in the greater spatial configuration of metropolises because, among other reasons, they are the new building sites of the Westem world in response to increasing pressure to build on brownfield rather than greenfield land. As Warwick Fox astutely observes, "The fate of the 'green bits' of the planet is now inextricably bound up with-indeed effectively at the mercy I Felix Guattari. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, trans. Paul Bains and Julie Pefanis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 18. For the remainder of this document, Chaosmosis will be referred to as CS. 2 Grahame Shane, "The Emergence of Landscape Urbanism," in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Charles Waldheim (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), 57. 2of-the future of the 'brown bits. ",3 These brown sites are also temporally significant as the result of historical-geographical processes and can be both environmentally toxic and ecologically diverse. My thesis is about the conceptual framework that underlies the sustainable renewal of post-industrial land. I specifically explore post-industrial land as an opportunity to redefine human dwelling from an ecological perspective. I ask, how can thoughtful (re)use ofpost-industrial land reflect a more ecologically-sound way ofliving? My argument here is that you cannot simply remediate polluted land, move soil around and, voila! I use 'reinhabitation' to describe a methodology with which to approach the post-industrial landscape that is ethically and aesthetically aware. Reinhabitation means radically reconceive our lifestyles, defined as material and immaterial relations, to accommodate new materials that are not toxic to ecosystem health and new social attitudes that are democratic and non-hierarchical. As Niall Kirkwood observes, "The challenge we're facing as we move into the twenty-first century is not only to remediate contamination, but to create thoughtfully designed healthy communities that overcome the environmental ravages of our history.,,4 The sociologist Galen Cranz suggests that parks can be "a perfect world in miniature, one that provides nonns for the larger world to live up to.,,5 Michael Hough, Professor of Environmental Studies at York University and a landscape architect, has called post-industrial land "the parks of the twenty-first century.,,6 Therefore, I have chosen a post-industrial site that is now a park to focus my discussion. My site, 3 Warwick Fox, "Introduction," in Ethics and the Built Environment, ed. Warwick Fox (New York: Routledge, 2000), 3. 4 Niall Kirkwood, "Response: Living Laboratories; Studies in Infrastructure and Industrial Land," in Manufactured Sites: Rethinking the Post-industrial Landscape, ed. Niall Kirkwood (New York: Spon Press, 2001), 70. 5 From The Politics ofPark Design: A HistOlY ofUrban Park.s in America as quoted in Julia Czerniak, "Introduction/Speculating on Size," in Large Parks, ed. Julia Czerniak & George Hargreaves (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 29. 6 Michael Hough, "Foreword," in Manufactured Sites: Rethinking the Post-industrial Landscape (New York: Spon Press, 2001), xiii. 3Gunpowder Park (GP), is not portrayed as an ideal, but rather as a test case for reinhabitory work complete with innovations, successes, and failures. METHODOLOGY To approach this topic I have drawn from a methodology increasingly used in landscape architecture: the case study. A case study is a well-documented and systematic examination of the process, decision-making and outcomes of a project, which is undertaken for the purpose of informing future practice, policy, theory, and/or education.? Case studies variously describe and evaluate sites. They aid in teaching by example and theory building. Mark Francis, professor and former chair of the landscape architecture department at the University of California, Davis, summarizing information from a research project conducted by the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAP), concludes that "As [landscape architecture] develops more of its own theory and knowledge base and communicates this more broadly, the case study method promises to be an effective way to advance the profession.,,8 He notes that "There is a critical need for case studies of more modest, everyday landscapes such as urban gardens, greenways, etc.,,9 Geographer Don Mitchell observes the need for sustained landscape analysis. He argues that landscapes "are actively produced and struggled over and it is the politics of production and struggle that ought to engage landscape studies."lo He notes that there has not been significant research conducted as to the way that 'ordinary people' receive, understand, and use landscapes. 11 7 Mark Francis, "A Case Study Method for Landscape Architecture," Landscape Journal 20, no. 1 (2001):16. 8 Ibid, 15. 9 Ibid, 18. 10 Don Mitchell, "The lure of the local: landscape studies at the end of a h'oubled century," Progress in Human Geography 25, no. 2 (2001): 271. 11 Ibid, 276. 4In this project, I used a multi-method approach, including contextual and specialized material and interviews, to perform an in-depth case study of a park on post- industrial land. I read the landscape of my case study site as a text that is the result of cultural, historical, political, and economic influences. This involved extensive research into theoretical and contextual background material. I also examined texts, both political and experimental, official and narrative, about the landscape of my site. The texts I examined included historical documents, information from the park management, nonfiction narratives, news articles, and even blog opinions. I was able to travel to the site myself, which provided personal familiarity with the landscape, an opportunity to interview the people working with the park, and the chance to document the park through maps and photographs. Alas, shortly after my travels, my computer crashed and I lost all but ten or so of my photographs. Thankfully, I was able to find images, both amateur and professional, on-line to supplement the few of my own that remained. I chose Gunpowder Park, located just outside of London, England, as my case study site because it specifically incorporates art, science, and nature into its reclamation process. Gunpowder Park is not portrayed as an ideal, but serves as a test site for my model of post-industrial reinhabitation. Gunpowder Park is 90 hectares (approximately 225 acres) of reclaimed green space described as a "country park for the benefit of wildlife, people and the arts."I2 The site can variously be typified as (metropolitan) open space, greenway/parkway, historic landscape, and restored/reclaimed land. The Park takes its name from its former use as a Royal Ordnance Munitions Testing Facility that was closed to the public for 100 years. Awkwardly located between a pivotal commuter autoroute, the M25, mixed occupancy dwellings, and an industrial warehouse, this public space challenges definitions of urban and rural. Gunpowder Park is a (post)modem commons in an age of increasing privatization. It is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with no perimeter fences but CCTV monitoring in the parking lot and around the Field Station. The programming is managed by a non-profit landscape architecture firm, Landscape+Arts Network Services 12 Gunpowder Park, www.gunpowderpark.org. 5(LANS), a registered UK charity, in partnership with Lee Valley Regional Park Authority (LVRPA). The Park claims to "effect social change through policy development and facilitate creatively led capital development through informed joined-up decision making between artists and local authorities.,,13 In concept and in application, Gunpowder Park has an embedded element of dialogue. The Park was created when 100,000 m3of new soil was brought to the site to cover clay-capped toxic soil with a thin, 3 meter-deep shell. Hence, Gunpowder Park is by no means an idyllic landscape where the interests of art, science and nature coincide, rather it is a highly managed public green space on a formerly State-run weapons testing and disposal grounds. It is very much a work in progress and could provide an example of open-ended reuse ofpost-industrial land. To successfully fulfill its own expectations Gunpowder Park has to create more than a pretty meadow complete with larks; it must push the boundaries oftraditional ecological paradigms and enable the evolution of ecological relationships between the environment, the community and the individuals that visit. A number of limitations to case studies have been identified, and my project is no exception. A specific limitation of my case study is that Gunpowder Park is very new. It opened in 2004 and so was only just over three years old when I visited. It has been observed that some projects are best evaluated after ten or so years. 