POST- INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPES

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

1-1-2023

Abstract

In the US context, post-industrial landscapes signify multiple layers of social, environmental, and technological change. They also reflect the inherent contradictions in industrial heritage and the absence in landscape discourse of environmental hazards, racialization, and the social, environmental, and economic violence of industrialization. This chapter broadly explores these absences and this violence synonymous with post-industrial landscapes in the US context, where economic success required change, yet that change corrupts “authenticity,” leading to a general lack of heritagescape focused on industrial pasts. Instead, focus on romanticizing the suburbs while demonizing racialized urban and industrial cores have led to the mass “redevelopment” of “wasted” lands and lives, part of a national landscape working for capitalism and white supremacy. While looking at broad patterns, we also focus not only on these absences and the violence of the built post-industrial landscape but also the agency and labor of those impacted by this violence. Reinvention and sustainable heritage have been hallmarks of isolated cases of industrial heritage which actively challenge and make visible violence and absences built into the post-industrial landscape. By building upon questions of heritage, scale, absence, and violence in post-industrial landscapes, we not only expose these obfuscated landscapes, but highlight examples of sustainability and resilience in industrial heritage.

Publication Title

The Routledge Companion to the American Landscape

ISBN

2022038476,9781000832921,2022038475,9780367640156

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