Reckoning with ruins

Abstract

Scholarly interest in ruins and derelict spaces has intensified over the last decade. We assess a broad selection of the resulting literature and identify several key themes. We focus on how ruins may be used to critically examine capitalist and state manifestations of power; we consider the way in which ruins may challenge dominant ways of relating to the past; and we look at how ruins may complicate strategies for practically and ontologically ordering space. We speculate about the motivations for this surge of current academic interest, draw out resonances with current trends in geographical thinking, and suggest directions for future research.

‘Therapeutic landscapes’ and the importance of nostalgia, solastalgia, salvage and abandonment for psychiatric hospital design

“…Although contemporary practices, aesthetics and physical comfort are important, they may not be sufficient to support senses of place associated with feelings of homeliness, social inclusion and personal identity, established through past experience and provoking the desire to salvage emotional links to the past through material remains. These motives of salvage raised issues of abandonment, nostalgia and salvage also examined in other geographical literature by Desilvey and Edensor (2012), who explore how ruins and material remains can be variably interpreted. The same relict may invoke traumatic recollections for some, or nostalgic feelings for others.…”

Arruinamento e regeneração do espaço edifìcado na metrópole do século XXI: o caso de Lisboa

“…Os efeitos da recente crise financeira global gerada pelo colapso do mercado de hipotecas na produção de ruínas novas são um facto que tem sido documentado na bibliografia internacional (Pálsson, 2012;DeSilvey & Edensor, 2013;Kitchin, O'Callaghan & Gleeson, 2014). O estudo do caso de Lisboa não deixou evidente essa relação.…”

“…Outra razão prende-se com a insensibilidade das estatísticas. Edifícios que ficaram por concluir em consequência da falência dos promotores ou construtores são uma das estruturas ruiniformes mais comuns que a crise gerou (DeSilvey & Edensor, 2013), mas essas construções abortadas escapam aos censos da habitação. Contudo, é também possível que a tendência de periferização do arruinamento detetada na Região de Lisboa nos anos mais recentes seja em parte reflexo da crise.…”

A Methodology for Identification and Analysis of City Shrinkage Effects in Urban Morphology and Landscape

“…Suspended/aborted projects are defined as buildings whose construction work have been interrupted and remain unfinished or half-finished, as well as lots where urbanization processes were suspended, i.e. which have not been fully developed, yet present evidence of infrastructures in the form of streets, lighting poles, lift stations or others; in other words, they correspond to "ruins in reverse" [2], i.e. constructions that do not fall into ruin after they are built but rather before they are finished.…”

“…Urban shrinkage is a major reason for that too: economic restructuring, social changes and political shifts have impact on land uses and may provoke abandonment, destruction and the replacement of buildings and infrastructures [1]. Dereliction and ruination have thus become fairly common realities in contemporary cities [2]. Although ruins and vacant lands are common occurences in the present-day cityscape, little attention has been devoted to their study in Human Geography and Urban Studies.…”