Abstract
Abandonment is often followed by overgrowing. When an industrial plant is abandoned, the growing plants bear witness to remaining substances in the ground—leftovers from industrial production. Following pioneering species, the industrial site will soon become marked by shrubs and later by trees, sometimes turning the place into a kind of forest. This “industrial nature” is acknowledged by botanists and ecologists as a habitat very rich in species. It is conceptualized by planners and landscape architects as an iconic post-industrial landscape, and has been turned into a visual genre by photographers and filmmakers epitomizing decay within a romantic or dystopian setting.1
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Notes
“Industrial nature” can also be understood as “industrialized nature,” that is, environments directly changed by industrial production. See, for example, Paul R. Josephson, Industrialized nature: Brute force technology and the transformation of the natural world (Washington DC: Island Press, 2002);
Gene Desfor and Lucian Vesalon, “Urban expansion and industrial nature: A political ecology of Toronto’s port industrial district,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32, no. 3 (2008); however, for the sake of this chapter, I choose to leave this understanding aside and concentrate on conceptualizations emphasizing a post-industrial situation or industrial wastelands, beside production or after production has ceased.
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Ibid., 84; Gerhard Seltmann, “Eine unmögliche Ausstellung? Merkzeichen für die Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park,” Arcus Architektur und Wissenschaft: IBA Emscher Park, Zukunkftswerkstatt für Industrieregionen, no. 13 (1991). Kersti Morger’s private collections.
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Ebert, interview; nevertheless, the word “park” could also signify ongoing industrial activity. A steel works in northern Duisburg was for example called “Industriepark Ost.” See Håkon W. Andersen et al., Fabrikken (Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press/Spartacus Forlag, 2004), 576.
The CSR triangle theory is an ecological classification of plants into competitors, stress-tolerators and ruderals. Ruderals are defined as having “high reproductive rates in transient disturbed habitats.” See J. Philip Grime and Simon Pierce, The evolutionary strategies that shape ecosystems (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2012), 12f.
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John Urry, “The place of emotions within place,” in Emotional geographies, ed. Joyce Davidson, Liz Bondi, and Mick Smith (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), quote from 81.
Shaw, “The International Building Exhibition (IBA) Emscher Park, Germany,” 91; see also Axel Föhl, “‘Ein Abwurfplatz für Meteoriten’. Industriedenkmale und die IBA,” Industrie-Kultur 3 (1999);
Ulrich Heinemann, “Industriekultur: Vom Nutzen zum Nachteil für das Ruhrgebiet,” Forum Industriedenkmalpflege und Geschichtskultur 1 (2003).
Ursula Poblotzki, “Transformation of a landscape,” Topos: European landscape magazine, no. 26 (1999), 48. Kersti Morger’s private collections.
Dagmar Kift, “Heritage and history: Germany’s industrial museums and the (re-) presentation of labour,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 17, no. 4 (2011), 380; Raines, “Wandel durch (Industrie) Kultur,” 186ff.;
Rita Müller, “Museums designing for the future: Some perspectives confronting German technical and industrial museums in the twenty-first century,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 19, no. 5 (2013), 511.
Shiloh R. Krupar, Hot spotter’s report: Military fables of toxic waste (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).
See, for example, Chris Hagerman, “Shaping neighborhoods and nature: Urban political ecologies of urban waterfront transformations in Portland, Oregon,” Cities 24, no. 4 (2007), 285ff., quote from 290; Anna Storm, Hope and rust: Reinterpreting the industrial place in the late 20th century (Stockholm: KTH diss., 2008).
Thomas Lekan and Thomas Zeller, Germany’s nature: Cultural landscapes and environmental history (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 4; a similar logic underpins the volume Urban wildscapes, among other things including examples from several European countries. Anna Jorgensen and Richard Keenan, ed., Urban wildscapes (New York: Routledge, 2011).
Ebert, interview; Dietrich Soyez, “Das amerikanische Industriemuseum ‘Sloss Furnaces’—ein Modell für das Saarland?,” Annales. Forschungsmagazin der Universität des Saarlandes, no. 1 (1988).
Divya P. Tolia-Kelly, “Landscape and memory,” in The Routledge companion to landscape studies, ed. Peter Howard, Ian Thompson, and Emma Waterton (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 323.
Zygmunt Bauman, “From pilgrim to tourist—or a short history of identity,” in Questions of cultural identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1996), 30;
Sharon Zukin, Loft living: Culture and capital in urban change (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982), 111f.; the conversion of former industrial buildings for cultural purposes is taking place in many places in Europe. See, for example,
Fazette Bordage, ed., The factories: Conversions for urban culture (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2002).
Millington, “Post-industrial imaginaries,” 281; Tim Edensor, Industrial ruins: Spaces, aesthetics, and materiality (Oxford: Berg, 2005).
Tim Edensor, Industrial ruins; see also Richard Pettersson, “Plats, ting och tid: Om autenticitetsuppfattning utifrån exemplet Rom,” in Topos: Essäer om tänkvärda platser och platsbundna tankar (Stockholm: Carlssons Bokförlag, 2006);
Klas Sandell, “Friluftsliv, platsperspektiv och samhällskritik,” in Topos: Essäer om tänkvärda platser och platsbundna tankar (Stockholm: Carlssons Bokförlag, 2006).
Jan Turtinen, Världsarvets villkor: Intressen, förhandlingar och bruk i internationell politik, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm studies in Ethnology 1 (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2006), 60f.; the concept of authenticity is under negotiation, however, especially under the influence of value systems in Asia. See, for example, the Nara Document on Authenticity, http://www.iicc.org.cn/Info.aspx?ModelId=1&Id=422 (accessed April 12, 2014).
Gregory Ashworth and Peter Howard, European heritage planning and management (Exeter: Intellect Ltd, 1999), 24.
David Lowenthal, The heritage crusade and the spoils of history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), x.
Kenneth E. Foote, Shadowed ground: America’s landscapes of violence and tragedy, revised edition (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 25.
Cited in Raines, “Wandel durch (Industrie) Kultur,” 203; see also Karl Ganser, “The present state of affairs … Karl Ganser in a conversation with Carl Steckeweh and Kunibert Wachten,” in Change without growth? Sustainable urban development for the 20st century. VI. Architecture biennale Venice 1996, edited by Kunibert Wachten (Braunschweig/Wiesbaden: Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 1996), 12–23.
Quote from Universität Oldenburg, landscape ecology, http://www.landeco.uni-oldenburg.de/20716.html (accessed September 25, 2013); Mira Kattwinkel, Robert Biedermann, and Michael Kleyer, “Temporary conservation for urban biodiversity,” Biological Conservation, no. 144 (2011).
David Harvey, “Emerging landscapes of heritage,” in The Routledge companion to landscape studies, ed. Peter Howard, Ian Thompson, and Emma Waterton (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 154f.
Matthew Gandy, “Urban nature and the ecological imaginary,” in In the nature of cities: Urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism, ed. Nikolas C. Heynen, Maria Kaika, and Erik Swyngedouw (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006), 71.
Mattias Qviström, “Network ruins and green structure development: An attempt to trace relational spaces of a railway ruin,” Landscape Research 37, no. 3 (2011), 257.
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© 2014 Anna Storm
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Storm, A. (2014). Industrial Nature. In: Post-Industrial Landscape Scars. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137025999_5
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