14 The newness of the Park made it an exciting place to explore, both physically and conceptually, but it would be advisable to revisit the Park in another five or so years to reevalutate. Another limitation to the case study methodology is that it is difficult to compare different case studies because of the variety of research methods used. In addition, a lack of objectivity has been observed within the case study method. But, it is a mistake to assume a site can be approached from anything other than a subjective standpoint. For 13 Gunpowder Park, www.gunpowderpark.org. 14 Mark Francis, "A Case Study Method for Landscape Architecture," Landscape Journal 20, no. 1 (2001):18. 6"Who speaks the truth?"15 Sites are managed, constructed, and designed. A landscape architect herself, Anne Spim remarks, "Designers are storytellers.,,16 And "Storytelling," writes Walter Benjamin, does not aim to convey the pure essence of a thing, like information or a report. It sinks the things into the life of the storyteller, in order to bring it out of him again. Thus traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel. 17 Designing, storytelling, and case studying are all subjective experiences. Differences in approach and perspective serve to enrich and strengthen theoretical engagement with the landscape. While I believe it is a witch-hunt to seek any sense of objectivity when telling the story of a landscape or a place (or for that matter, at any time), I also see the need for continuity between case studies that would allow for comparison. There is potential for a flexible case study structure that would welcome subjective engagement while providing essential infomlation enabling comparative analyses. I strive to use the case-study method in this mutually satisfying way. Therefore, I investigated published landscape architecture case studies for commonalities. I identified essential components of a landscape architecture case study including design, construction, process, technique, concept, temporality, meaning, fixed form, function, and management. I use these components to guide the story of my site. Not only does this work study an "everyday landscape" but it satisfies another requirement for case studies identified by Mark Francis; it is a case study that engages "effective design practices, aesthetics, landscape perception, what constitutes a successful project, and design theory.,,18 This work contributes to a growing body of criticism and critical theory not only in landscape architecture, but eco-criticism, environmental studies, urban planning, and geography. 15 CS, 86. 16 Anne Whiston Spirn, The Language ofLandscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 267. 17 As quoted in Felix Guattari, The Three Ecologies, trans. Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton (New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone Press), 67. For the remainder of this document, The Three Ecologies will be referred to as 3E. 18 Mark Francis, "A Case Study Method for Landscape Architecture," Landscape Journal 20, no. 1 (2001): 27. PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDAnONS The theoretical underpinnings of my work lie with the French experimental psychoanalyst and radical philosopher Felix Guattari. Referencing primarily The Three Ecologies and his last book, Chasomosis, I apply Guattari's ecosophy to reinhabitation. Guattari presents a triadic or three-pronged set of interrelationships for us to consider. He identifies the social, environmental, and mental as (ecological) lenses through which to understand the transversal interface of natureculture, that is the multi-directional relation between humans, self, and other. 19 He means not to divide ecology irreparably, but, by complicating ecological understandings, he means to engage us more fully in the reality of our lives-in-relation. I chose to embed my discussion ofpost-industrial reihabitation in Guattari' s ecosophy for three reasons. First, Guattari is down to earth in his recognition ofthe environmental disasters that surround us. Second, because he was a psychoanalyst (he died in 1992) who worked with crazy people, he recognizes that the way we behave towards ourselves and others impacts the way we behave towards our environments (and all the other ways around). Finally, he makes it clear that ecology is all about material and immaterial relations, and, therefore, about the way we relate. In my thesis, I use the word lifestyle to describe the relations that make up our daily lives, both material, with the things we use and the architectonics of our surroundings, and the immaterial, the way we greet our neighbors human and non-human. LaBorde Not only does Felix Guattari's triadic ecosophy, under the aegis of his ethico- aesthetic paradigm, offer a revolutionary lens through which to view the post-industrial landscape, Guattari's own work at the La Borde clinic in France provides an example of the reinhabitory approach. This psychiatric clinic or 'mad house' as it is more 19 DOlma Haraway uses this term to express the inextricable 'nature' of the natural and the human. 7 8colloquially known, was the "first experiment in 'Institutional Psychotherapy' in the context of a private establishment.,,2o Upon request, Guattari aided in establishing an intra-hospital committee called the Patients' Club. This group was involved in "multiple collective proceedings: general assemblies, joint commissions between patients and personnel, and 'workshops' of all kinds: newspaper, drawing, sewing, raising chickens, gardening, etc.,,21 Not only were unique group activities embarked upon, but the traditional hierarchy of the clinic was overthrown. Guattari began by asking, "How did one avoid creating a rift between the presumably 'noble' tasks of the medical staff and the thankless, material tasks of the service personnel?,,22 And[ ... ] in a few months time, the clinic's institutional landscape would change radically. An old washerwoman proved very capable of mmling the print workshop and editorial committee of the newspaper; another excelled in sporting activities, a former metallurgist showed great talent in leading mime shows ... 23 At La Borde, Guattari observed, "one can count about forty activities for a population consisting ofjust a hundred patients and seventy staffmembers.,,24 Importantly, these activities are not necessarily those that one might expect in the landscape of a psychiatric hospital. Inherent to the process is the "constant activity of calling things into question [...which institutes] individual and collective assumptions of responsibility.,,25 Activities are organized around the principle of continuous reinvention and non-traditional roles which in tum engender a sense of responsibility for events one is 'in charge of.' Through this "general desegregation,,26, the patients are exposed to new 20 Felix Guattari, "La Borde: A Clinic Unlike Any Other," in Chaosophy, ed. Sylvere Lotringer, trans. David L. Sweet (New York: Serniotext(e), 1995), 187. 21 Ibid, 189. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid, 190. 24 Ibid, 193. 25 Ibid, 191. 26 Ibid, 200. 