Abstract
This chapter considers how the city is transformed and replenished by four interlinked processes: quarrying, demolition, disposal and the remediation of landfill sites. Developing the analysis of stone supply in Chapter 2, I discuss how the city does not only build, it destroys, and a subsequent analysis of demolition practices explore how stone and the buildings composed from it are always liable to become devalued according to changing political, economic and architectural approaches. The stony rubble produced by demolition needs to be disposed and quarries that have supplied the building material for the city continue to serve as sites for landfill. I investigate how changing landfill technologies and practices have impacted upon the destiny of former quarries used as sites of disposal and have results in hazardous toxic escape and subsidence. I also explore how quarries have come to serve as sites of recreation, conservation, building development and creative practice following landfill or instead of it. Finally, I examine how these redesignated former quarries require remediation, a practice characterised by contesting ideas and increasingly sophisticated landscaping approaches.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Amin, A., & Thrift, N. (2017). Seeing Like a City. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Annear, R. (2014). A City Lost and Found: Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne. Melbourne: Black Inc.
Brand, S. (1995). How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built. London: Penguin.
Cairns, S., & Jacobs, J. (2014). Buildings Must Die: A Perverse View of Architecture. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Carey, A. (2018, July 14). State Government Weighs Proposal for Giant Quarry in Green Wedge Zone. The Age. https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/state-government-weighs-proposal-for-giant-quarry-in-green-wedge-zone-20180713-p4zrde.html. Accessed 5 February 2019.
Costello, L. (2005). From Prisons to Penthouses: The Changing Images of High-Rise Living in Melbourne. Housing Studies, 20(1), 49–62.
Dawdy, S. (2016). Patina: A Profane Archaeology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
DeSilvey, C. (2013). Object Lessons: From Batholith to Bookend. In N. Johnson, R. Schein, & J. Winders (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Cultural Geography. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
DeSilvey, C., & Edensor, T. (2013). Reckoning with Ruins. Progress in Human Geography, 37(4), 465–485.
De Sola Morales, I. (1995). Terrain Vague. In C. Davidson (Ed.), AnyPlace. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Doron, G. (2000). The Dead Zone and the Architecture of Transgression. City, 4(2), 247–263.
Edensor, T. (2016). Incipient Ruination and the Precarity of Buildings: Materiality, Non-human and Human Agents, and Maintenance and Repair. In M. Bille & T. Sorensen (Eds.), Assembling Archaeology, Atmosphere and the Performance of Building Spaces (pp. 366–382). London: Routledge.
Edgeworth, M. (2017). Humanly Modified Ground. In D. DellaSala & M. Goldstein (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene. London: Elsevier.
Forty, A. (2013). Concrete and Culture: A Material History. London: Reaktion.
Hackworth, J. (2016). Demolition as Urban Policy in the American Rust Belt. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 48(11), 2201–2222.
Harvey, D. (1985). The Geopolitics of Capitalism. In D. Gregory, J. Urry (Eds.), Social Relations and Spatial Structures (pp. 128–163). London: Macmillan.
Harper, L. (2017). The Urbanism of Material (Unpublished PhD thesis). Monash University, Melbourne.
Hatmaker, S. (2014). On Mattering: A Coal Ash Flood and the Limits of Environmental Knowledge. Environmental Humanities, 4(1), 19–39.
Hemmings, S. and Kagel, M. (2010). Memory Gardens: Aesthetic Education and Political Emancipation in Lanschaftspark Duisberg-Nord, German Studies Review, 33(2): 243–261.
Houston, C., & Vedelago, C. (2018, July 23). Tip Linked to Gangsters Shut Down by the EPA. The Age. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/tip-linked-to-gangsters-shut-down-by-epa-20180722-p4zsy1.html. Accessed 14 June 2019.
Hudson, J. (2015). The Multiple Temporalities of Informal Spaces. Geography Compass, 9(8), 461–481.
Instone, L. (2019). Making the Geologic with Urban Nature Cultures: Life and Nonlife on the Victorian Volcanic Plains Grasslands of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Geoforum, 106, 363–369.
Jaramillo, G. (2017). Fragmentary Landscapes: Explorations Through the Detritus of the Peak District. Landscape Research, 42(6), 663–676.
Jorgensen, A., & Tylecote, M. (2007). Ambivalent Landscapes—Wilderness in the Urban Interstices. Landscape Research, 32(4), 443–462.
Kershaw, T. (2017, May 12). Mega Landfill Binned. The Great Southern Star. http://thestar.com.au/blog/mega-landfill-binned/. Accessed 13 May 2019.
King, C. (2017, June 8). Quarry Approved at Birregurra After Long-Running Planning Dispute. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-08/quarry-approved-at-birregurra-after-long-running-dispute/8600348. Accessed 6 June 2019.
Kolankiewicz, V. (2018, January 31–2 February). Making Something of a Hole in the Ground: The Re-use of Basalt Quarries in Melbourne’s Western Suburbs. In Proceedings of the 14th Australasian Urban History Planning History Conference 2018. Melbourne, VIC: Australasian Urban History Planning History Group.
Legwaila, I., Lange, E., & Cripps, J. (2015). Quarry Reclamation in England: A Review of Techniques. Journal of the American Society of Mining and Reclamation, 4(2), 55–79.
Lesh, J. (2019). From Modern to Postmodern Skyscraper Urbanism and the Rise of Historic Preservation in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth, 1969–1988. Journal of Urban History, 45(1), 126–149.
Macfarlane, R. (2019). Underland: A Deep Time Journey. London: Hamish Hamilton.
Matless, D. (2017). The Anthroposcenic. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42(3), 363–376.
Neilsen, T. (2002). The Return of the Excessive: Superfluous Landscapes. Space and Culture, 5(1), 53–62.
Picon, A. (2000). Anxious Landscapes: From the Ruin to Rust. Grey Room, Fall, 64–83.
Presland, G. (2008). The Place for a Village: How Nature has Shaped the City of Melbourne. Melbourne: Museum Victoria.
Quarry News. (2019, January 5). Historic Site to Become “Walkable” Suburb. https://www.quarrymagazine.com/2019/01/05/historic-site-to-become-walkable-suburb/. Accessed 12 July 2019.
Rosier, S. (2018). Operationalising the Sublime: Bringing the Sublime from Abstract to Concrete. In P. Rajagopalan & M. M. Andamon (Eds.), Engaging Architectural Science: Meeting the Challenges of Higher Density: 52nd International Conference of the Architectural Science Association (pp. 611–618). Melbourne, VIC: Architecture Science Association (ANZAScA), RMIT University.
Roth, M. (1997). Preface. In M. Roth, C. Lyons, & C. Merewether (Eds.), Irresistible Decay. Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Research Institute.
Schumpeter, J. (1994). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London: Routledge.
Trigg, D. (2009). The Place of Trauma: Memory, Hauntings, and the Temporality of Ruins. Memory Studies, 2, 87–101.
Vines, G. (1993). Quarry and Stone: Bluestone Quarrying, Stonemasonry and Building in Melbourne’s West. Highpoint City, VIC: Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West.
Walter, S. (2019). Malmsbury Bluestone and Quarries: Finding Holes in History and Heritage (Unpublished thesis). Federation University, Ballarat, Victoria.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Edensor, T. (2020). Stony Entanglements: Quarrying, Demolition, Disposal and Remediation. In: Stone. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4650-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4650-1_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-4649-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-4650-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)