Landscapes of abandonment (2/4): Abandonment, planning, governance

Abstract der Sitzung

Landscapes of abandonment proliferate. Abandonment can occur in remote areas, but also very close to, or right after intensive use. In some places, farmland is abandoned and villages are emptying, former industrial areas are deteriorating, and fast-paced extractive terrains are turned into ghostly ruins. Spaces of accelerating climatic volatility are already being abandoned and many places are expected to become uninhabitable in the near future. Abandoned urban or rural landscapes often bear witness to devaluation, crises, erasure or toxic legacies. They can be heavily stigmatized. But they may also be associated with future-bound possibilities of creativity and new beginnings, or the return of plant and animal species. The apparent ‘resurgence’ of wildlife to these places is even celebrated in popular discourse as a marker of nature’s ‘resilience’. Different observers may interpret the same abandoned landscapes as degraded or regenerating–differences in perceptions that can be bound to positionality and power. For instance, the trope of emptiness can reflect or produce violent forms of erasure imbued with longstanding colonial and capitalist interests.

This session aims to develop a better understanding of the various spatial practices, imaginations, and knowledges related to abandonment. It aims to explore the different scales, specificities, lived experiences, and valuations that various emptying landscapes engender as they become more common in the Anthropocene. We invite papers discussing abandonment from a range of spatio-temporal scales, geographical and historical contexts, and especially welcome contributions that combine empirical work with theoretical insights and/or methodological reflections. A key aim of the session is to spark discussion about the prospects and tensions of combining different theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of abandoned landscapes.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, questions such as:

• Which narratives and imaginations of planetary crisis or futurity are sparked by abandoned landscapes?
• Which bodies of knowledge (scientific and otherwise) are produced around abandoned landscapes? What is the role of scientists and other actors in constructing different futures for “empty spaces” (e.g. for carbon sequestration or rewilding)? How are these future visions implemented or contested?
• How are abandoned landscapes inhabited, sensed, lived and experienced?
• Which new forms of sociability, interactions with nature, or processes of commoning might abandoned spaces provoke?
• In which ways can abandoned landscapes act as material archives with multiple strata of histories, memories, and unforeseen artefacts to be recovered?
• At what different spatial and temporal scales can we encounter abandonment?
• Which methodological tools are deployed to gain insights on abandonment at different scales (e.g. ethnographic investigations, critical GIS techniques used in land use science)?