9ways ofliving, the doctors are inspired to try new 'treatments,' and the employees of the clinic given the opportunity to learn new skills and discover new talents. For Guattari, "this is the essential thing, this change of relation with the world.,,27 The greatest concerns at La Borde were for authentic engagement in all relations and the continuous fostering of subjectivities. "Treatment is not a work of art, yet it must proceed from the same sort of creativity.,,28 There is no permanent 'treatment' at La Borde. Rather there is a process of creating treatments. "Thus, the ideal situation would be one in which no two institutions were alike and no individual institution ever ceased evolving in the course oftime.,,29 No work occurs in a vacuum, and the work at La Borde proves to be no exception. "By working day to day with its hundred or so patients, La Borde gradually found itself involved in wider, global issues of health, pedagogy, prison conditions, femininity, architecture, urbanism.,,30 The manner in which those at La Borde engaged with each other, changed the landscape of the clinic and, in tum, the relations between those at the clinic and the vaster landscapes of the external world also changed. Creating a space where one might act differently and imaginatively, a place for playing, can change one's entire ecological orientation. Guattari's work in theory and application inspires and informs my discussion ofreinhabiting the post-industrial landscape. CHAPTER OVERVIEW In Chapter II, I define the post-industrial landscape. Current literature on the topic of the post-industrial landscape is not confined to a particular discipline, but rather can be found in a wide array of project proposals, theoretical work, and empirical studies by academics, architects, landscape architects, urban planners, geographers, city 27 Felix Guattari, "La Borde: A Clinic Unlike Any Other," in Chaosophy, ed. Sylvere Lotringer, trans. David L. Sweet, (New York: Semiotext(e), 1995), 192. 28 Ibid, 205. 29 Ibid, 208. 30 Ibid, 195. 10 governments, and artists. Policy makers and lawyers are faced with deciphering complex regulations and environmental justice imperatives surrounding redevelopment, remediation procedures, and (re)use. I explore this literature in Chapter II, extracting threads of particular interest to my case study site and development of the term reinhabitation. Chapter III is the story of Gunpowder Park. I trace its relation to the surrounding region, its history and that ofthe area, and its contemporary role as regenerated parkland. Guattari's ecosophy is engaged in Chapter IV as a means of conceiving of a future for such reinhabitation projects. His ethico-aesthetic paradigm is one of liberation from the homogeneity often associated with the scientific paradigm's search to define an objectivity. Underlying this paradigm is the suggestion that how a landscape looks and feels affects how we might act within it. Examples from Gunpowder Park are used as tangible examples of reinhabitory work. Michael Hough writes that his primary concern is how the environmental and social health ofthe city might be improved; health, he says, concerns "life systems as a whole.,,31 In answer to Hough's concern for holism and with the help of Guattari's sense of ecology, I am writing to offer alternatives to dichotomous relationships and the traditional dualisms of nature/culture, urban/rural, historic/contemporary, toxicity/health, ecology/technology, city/wild, artificial/natural, pure/impure. I ask, what would an ecological relationship between humans and post-industrial land look like? How might the landscape and the management of our parks define and/or contribute to this relationship? I am exploring new ways of using, experiencing, and representing space. This thesis is a journey of discovery in search of an ecological methodology of reinhabitation and the tools that we might make use of along the way. 31 Michael Hough, Cities and Natural Process: A Basisfor Sustainability, (New York: Routledge, 2004), 24. 11 CHAPTER II THE POST-INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE I do not separate humans/rom the rest o/the ecosystem. Gilles CLemenr How we see things andplaces is...primary. Robert Smithson2 It is my project in this chapter to adopt an ecological stance on the topic of the post-industrial landscape. I argue that landscapes are dynamic entities that reflect lifestyles. Public, post-industrial space has potential to provide opportunities for new lifestyles and to inspire play. I begin by explaining what I mean by the post-industrial landscape and why it is essential to approach this space. (A NOTE ON) POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY In 1973 the sociologist Daniel Bell published The Coming ofPost-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting in which he describes the transition from pre- industrial society ("dependent on raw labor power and the extraction of primary resources from nature") to industrial society ("organized around the axis of production and machinery, for the fabrication of goods,,).3 He proceeds throughout the series of essays J Gilles Clement, "Working with (and never against) Nature," in Environ(ne)ment: Approachesfor Tomorrow, ed. Giovanni Borasi, (Milano, Italy: Skira; Montreal, Quebec: CCA, 2007), 90. 2 From The Writings ofRobert Smithson (1979), 221. In Linda Pollack, ""Matrix Landscape: Construction of Identity in the Large Park," in Large Parks, ed. Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 98. 3 Daniel Bell, The Coming ofPost-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973), x. 12 that compose the book to prophesize the coming of post-industrial society, "a view," he writes, "from the twenty-first century.,,4 After the industrial glory of WorId War II died down, the 1960s were a time of unease, revolution, and transition. Bell was by no means the only theorist engaging with the concept of a societal transition from one defined by industry toward something new. The French sociologist Alain Touraine had written a book in 1971 entitled The Post- Industrial Society where he is generally credited with 'coining' the term as it is now commonly used. Seven years later, in 1978, sociologist Krishan Kumar expanded upon Touraine and Bell's work in Prophecy and Progress. Other disciplines took up the concept of a society in transition as well. Murray Bookchin, the' father' of social ecology used the term 'post-scarcity' most famously in his essay "Listen, Marxist!" published in the collection Post-scarcity Anarchism (1971). Kevin Lynch, an academic city planner, was thinking about the spatial implications of change in 1972 as he wrote What Time Is This Place? Psychology was contemplating the affects ofthese changes on the human psyche and day-to-day existence (see for instance Theodore Roszak's Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society, 1972, and Don Mankin's Toward a Post-industrial Psychology, 1978). Daniel Bell's ideas, though, are most commonly used to describe the concept of the post-industrial society and remain useful today. He defines five categorical characteristics of such a society: 1. Economic sector: the change from a goods-producing to a service economy; 2. Occupational distribution: the pre-eminence of the professional and technical class; 3. Axial principle: the centrality of theoretical knowledge as the source of imlOvation and of policy formulation for the society; 4. Future orientation: the control of technology and technological assessment; 5. Decision-making: the creation of a new "intellectual technology."s I explicitly add to this list, as does A Dictionary ofGeography, high levels of urbanization. 4 Daniel Bell, The Coming ofPost-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973), xi. 5 Ibid, 14. 13 (A NOTE ON) TERMINOLOGY The tenn 'post-industrial' is a complicated one that tangos with post-modernism and harkens dark science fiction images of Big Brother, suits and ties, and a genetically- controlled infonnation society. Thirty years after Bell's seminal book, geographer Susan Mayhew writes, "the development of a post-industrial society is linked only with very advanced economies, if it exists at all.,,6 Post-industrial is not a structural object, but a concept. In her book The Post-modern and the Post-industrial: A Critical Analysis, Margaret A. Rose observes that Bell was concerned with "the widening gap between the economy, the polity and culture."