Drosscape : wasting land in urban America / Alan Berger.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berger, Alan, 1964-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

City planning--United States.

City planning.

Vacant lands.

Waste lands.

United States.

Regional planning--United States.

Regional planning.

Land use, Urban--United States.

Land use, Urban.

Waste lands--United States.

Vacant lands--United States.

Physical Description:

255 pages : color illustrations, maps (some color) ; 29 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Princeton Architectural Press, [2006]

Summary:

Do you really know what's under the new house you just bought? Was that "big box" retail outlet down your street built atop a toxic site? Will the warehouse just beyond your backyard be converted into a shopping center, factory, or trucking hub? These are a few of the worrisome scenarios facing us all as our cities begin a stealth relocation of industrial facilities from the inner city to the urban periphery and to reuse old toxic waste sites while creating new ones-places Alan Berger has coined drosscapes. Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America is your guide to this vast, unknown geography of waste landscapes and sprawl.

Ten cities and their drosscapes are analyzed through aerial photography, maps, charts, and graphs. Lured by liability reductions, tax incentives, and inadequate public awareness, corporate America is rapidly developing land for short-term gains and occupancy, leaving us to clean up their toxic land, wasteful places, and degradation of natural systems. Drosscape makes clear that "waste" is a design challenge of the most pressing order.

Contents:

Part 1 Landscape, Urbanization, and Waste 16

The Changing Nature of Urban Land 18

The Obsolescence of Sprawl 21

Chapter 1 Discourses for Landscape and Urbanization 26

The Horizontal City and the In-Between 26

A Liminal Landscape 29

Enclaves, Off Worlds, Ladders 31

Terrain Vague, Exaptation, Vacant, Abandoned 33

Holey Planes and Stimdross 37

From In-Between to Freedom and Waste 39

Coda: Urban Landscape is a Natural Thing to Waste 44

Chapter 2 The Production of Waste Landscape 46

Deindustrialization: Waste Landscape Through Attrition 46

Post-Fordism: Waste Landscape Through Accumulation 53

Flexibility 53

Agglomeration and Regionalism 56

Local and Regional Agglomerations 57

Technological Innovation and Location: Waste Landscape and Space 58

Flows 61

Contamination, Ugliness, and Blight: Revaluing Waste Landscape 64

Federal Activity 66

Denver: America's Superfund City 67

Brownfields 70

Funding 72

Ugliness, Blight, and Tax Increment Financing 74

Part 2 Representing the Relationships between Waste Landscape and Urbanization 76

Chapter 3 Ten Urbanized Regions 78

Atlanta 80

Boston-Lowell/Providence 86

Charlotte/Raleigh-Durham 92

Chicago 98

Cleveland/Akron 104

Dallas/Fort Worth 110

Denver/Front Range 116

Houston 122

Los Angeles 128

Phoenix 134

Chapter 4 Waste Landscapes 140

Waste Landscapes of Dwelling (LODs) 140

Waste Landscapes of Transition (LOTs) 158

Waste Landscapes of Infrastructure (LINs) 170

Waste Landscapes of Obsolescence (LOOs) 186

Waste Landscapes of Exchange (LEXs) 204

Waste Landscapes of Contamination (LOCOs) 220

Part 3 The Drosscape Manifesto 234

Chapter 5 Drosscape Explained 236

Drosscape Defined 236

Drosscape Proposed 239

Postscript: Vastlands Visited by Lars Lerup 242

Appendix 1 Contemporary Names for the Urbanization of Landscape 244

Appendix 2 Notes on Graphics: Data Uses, Sources, and Methods 245

Dispersal Graph Comparison 248

Spindle Chart Comparison 250.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

156898572X

OCLC:

61479585

Publisher Number:

9781568985725