,
I
Matt Black's 2014 image
of Fallowed Tomato Fields
in Corcoran, California,
documents the result of
the worst drougbt in the
history of the state
(opening spread).
Sol LeWitt's 1979
A Square of Chicago
without a Circle and
Triangle (left), from early
paper works titled Torn
Cut Folded Ripped, deploys
geometric shapes in his
exploration of dislocation
and site. Gilles Clement's
'Third Landscape'
encourages nature
to colonise spaces left
over by man and, in
so doing, stimulate
biodiversity (below)'The move to valuing
progress over fallowing
signalled a regime
change that rationalised
space and time'
-- •••
--···-··-- .. •••- ·-- --- - ·--
..professions have been criticised as largely geared towards solving
the problems of wasted space to restore class relations and processes
of accumulation. Can a design culture that sees itself as inextricably
linked to growth retrain its analytical lens on social and ecological
value production that exists outside capitalist sociospatial relations,
rather than vievving moments of inactivity merely as opportunities
to promote t he next growth cycle?
Within t he context of contemporary landscape architecture and
urban design practice, Matthew Gandy points to a fissure in design
between the increasing awareness of the ecological value of 'slow
spaces' in t he design of landscapes and the 'neoliberal impetus' for
parks to be pressed into service for capital accumulation. I n addition,
architect Christopher Marcinkoski advocates 'a retooled urban design
praxis' in which the profession is aware of their role in circuits
of capital accumulation, and as insiders work to exploit speculative
processes towards alternative ends. There are unresolved questions,
however, r egarding the agency of the designer to push back against
or shape the regulatory and economic systems in which we work.
Can we transform project mandates within a traditional client-designer
relationship? How much control of outcomes are designers willing
to cede to or ganic interactions? But it is a start. Our systems of
valuation ar e not immutable - we have the ability to reset the
narratives we construct and the meanings we produce. How might
the planning and design disciplines approach the question of revaluing
inactivity and in turn our understanding of progress? That work
remains to be done, and it remains to be seen if designers can yield
control to true spontaneity or 'staged non-intervention'.
While Cerda and others sought to 'fill the earth' in a push that
introduced urbanisation to the world stage, can a future urban world
be formed around 'letting the earth sleep'? If so, what might these
appr oaches look like? One radical r esponse is the Half-Earth Project
proposed by biologist EO Wilson. In this scenario, half of the Earth's
surface would be removed from circulation, set aside for conservation
of the biosphere. This approach is not without deep socio-ecological
pitfalls, however. As environmental scientist Er le Ellis notes,
if 'implemented poorly, Half-Earth co uld become the greatest green
grab in human history'. ~lore, it seems plausible that without adequate
safeguards, inequality could actually be exacerbated with the
intensification of land use pressures in the Half-Earth solution.
That said, by posing the question, Ellis and "'"Tilson encourage us
to take seriously grand land management schemes to rebuild
biodiversity and ecological value in the Anthropocene.
At much smaller scales, there are also strategies for revaluing land
in cultural and ecological terms while keeping it out of circulation.
Advocating beyond binaries of human and non-human nature in the
preservation of post-industrial grounds, cultural geographer Caitlin
DeSilvey, for example, proposes incorporating the idea of 'boundary
work', which engages with the careful curation of layered ecological
and cultural meaning. Boundary work problematises heritage practices
based on the separation of artefacts into formalised categories
and advocates a method t hat incorporates permeable borders and
the continual negotiation of nature and culture in the preservation
of sites of industrial ruin. Jill Desimini navigates a third approach
using the contours of fallow and ·wild to encourage designers to
recognise the layered use values of overgrown spaces.
Desimini highlights t he counterintuitive outcome of increased
ecological and social diversity that emerges 'by letting go temporarily'.
The examples highlighted above offer three different approach es
along a spectrum of human control over space with respect to revaluing
inactivity that design might be able to mobilise. The first advocates
a strong human-nature divide and intensive human effort to take land
out of circulation to preserve ecological richness. The second advances
an approach t hat celebrates the blurring boundaries of human and
nature as a way to promote the revaluation of both cultural and natural
resources through an evolving interstitial space of building and wasting
that lies outside the sphere of ceaseless growth. Meanwhile, the t hird
argues for something of a hands-off approach, allo\ving for spontaneous