? This gap between, very basically, society and its values does not represent a clear break from industlial society or, for that matter, pre- industrial society, but a continuation. The argument is that we are post-modem societies living amidst the dregs and slag heaps of industrialism. The academic landscape architect Alan Berger warns against the dangerous spatial-temporal implications of the tenn 'post-industrial' because, he argues, it "reifies the site as essentially static and defines it in tenns ofthe past rather than as part of ongoing industrial processes that fonn other parts of the city."s Geographer Edward Soja describes the post-industrial 'movement' as "a na"ive and simplistic 'rush to the post'-to a postindustrialism ... that insists on a finalizing end to an era, as if the past can be peeled away and discarded.,,9 Berger suggests that the tenn deindustrialization be used in lieu of 'post-industrial. ' 6 Susan Mayhew, "Post-industrial society," A DictionCllY o.lGeography (Oxford Reference Online: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.encyclopedia.com/A+Dictionary+of+Geography/publications.aspx. 7 Margaret A. Rose, The Post-modern and the Post-industrial: A Critical Analysis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 30. 8 Alan Berger, "Drosscape," in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Charles Wa1dheim (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), 200. 9 Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies (London: Verso, 1989), 170. As quoted in Richard Heyman, "Postindustrial park or bourgeois playground? Preservation and urban restructuring at Seattle's Gas Works Park," in The Nature ofCities: Ecocriticism and Urban Environments, ed. Michael Bennett and David W. Teague (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999), 114. 14 A critique of What Time Is This Place? by urban planner and theorist Kevin Lynch is particularly relevant here. In his call for an identifiable future for which people may prepare, Lynch prescribes, to use French philosopher Jacques Derrida's terminology, le futur rather than l 'avenir. Le futur is the prescribed future. It is the future that the past has already defined and the present strives for. L 'avenir is the open future. It is the future of the other; it is unimaginable from our current position, our current perspective. For Kevin Lynch, 'acceptable change' is "legible and fairly rapid, concentrated in time or space to make a noticeable difference, yet made up of moderate increments that can be deferred without disrupting the entire process."]O The future for Lynch cannot extend beyond the expectable. "While attempting to keep the future open," he argues, "there is no need to keep it wide open, able to change into anything else imaginable ...No one can choose among infinite possibilities."]] It is just this width, though, which might acconmlodate multiplicitous trajectories. The work of Bell and many others at the time was future-oriented; its work was to predict what might be next, hence the term post-industrial. The future became something for which to plan, if not to create. Listening to Soja and Berger's warning with a desire to remain open to l 'avenir, I am not superimposing a particular "post-industrial subjectivity" here. 12 I recognize that in the West we remain an industrially-dependent society with a growing 'service' industry and globalized production pathways. We are surrounded by post-industrial landscapes and grocery stores with shelves loaded high with industrial products. I cringe at the imposition of a word that veils material human involvement with the things of our lives. I also recognize that as modes of production change, so too do social relations. Yet there is a fine line between allowing ourselves to more on and denying the past. Rather than attempt to describe an unclear and polemically-charged post-industrial society, then, I am explicitly discussing the post-industrial landscape. 10 Kevin Lynch, What Time Is This Place? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972),205. II Emphasis in original. Ibid, 114. 12 3E, 63. 15 FROM A LANDSCAPE PERSPECTIVE Landscape is a Mise-en-scene!3 of politics, aesthetics, ethics, history, and identity; landscapes are relationally revealing. How we see the landscape is a reflection of our own understanding of self and our place in the world. For example, in the United States, from a specifically ethnocentric perspective, wilderness is a landscape apart from the human whereas the urban skyline is 'ours.' Art critic and scholar Lucy Lippard quotes geographer Denis Cosgrove who describes landscape as "the external world mediated through human subjective experience.,,14 From a phenomenological standpoint, "Landscape is our body's space ofperception.,,15 Landscape is a horizon and a way of looking. Yet the landscape is not structured; it is open-ended and vast. "Landscape traditionally concerns the temporal, change, transformation, indeterminacy, and succession.,,]6 Change in the landscape is at once inevitable and disguised, depending on the management by the inhabitants and geological, hydrological, meteorological, and other earth-shaking events. Landscape is therefore always a reflection of ecologies. Landscape architect James Comer explains, "the discipline of ecology suggests that individual agents acting across a broad field of operation produce incremental and cumulative effects that continually evolve the shape of an environment over time.,,]7 Massimo Venturi Ferriolo observes, Landscape thinking is not striving for a concept, but to penetrate the place and interrogate each of the individual entities belonging to it about their location. Interest 13 Hemi Lefebvre uses this phrase to describe 'even' landscapes, both urban and mral. The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991),62. 14 Lucy Lippard, The Lure ofthe Local: Sense ofPlace in a Multicentered Society (New York: New Press, 1997),7. 15 Herman Prigaml, "Art and Science-perspectives and ways of an ecological aesthetic," in Ecological Aesthetics-Art in Environmental Design: TheOlY and Practice, ed. Heike Strelow (Boston: Birkhauser, 2004), 182. 16 Peter Reed, "Beyond Before and After: Designing Contemporary Landscape," in Groundswell: Constructing the Contemporary Landscape, ed. Peter Reed (New York: Museum of Modem Art, 2005), 30. 17 James Comer, "Tena F1uxus," in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Charles Wa1dheim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), 29. 16 is not in the thing, but in its content and all the relations associated with it-which became known through Heidegger's literally and symbolically intended image of the b 'd 18n ge. To talk about the implications of dwelling on the landscape and vice versa is to 'not separate humans from the rest of the ecosystem,' but to understand the landscape as a reflection of human lifestyle. By lifestyle, I mean Bourdieu's habitus: a loose system of behaviors that are not fated or innate, but learned and embedded in our daily lives; "habitus must not be considered in isolation.,,19 Lifestyle, as I use it, refers to the relations that make up our daily lives, both material, with the things we use and the architectonics of our surroundings, and the immaterial, the way we greet our neighbors, human and non-human. To approach the post-industrial from a landscape perspective is indeed to delve into the temporal and spatial relations, individual and collective meanings, and function of the landscape. It is to engage what Geographer Don Mitchell calls 'the politics of production and struggle' which interrogates the actions, thought patterns, and power relations underlying the creation of the landscape and simultaneously unveils multiple spatial and temporal scales. zo As a reflection of lifestyle, the post- industrial landscape is, ironically, both the problem and the site ofpossible solutions. THE POST-INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE Echoing the plight of countries across the (especially western) world, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in the United Kingdom begins their webpage on contaminated land with this line: "Our long industrial history has resulted in a substantial legacy ofland contamination."zl This legacy began with the 18 Emphasis mine. Massimo Venturi FelTiolo, "Landscape ethics," in Ecological Aesthetics-Art in Environmental Design: TheOlY and Practice, ed. Heike Strelow (Boston: Birkhauser, 2004), 18. 