Drosscape

Drosscape is an urban design framework that looks at urbanized regions as the waste product of defunct economic and industrial processes. The concept was realized by Alan Berger, professor of urban design at MIT, and is part of a new vocabulary and aesthetic that could be useful for the redesign and adaptive re-use of ‘waste landscapes’ within urbanized regions.^[1] In After the City, Lars Lerup defines dross as waste product or impurity formed on the surface of molten metal during smelting. It is also defined as "worthless stuff, as opposed to valuables or value."^[2] Thereby, according Berger, drosscape, as a concept, implies that dross, or waste, is "scaped", or resurfaced, and reprogrammed for adaptive reuse. Berger goes on to explain that this phenomenon emerges from two primary processes. Firstly, Drosscape surfaces as a byproduct of rapid urbanization and horizontal growth urban sprawl. Secondly, these spaces arise as a consequence of defunct economic and production systems.^[3] For urban planners, architects and other design professionals, drosscape may offer another creative way to envision space and landscape design in a city. According to Berger, “Adaptively reusing this waste landscape figures to be one of the twenty-first century’s great infrastructural design challenges.” These waste places have risen from deindustrialization as well as industrial growth, the latter having replaced old technologies with new ones... leading to “creative destruction”, or the abolishment of the obsolete. This concept also forgives sprawl, explaining that industrial growth and success in urban centers causes this inevitable, horizontal movement, and isn’t intrinsically bad. Again, this will require a new line of thinking, as we’ve been trained to fear sprawl and to despise the landscape that humans have created.

Purpose

The purpose for this exploration is to better understand regional urban landscape formation, which is created in older areas of the city by rapid de-industrialization of the inner core, and in newer areas by rapid urbanization of the periphery. One of the tenants of drosscape says that these 'unplanned horizontalizations around vertical centers' are neither innately good or bad. Berger explains that they are a natural outcome of growth and success in a city, and, instead of being pigeonholed as something bad, they should be considered and planned for. Once the waste landscapes are identified, it will be the job of the entrepreneurial design professional to integrate and re-use these spaces in the urban world.

Methodology

1. Use regional waste geographies and topical waste landscapes as the loci for future landscape design and planning activity. 2. Bottom-up advocacy process that will require inventiveness, entrepreneurialism and long-term environmental recovery.^[1]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Berger, Alan. 2006. Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America. Princeton Architectural Press. New York, NY.
2. ^ Lerup, Lars. 2006. After the City. The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA.
3. ^ Berger, Alan. Drosscape in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, Charles Waldheim, Ed. 2006. Princeton Univ. Press. Pp. 197-217.

External links

• P-REX (Berger's lab at MIT)