First we had cities: space for living and working. Then came suburbs, for living in and commuting from. A couple of decades ago we got edge city, where the world of work came out to meet the 鈥榖urbs again in an extended version of urban sprawl. Now, beyond the sprawl, we have drosscapes.
Drosscapes are large tracts of abused land on the peripheries of cities and beyond, where urban sprawl meets urban dereliction: landscapes of wasted land where the planners gave up. They are a world of contaminated former industrial sites, mineral workings, garbage dumps, container stores, polluted river banks, sewage works and expanses of tarmac used for airport parking lots and military compounds.
Where does the name 鈥渄rosscape鈥� come from? Alan Berger of Harvard University鈥檚 department of landscape architecture coined it to describe these urban badlands in his book of the same name (Princeton Architectural Press, ISBN 9781568987132). It is not a pretty word, but then they are not pretty places.
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It was the architect Lars Lerup in 1995 who was first to use 鈥渄ross鈥� in the context of urban landscapes, when he divided the urban world into two parts. There is 鈥渟tim鈥�, the deliberate, developed urban areas. The rest is dross, the accumulation of polluted and unprofitable voids that are left over 鈥� the bits that fell through the planning net. Yet Berger sees this as something more positive than just a planning failure. For him, drosscape is not the void between bits of the urban landscape; it is integral to the essence of the urban landscape. The holes are part of the whole.
鈥淒ross is integral to the urban landscape. The holes are part of the whole鈥�
Berger discovered drosscapes largely from the air, flying over the urban fringe. The extent of drosscapes is often unknown even to planners, because they can frequently be inaccessible, especially from the road. Train passengers, who tend to see the backs of places rather than the front, probably get the best sense of these backlots and blighted lands. The barely used railway siding is a classic example of drosscape.
Drosscapes are most prevalent in the US, where the wide-open spaces beyond many city limits invite abuse. In Europe, where land is in shorter supply, they take slightly different forms. Europe recycles land more efficiently, but even so the continent is dotted with 鈥渂rownfield鈥� sites awaiting redevelopment. Some are toxic, some are havens for wildlife and, disturbingly for conservationists, a large number contrive to be both.
European drosscapes do usually eventually find new uses. In the UK, Heathrow airport鈥檚 fifth terminal is nearing completion on an old sewage farm, and a super-casino is planned for abandoned industrial land in Manchester, where it will be flanked by a football stadium and a prawn processing plant. Yet even as these new developments take place, we can be sure that new wasted margins will emerge.