19 PielTe Bourdieu, "Habitus," in Habitus: A Sense oiPlace, ed. Jean Hillier and Emma Rooksby (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), 43-49. 20 As Mitchell notes, both Lucy Lippard in The Lure ofthe Local (1997) and Doreen Massey with her concept of a 'progressive sense of place' in Space, Place and Gender (1994) contribute nuanced arguments to the discussion of scale. Don Mitchell, "The lure of the local: landscape studies at the end of a troubled century," Progress in Human Geography 25, no. 2 (2001),269-281. 21 DEFRA, http://www.defra.gov.uk/environmentlland/contaminated/index.htm. 17 industrial revolution of the eighteenth century and continues to have a lasting impact on daily life. The modem capitalist economy, as argued by such influential thinkers as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, began with the introduction of new modes ofproduction and expectations of efficiency. The repercussions of associated mass-mechanized production, increased transportation, and more sophisticated metallurgy are especially poignant in the plethora ofpost-industrial sites that litter the landscape of the twenty-first century. Such sites are 'second' rather than 'first' nature. They have variously been covered in concrete, steeped in heavy metals, and gutted for their raw materials. They often house rusting infrastructure, lasting toxic remnants, and irreversible scars. Post-industrial sites are commonly called 'brownfields.' Brownfields are defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as "real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.,,22 The underlying implication is that there is an extra cost associated with brownfield property, whether social, economic, or ecologic. As the u.K. Environment Agency points out, "It is important to be aware that brownfield land is not necessarily contaminated."n In fact, the German understanding of brownfields assumes that the area is not contaminated.24 These sites are garnering a considerable amount of attention in the western world in both theory and practice. As was observed in a New York Times article about guerrilla gardening in London, "Orphaned land is an abundant, underutilized resource in the 22 Environmental Protection Agency, "Brownfields and Land Revitalization." http://www.epa.gov/swerosps/bf/index.html. In the United States the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that there are more than 450,000 brownfield sites. 23 Environment Agency, "Land affected by contamination," http://www.environment- agency.gov.ukibusiuess/444304/502508/1506471/1506565/1508003/. In the United Kingdom the term most frequently used to describe post-industrial sites is PDL or "previously developed land," while the term 'contaminated land' specifies the presence of pollutants such as oils and tars, heavy metals, organic compounds and soluble salts and mining materials. See the Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/land/contaminated/outline.htm. 24 See for example Martin Franz, Orhan GUles, and Gisela Prey, "Place-making and 'Green' Reuses of Brownfields in the Ruhr," Tijdishrifl voor Economishe en Sociale Geografie 99, no. 3 (2008): 316-328. 18 postindustrial city.,,25 For example, after the publication of two influential studies, Towards an urban renaissance published by London's Urban Task Force in June 1999 and Urban White Paper, Our Towns and Cities: the future published by the British government in November 2000, policy in England now requires that 60 per cent of new housing be constructed on brownfield sites.26 Landscape architect Gilles Clement develops the tem1 tier paysage, or third landscape, to describe "wasted space that awaits future use."n The tier paysage takes as its premise that "in a fissure in a wall, one finds many things growing.,,28 Specifically relevant here is the category of the tier paysage he calls (telaisse, or abandoned sites formerly exploited as agricultural, industrial, or touristic space. These spaces are untended, generally urban, and, because they often harbor diversity, "the genetic patrimony of humankind. ,,29 "Drossscape" is a term used by landscape architect Alan Berger to describe a natural component of urban growth and deindustrialization that is intentional and may be ugly or beautiful. Of his six categories of wastescapes, "Waste Landscapes of Contamination (LOCOs)" are the most relevant to this discussion and "include such public and federal installations as airports, military bases, ammunition depots and training grounds, and sites used for mining and petroleum and chemical operations. ,,30 25 Jon Mooallern. "Guenilla Gardening: Reclaiming green space one anarchic, get-your-hands-dirty, grab- a-flat-of-perennials-and-a-trowel act at a time," New York Times Magazine (June 8, 2008), http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/magazine/08guenilla- t.html?scp=1&sq=guerrilla%2Ogardening&st=cse. 26 Joseph Rowntree Foundation, "Brownfield Land: Obstacles to the release of brownfield sites for redevelopment" (May 2001), http://www.eais.netlbrownfield/. 27 Gilles Clement, "Working with (and never against) Nature," in Environ(ne)ment: Approachesfor Tomorrow, ed. Giovanni Borasi, (Milano, Italy: Skira; Montreal, Quebec: CCA, 2007), 92. 28 Ibid, 90. 29 Ibid, 92. 30 Alan Berger, Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006),33. 19 These abandoned and possibly contaminated sites create a staccato urban fabric with business pockets, neighborhood pockets, and 'dirty,' post-industrial pockets. These urban landscapes with unused areas are well-described by Lars Lerup as the "holey plane," "more a wildemess than a datum of a [hu]man-made city.,,31 Virtually every city in the westem world is grappling with the challenges of unused and often polluted post- industrial sites. Simultaneously, land available for wildlife decreases and homogenous suburban developments prevail. Ironically, as Clement's tier paysage suggests, it is post- industrial landscapes that are most readily available to meet the ecological needs of human and non-human communities. The regeneration of such land can serve to reinvigorate the landscape of the built environment as well as COilllect existing corridors of open space and provide public access to land. The post-industrial landscape is so important to ecology because it is both evidence of the violence of our lifestyles and the site of I'avenir. THE POST-INDUSTRIAL CITYSCAPE As of 2008, more people live in metropolitan areas than ever before. 32 This means that, proportionally, over half of the human population now resides within city limits. Homo Sapiens has spent thousands of years transforming landscapes into cityscapes. Human and non-human entities inhabit these urban habitats. The forces at work in their construction, design, and management are just as ecologically important as the uncontrollable power of 'Mother Nature.' In the 1990s Charles Waldheim coined the term 'landscape urbanism' to describe the primacy of the landscape in determining a new urban form. This idea has gained considerable attention from scholars oflandscape architecture and provides a literal- ecological point of view from which to understand the metropolis. Acknowledgement of 31 As quoted in Alan Berger, "Drosscape," in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Charles Waldheim (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), 201. 32 Worldwatch Institute, State o[the World 2007: Our Urban Future (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007). 