Abstract
In ecological restoration projects in the Netherlands, agricultural landscapes in floodplains are being transformed into wetland reserves (so-called ‘new nature’). Besides the fact that the support for these projects among local residents is often suboptimal, some more fundamental issues can be raised with regard to these projects. They tend to disturb (or even wipe out) the different ‘textual’ layers in the landscape (historical anthropogenic landforms and human artifacts), reduce the ‘readability’ of the land, the sense of place, thereby transforming genuine places into ‘non-places’. In contrast, some restorationists claim that they bring out deeper ‘textual’ layers, implying that humans should widen the context in which they understand themselves and deepen their sense of place. Are ecological restoration areas places or non-places, do these projects endanger or rather enhance our sense of place, or do they escape this typology?
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Notes
- 1.
The other spokesperson was the landscape painter Willem den Ouden, who lives in a house on a dike, and who tried to capture the magic of the old river landscape in his work.
- 2.
The collective experience of the Dutch landscape has been influenced to a large extent by the works of writers such as Hendrik Marsman and Nescio, or more recently Willem van Toorn and Koos van Zomeren.
- 3.
Furthermore, some regional differences in style come from geological differences. The Rhine is a glacier river, flowing broadly, steadily and impressively through the landscape. In contrast, the Meuse – a precipitation river – is far more fickle: what normally appears to be a small tranquil stream can become a fearsome wild river in early springtime. These differences are also reflected in the landscape along these rivers: in the height and shape of the dikes, the character of land use in the flood plain, et cetera.
- 4.
The new plans even met the original budget, thus proving the point of the protesters that the flaws in the original policy were due to negligence.
- 5.
Of course, this is in contrast with Joseph Beuys’s statement that the land reclamations of the Zuyder Zee have changed the color of the Dutch light significantly. See the documentary Dutch Light: http://www.dutchlight.nl.
- 6.
Willem van Toorn admits that we should not turn our landscapes into museums. He praises the Italian landscape of Tuscany, where even the modern highways somehow follow the ancient pathways of the Romans. The new should take the old into account, not by deifying the old, but by respecting the old legibility while writing new layers on the land.
- 7.
Nowadays, historians use new imaging technologies to decipher old texts without destroying the new texts. A few years ago, a hitherto unknown text by Archimedes was discovered, hidden under the text of a medieval prayer book.
- 8.
It must be said, however, that this postmodern visitor will probably in some sense feel connected to the city he lives in – a type of place attachment Van Toorn does not seem to consider.
- 9.
Some will argue, in contrast, that many people are actively involved with the place in which they live, today more than ever. However, a conscious effort to collectively invest meaning in place – to which many local communities indeed seem to commit themselves these days – could be interpreted as being actually a symptom of the erosion of place as it apparently is no longer a spontaneous process.
- 10.
Other examples of non-places are service stations, supermarkets, malls, hotel chains, and so on.
- 11.
One could also give a more positive description of the relation between passengers and non-places. Some people even appreciate non-places such as airports precisely because being stuck there enables them, for instance, to read a book without being called away for all kinds of societal demands.
- 12.
Although, of course, we should add, that all non-places tend to be filled with meaning by people using them. Augé, too, acknowledges that there are hardly any ‘pure’ non-places – people are investing meaning in new places constantly. In the 2004 movie Terminal, Viktor Navorski, an eastern immigrant finds himself stranded in JFK airport, and must take up temporary residence there. He is forced to make his home in the airport terminal – the pivotal non-place. As Viktor is trying to find his way around, however, we gradually come to know the terminal as somehow a place in its own right. Both perspectives collide in a brilliantly funny scene. Viktor is shaving in a public restroom, when a worn out business man comes in and asks: ‘Ever feel like you’re living in an airport?’
- 13.
When my colleagues and I recently moved to a new building for the science faculty, we shared that experience of being simultaneously forced to re-invent some of our daily routines, thus sharing a certain place as a common point of reference.
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Drenthen, M. (2009). Developing Nature Along Dutch Rivers: Place or Non-Place. In: Drenthen, M., Keulartz, F., Proctor, J. (eds) New Visions of Nature. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2611-8_16
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