After Tomorrow: Three Perspectives on Urban Wastelands

Abstract

This essay focuses on the meaning and the role of wasteland in the contemporary city-territory. By looking at two specific case studies the essay displays three possible approaches to the subject: anthropocentric, ecological and cyclical. Each approach is based on both theories/abstractions and visual enquiries/design explorations related either to ‘wasteland’ taken as a conceptual tool or ‘wasteland’ seen as a specific space. Reconstructing a discourse on this formulates awareness on different perspectives about wasteland values and its spatial relation with the urban system, in which wasteland can be perceived as an integral part of the territory as well as the starting point for future territorial, ecological and projective reflections.