20 change and process gesture toward a city-becoming rather than a city-static. Observe the historic metamorphosis of the urban landscape in the photos in Figure 2.1 below. FIGURE 2.1 Lefi to right: The pre-modem urban landscape (19th & early 20th Century), modem urban landscape (50s, 60s, & 70s), and the post-modem urban landscape (80s-Contemporary). (Aspa Gospondi, "Portraying, classifying, and understanding the emerging landscapes in the post-industrial city," Cities 23, no. 5 (2006),313.) The landscape of the post-industrial metropolis has been called self-referential, fragmented, and exclusive. 33 According to A Dictionary ofGeography, the post- industrial city is: A city exhibiting the characteristics of a post-industrial society. Service industries dominate with a strongly developed quaternary [or business] sector and footloose industries abound, often on pleasant open space at the edge of the city. Post-industrial cities are also characterized by large areas of office blocks and buildings for local government administration. These cities often exhibit marked inequality of income distribution because of the contrasts between those who are appropriately skilled- professionals, managers, administrators, and those in high technology service industries-and the poorly paid service workers who look after their needs, together with the unemployed. The former can afford high house prices, and, in fact, contribute to them; the latter cannot. 34 It is the city of the entrepreneur, Wall Street, and the Stock Market. New York, Paris and London are the quintessential examples. These cities have a gaze Which, as geographer Doreen Massey points out, "sweeps the planet.,,35 The post-modern cityscape 33 Taken from a review of post-industrial public space literature by Miige Z. Ercan, "Public Spaces of Post- Industrial Cities and their changing roles," METU JFA 24, no. I (2007), 115-137. 34 Susan Mayhew, "Post-industrial city," A Dictionmy o[Geography. (Oxford Reference Online: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.encyclopedia.com/A+Dictionary+of+Geography/publications .aspx. 35 Doreen Massey, For Space (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005),155. 21 reflects as much. "The biggest physical export from New York City is now waste paper. ,,36 There is typically a concentration of financial and information-based institutions in the metropolitan center with smaller scattered city-centers throughout the metropolitan region. The countryside around the city itself is simultaneously urbanizing. Knowledge, especially what might be termed "e-knowledge," has become spatially prioritized thus creating what geographer Doreen Massey terms the "science park" icon of the twenty-first century that encloses knowledge in "constructed places, coherent, [and] planned.,,37 Industrial products are produced somewhere and designed somewhere else. If the post-industrial city is characterized by the spatial centering of powerful financial, technological, and knowledge-based institutions, its landscape also reflects a de-emphasis on industry, Berger's drosscape. A glance at the three images above of the cityscape through time reveals the spatial implications of historic moments but also hints at the possibilities for different spatial foci through the reinvention of post-industrial landscapes. As Clement's tier paysage suggests, fringe space, the transition zone between the dense built-up space of the city center and the surrounding rural space, is part and parcel of the post-industrial metropolis. The Greek urban planning scholar Aspa Gospodini describes the fringe landscape of the post-industrial metropolis as "heterogeneous and unruly, characterised by rubbish tips and warehouses, superstores and derelict industrial plants, office parks and sports courts, allotments and farmland.,,38 She continues, it often accommodates agricultural areas, scattered small communities with less than 10,000 population, essential but un-neighbourly functions such as waste disposal, sewage treatment and cemeteries; space-demanding functions such as sports facilities, educational institutions, warehouses and suburban uses such as commerce and . 39 serVIces. 36 David Harvey, The Condition ofPost-Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990), 331-332. 37 Ibid,143. 38 Aspa Gospondi, "Portraying, classifying, and understanding the emerging landscapes in the post- industrial city," Cities 23, no. 5 (2006), 321. 39 Ibid, 321. 22 The post-industrial cityscape is ripe with ecological opportunity. Wasted, derelict, toxic, and barren sites are scattered within it, around it, and as a result of the lifestyles of its inhabitants. Landfills such as Fresh Kills in NYC are full, the landscape stuffed to capacity, bulging at the seams. Yet years of neglect have been the natural impetus for diversity as well. Opportunistic species of plants have created often the last vestiges of urban habitat within cities and on the edges of metropolises. Landscape architect Michael Hough notes the increasing diversity in abandonment and quotes Chris Baines: "Ironically, the post-industrial inner city is far greener than it was when I was young. Nature has healed the scars of heavy industry and much of the derelict land is wild and wooded once again.,,4o This may be an overly optimistic outlook, but as Alan Berger notes, "Contamination and abandonment may also bring favorable ecological surprises.,,41 Ifwe extend our definition of ecology to include registers beyond the common realm of "nature" toward an inclusion of the immaterial-culture, the virtual, etc.-these ecological surprises are diverse indeed. It is this fringe and these in-between pockets, the tier paysage, that present opportunities for new stories, new ways of living, new subjectivities. Public Landscapes in Post-Industrial Cities Public space is not a new phenomenon, nor is its importance unique to the post- industrial city. Sidewalks, streets, parks, and plazas all fulfill the definition of public space. Such interstices and landscapes perform a variety ofphysical, aesthetic, ecological, economic, symbolic, and psychological functions. Perhaps most importantly, public spaces serve to enable social interaction; the expectation then, as Don Mitchell points out, is "to encounter and hear from those who are different, whose social 40 Michael Hough, Cities and Natural Process: A Basisfor Sustainability (New York: Routledge, 1995), 227. 41 Alan Berger, "Drosscape," in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Charles Waldheim (New Yark: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), 209. 23 perspectives, experience and affiliations are different.,,42 By providing places for interaction and open dispute, public spaces provide the opportunity to encounter self, other, and environment.43 To approach the concept of 'public' requires engagement with ownership, community, identity, and (bio)diversity. Culture of a particular gentrified and redundant species, just the sort Felix Guattari warns against, has thrived in the wake of industry. Aspa Gospodini, among many others, has observed that intense competition to attract capital is shaping contemporary post-industrial cities around the world. One of the responses to this competition, she notes, has been in the form of soft infrastructural improvements predominately in the form of "creative culture and leisure amenities and the enhancement of the city's image through landscape transformation.,,44 In post-modem society, the goal of such enhancements is to heighten place identity and market the city as a commodity to the "flaneur'" and the "urban voyeur. ,,45 These spaces are frequently run by the private sector with no concern for ecology. Islands or, in Gospodini's vocabulary, 'clusters' of cultural amusement with bars, shopping districts, and museums are popping up amidst the post-modem metropolis. The edges of the city are devoted to 'open-space' and 'green lungs ,46 designed for leisure shopping or leisure sport. These parks, plazas, and malls are 42 Mitchell 1995 as quoted in Mlige Z. Ercan, "Public Spaces of Post-Industrial Cities and their changing roles," METU JFA 24, no. 1 (2007), 131. 43 M1ige Z. Ercan, "Public Spaces of Post-Industrial Cities and their changing roles," METU JFA 24, no. 1 (2007), 117. 44 Aspa Gospondi, "Portraying, classifying, and understanding the emerging landscapes in the post- industrial city," Cities 23, no. 5 (2006), 311-330. 45 Gospondi notes that in post-modern cities the 'urban voyeur' refers to both residents and visitors. lain Sinclair provides an excellent example of such a character. His observational books of urban non-fiction offer insight into this role of resident visitor; see London Orbital and Lights Outlor the Territory. 46 Landscape architect Michael Hough points out the inaccuracy of this term in Cities and Natural Process. He writes on page 207-208, "Jane Jacobs has observed that the term 'green lung' is applicable only to the park spaces themselves and has little effect on the overall quality of the air in the city. There have been claims that the oxygen produced by vegetation can affect the balance ofoxygen in the air. These have evolved from the fact that much more oxygen is produced by photosynthesis than is used up in respiration. There is, however, as much oxygen used up in plant decay and the metabolism of animals that feed on plants as there is released by photosynthesis. The concept of 'green lung' may be inaccurate in describing the effect of parks on the oxygen content of the city overall, but research has established definite connections between forest vegetation cover, open space distribution and urban climate control." 24 often more physically than publicly open. One must ask what sort of public these projects are for if they are open from dusk to dawn and prohibit daytime naps. "In fact," writes geographers Don Mitchell and Richard Van Deusen, "much contemporary open space design stands opposed to public space.,,47 Mitchell and Van Deusen usefully identify two antipodal views of public space. One argument asserts that public spaces can flourish only if they are open to their own subversion, and activists and others seek to transform their use as a means of advancing political agendas. The counterargument claims that public culture can thrive only to the degree that orderly, leisurely pursuits are carefully planned for, tended, pruned, and fertilized.48 It is seldom that public landscapes successfully respond to the ecological needs of the entire "public" and even more unlikely that these spaces are designed for a public that includes the non-human. The Dangers and Joys ofPublic Space: Art, Leisure, Heritage Public art has been commonly used to beautify wastelands and restore an economic and symbolic function to brownfields. Regenerative projects in Britain, for example, commonly feature an artistic element. Famous historical figures are memorialized in fountains and abstract sculpture parks make for a nice day outing. To simply install an art piece does not make art public, though. Most public art sculptures, for example, are not to be touched or climbed. While public art has much potential, it can easily become just another benign element ofthe landscape. David Harvey quotes Charles Newman, speaking of England, who observes "an unprecedented non-judgmental receptivity to Art, a tolerance which amounts to indifference.,,49 Using the function of leisure to design public space is even more publicly alienating. Henri Lefebvre terms space for leisure 'non-work spaces.' He says these spaces are a result of 'neo-colonization' because the resulting landscapes are "given over 47 Don Mitchell and Richard Van Deusen, "Downsview Park: Open Space or Public Space?" in Downsview Park Toronto, ed. Julia Czerniak (London: Prestel, 2001), 103. 48 Ibid, 105. 49 David Harvey, The Condition ofPostmodernity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989),62. 25 completely to unproductive expense, to a vast wastefulness.,,5o One look at sprinklers watering a golf course in the early morning is proof enough. The imperative to create spaces for leisure, like art, is not always open the landscape to new public interaction as well. Creating grassy place to play sports, for instance, invites friendly neighborhood rivalry. Play can be cultivated in spaces of leisure to counter structured concepts of 'leisure.' Play is acting imaginatively and, if encouraged, has the potential to realign subjectivities. Heritage is another landscape use category with contradictory results. It can serve to erase memory and reform it with a particular story and a particular public in mind. With the help of Hewison, David Harvey argues that 'heritage' veils history by defining it as a contemporary creation. 51 As is characteristic of postmodernity, Harvey argues that heritage jumbles histories and identities into a collage of sorts. 52 Heritage, though, is also an environmental value. 53 If the heritage industry plays a vital role in defining memory, history, and identity, is heritage by definition exclusive? Dave Pritchard instructively suggests that 'temporal context' may serve as a "paradigm for heritage value.,,54 Temporally situating landscapes rather than defining a structured history can help ensure continued engagement from a variety ofpublics. It is a particularly post-modem (and western) dilemma to want to preserve place through heritage and simultaneously make place through pioneering design (art and leisure). Aspa Gospondini of the Department ofPlanning and Regional Development at the University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece developed the term '" glocalised' landscape" to describe "an emerging urban landscape-collage dominated by two extremities: (a) that of 50 Henri Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991),58. 51 David Harvey, The Condition ofPostmodernity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989),62-63. 52 Ibid, 85. 53 This is noted by David Harvey (1989) and Aspa Gospondi (2005) as well as others. 54 Dave Pritchard, "Art and Environment: Relating the creative arts to environmental conservation," LANDSCAPE & ARTS NETWORK online JOURNAL, No. 38 (August 2006), 10. 26 tradition, with rather local spatial references and (b) that of innovation, having more universal or global spatial references.,,55 These glocallandscapes, if public, provide a physical place for new social relationships and behaviors. They are opportunities to accommodate human and non-human ecologies not addressed by private, money-driven projects. A truly public space, according to geographers Don Mitchell and Richard Van Deusen, is public "only to the degree that agitating publics continue to go," a place where people throw "off their limited roles as consumers (of culture, of commodities, of 'democracy') and [become] producers of their own contentious cultures, their own public spaces.,,56 Just as subjectivity is "in fact plural and polyphonic ...recognizes no dominant or determinant instance guiding all other forms according to univocal causality,,,57 the public cmmot be characterized as an identifiable character with homogenous needs. Rather, the public is a varied entity composed of diverse subjectivities. It is to such a human and non-human public that I suggest reinhabited post-industrial spaces must attend. TOTAL WAR "Every epoch has its landscape... ,,58 In the Occident, the landscape of the twenty- first century is the post-industrial. This landscape is a result of the lifestyles we have chosen to adopt that are founded in warring, colonial nation-states, industrially-produced goods, and the capitalist dream ofpersonal wealth. Together these elements construct Total War, explained below by geographer Don Mitchell. 55 Aspa Gospondi, "Portraying, classifying, and understanding the emerging landscapes in the post- industrial city," Cities 23, no. 5 (2006), 312. 56 Don Mitchell and Richard Van Deusen, "Downsview Park: Open Space or Public Space?" in Downsview Park Toronto, ed. Julia Czerniak (London: Prestel, 2001), 105 and 113 respectively. 57 CS, 1. 58 Massimo Venturi Feniolo, "Landscape ethics," in Ecological Aesthetics-Art in Environmental Design: Theory and Practice, ed. Heike Strelow (Boston: Birkhauser, 2004),16. 27 The twentieth was a century, for all its technological advances, of constant and frequently total war; a century that saw direct colonial administration over the majority of the land surface and peoples give way to a neocolonialist imperialism, now advanced under the title 'globalization,' that (all these wars notwithstanding) was just as ruthless in its deployment of the 'dull compulsion of economic necessity' as was the old order in its deployment oftroops; and a century of frequent, and frequently betrayed, revolutions, struggles large and small to forge a different way of living than that dictated by global capitalism and its attendant geopolitics.59 War is everywhere and, as such, possibly even natural. Felix Guattari observes "From time immemorial [even] 'nature' has been at war with life!,,6o Post-industrial landscapes, though, are specifically the result of Total War, a term found in the works of theorists as diverse as sociologist Theodore Roszak (1972), respective philosopher and alternative-psychoanalyst Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1980), philosopher-urbanist- architect Paul Virilio (1983), and human geographer Don Mitchell (2001). They argue that globalization, capitalism, colonialism, production, and consumerism haunt our future and past horizons. Guattari warns of the New Industrial Powers that market unnecessary products to us for billions of dollars a day. Powerful forces including the Military Industrial Complex and Integrated World Capitalism wages Total War on each of the three ecologies, homogenizing subjectivities, depleting natural resources, and destroying communities. The result is fundamentally toxic to a healthy global ecology. Landscapes shamelessly reveal military might in the form of Boeing factories, army bases, and steel mines. The choice to drive personal automobiles has transformed the landscape into a network of crisscrossing highways and Henry Ford assembly-line factories. We pave over life-giving soil for housing developments and shopping malls, and then lament the lack of fresh local produce for the new residents. Alan Berger's bird's-eye view of these landscapes in the United States are an awesome demonstration of their predominance and power. 61 Edward Burtynsky's photographs of the industrial landscapes of Canada and, more recently, China are simultaneously eerie and beautiful. 59 Emphasis mine. Don Mitchell, "The lme of the local: landscape studies at the end of a troubled century," Progress in Human Geography 25, no. 2 (2001), 270. 60 3E, 66. 61 See Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America. 28 These landscapes are everywhere, often in the interstitial spaces that are paid little heed in our daily lives. Figure 2.2 is my own photograph of such a landscape. But they are part and parcel of our lifestyles; each one of us is a soldier in this total war. As we consider the future of these brownfield sites, there are myriad opportunities, as much to continue along the industrial path of sterile development toward Ie future as there is to create an avenue of escape open to l'avenir. If it is of importance to us to reconsider the behaviors, the choices, the lifestyles that produced these now abandoned, often contaminated sites-and this thesis takes as its premise that it is-we must challenge ourselves to see these landscapes as ecological opportunities rather than solely economic investments. These sites are often beautiful, as Berger's drosscape suggests and the image below is witness to. We cannot allow this land to be re-dirtied, re-polluted, re-abandoned; we need not repeat past mistakes. There is beauty in the potential to discover a new way of living by seeing our landscapes as a part of our ecological health, treating them with respect, and nurturing them as the harbingers of life, especially on those ofthe post-industrial variety. FIGURE 2.2. Turcot Yards, Montreal. This site, formerly a rail yard, lies vacant beneath major highway overpasses on the western edge of the city. It claims to be the largest post-industrial site in North America. In the winter it is used to store snow collected from the city streets. In the summer it is used by graffiti artists, amateur urban archeologists, walkers, and cyclists, though technically there is 'no trespassing.' (Photo by author.) 29 "The large, the park, the city, and the future are intimately related," observes landscape architect Julia Czerniak.62 Reinhabitation is founded on the ecology of these relations. It questions how we experience the significance of our environments. In the next chapter, Gunpowder Park, just outside of Greater London, is established as my research site. It is from there that I am able to illustrate reinhabitation and ask: how do we design for (politicized) play without venturing toward the neo-colonialism of leisure? 62 Julia Czerniak, "Legibility and Resilience," in Large Parks, ed. Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 244. 30 CHAPTER III GUNPOWDER PARK: A PARK UNLIKE ANY OTHER Every place that can call itselfa place is a story ofits own becoming. Newton Harrison! Essex, England. Munitions factories. Official Secrets Act. Parkland cleaned up by the Lee Valley Authority.2 Site clearance (leisure, commerce, heritage) pushes the horizon back. [...j This sounds like an uncomfortable procedure. Not just 'soil ameliorating' amI 'imaginative and sensitive landscape design' but the effort of will to rebrand a balding and sullen interzone, the motorway's sandtrap, as a wildlife habitat, 'a vibrant waterside park'. lain Sinclair3 POST-INDUSTRIAL CITY: LONDON, ENGLAND IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY A global city with a rich history of colonization and trade, London is one of the world's oldest Western cities. Once upon a time a Roman stronghold, London's more contemporary history recalls Charles Dickens' dark descriptions of working class poverty and sooty industry. London is, in fact, considered the 'home' ofthe industrial revolution, endowing it with an odiferous grit, history of class struggle, and myriad working landscapes. Rising from the ashes of its industrial heritage, London is now an active world financial center and post-industrial megalopolis. As noted in Chapter II, London is an example par excellence of the post-industrial city. Within its square mile downtown financial center, skyscrapers loom over brick facades. The high-density tentacles of the city extend much farther and are 'naturally' bordered4 by the M25 commuter highway 1 Newton Harrison, telephone conversation.with author, 27 August 2007. 2 lain Sinclair, London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25 (New York: Granta Books, 2002), 20-21. 3 Ibid, 62. 4 A 2004 survey revealed that 2 out of 3 people living within the M25 thought it to be the natural boundary of London. London Assembly. Press Release, "Poll says M25 is London's 'natural boundary'" (February 24, 2004), http://www.london.gov.uk/view--pressJelease_a.jsp?releaseid=3002. 31 completed in 1986. The 117-mile stretch of orbital motorway encloses the 1,572 square miles of Greater London, 1.2% of the country's total land area, and its diverse population of approximately 7.5 million inhabitants.s I., " ... I .. ,,,RIVER LEE r .'·1~'': 1' ..1 ..,',. .' ,,'.t I .:'" ,II ,1,; " ~·I':'.: .i'. JI ~ ~11 ':'T'fo -'.~1i', II , .\', I '.... ,1 '", 'I ",II ','.,"","1 I '( . l' I . ~I r., ,I 'f' . t ,I·,l . II ~ 'I ' " ) •.- 'Ir.~:" ,:c1"1 '~'l~'I' '.li'LO~·~ON ·... ':r "'~""'. ,I" , ~,.1,,,·_11 -" ,:.1. .. \ '", 'J'" "' ... I~ I' t,.. t•• I': J 1 'w J I '. , ••tt::· I '. I. , ~. I " • I I 11-; I ~" . Iff 1 I., I ~ ,. '\' ~. tl'~·-'~I I Itrlrl .... )' ''''I~'':'' "J~' ';"."" 'fHAl"lT,'S, • I ", ·:•• ·~II f IV 1:. ..··:·~;,l.' ,ila,!. j:;; I", - It !f... .... . ''''~',,,.' "". ,.,'" .'.1., " . . "":l')" .~ •'(..Lfi.l: " _ I' '•. If "~'ll '.,1',' '.. , .• .ft ',"( .", ! ':,',1.",."",,'." ;,.,: _______ I .1, II .• 'M25 ---'__-""'--l...._ .' ..r; ".. . ....... FIGURE 3.1 Note the importance of the waterways in creating spatial definition. The orange star denotes Gunpowder Park. (Map courtesy ofOpenStreetMap.org, with place markings added by