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PEER REVIEW The Leftover City: Leftover Sites as Disruptors of Urban Narratives in the Work of J.G. Ballard, Jim Jarmusch, and Wim Wenders Christos Papastergiou KEYWORDS Leftover City, leftover sites, architecture, urban design, cinema, literature, disruption, narrative, Ballard, Jarmusch, Wenders Leftover City, sitios abandonados, arquitectura, diseño urbano, cine, literatura, narrativa, Ballard, Jarmusch, Wenders Papastergiou, Christos. 2020. “The Leftover City: Leftover Sites as Disruptors of Urban Narratives in the Work of J.G. Ballard, Jim Jarmusch, and Wim Wenders.” informa 13: 208–221. informa Issue #13 ‘Urban Disruptors’ 209 THE LEFTOVER CITY: LEFTOVER SITES AS DISRUPTORS OF URBAN NARRATIVES IN THE WORK OF J.G. BALLARD, JIM JARMUSCH, AND WIM WENDERS Christos Papastergiou ABSTRACT that introduce a creative, holistic understanding of the phenomenon and discusses alternative uses of the During the 1970s and 1980s, emerged a second wave urban environment. The leftover sites can result from of architectural criticism to Modernism related extraordinary conditions; for example, wars, physical with the global oil and fiscal crises of the period. destruction or mass migration. However, they are This criticism, targeting the issues of the ongoing mainly the by-products or the unintended products urbanization, the unlimited spending of resources of long-term processes, such as the fragmentation and the environmental degradation rendered of a city due to rapid, uneven and unbalanced the fragmentation of cities a critical problem for development. They can be produced by the spas- social coherence. In this second period, leftover modic sprawl of the city, inconsistencies in the built sites were rediscovered and appeared as a favorite context and discontinuities of landscape, topography subject in narrative arts. Literature and cinema and infrastructure, or by a combination of these. explored the lyrical role of such sites as allegories They can also result from land ownership issues, of alternative forms of urban life, romantic forms of policies that separate areas—for example by dividing unlawfulness, and the re-establishment of the senses land into purpose-built plots,—as well as from or the rediscovery of lost identities. In these cases, the errors, the insufficiency, or even the total lack leftover sites in cities appear as a more complicated of planning policies. phenomenon, one that had already been established and had evolved in cities for more than four decades. The phenomenon of leftover sites is generally consid- Leftover sites became more internalized and they ered to be negative. Leftover sites are usually linked were used to project the profound psychological with negative circumstances and aspects of the city: concerns of the contemporary inhabitants of the dirt, garbage, decomposition and abandonment. They city, such as the experience of a lost identity in the are referred to as dump spaces and as voids; they are city, the shattering of social coherence of urban life, considered places to be avoided or places in an in-be- the overwhelming presence of dominant patterns of tween condition waiting for development. The aca- use in the city, or the city’s problematic relation with demic and urban design practitioner Roger Trancik nature. This article examines the ways that various introduced in 1986 the term ‘lost space’1 in order to narrative artistic projects from cinema and literature describe the negative presence of such spaces in the refer to the presence of the leftover sites in cities. It Western cities. According to Trancik, such spaces are investigates the way that these artistic projects can the by-products of the urban design intensions that form a consistent narrative about alternative forms have formed the contemporary cities: the use of car of urban life, one that exists in parallel to the domi- infrastructure, the modernist attitude towards open nant patterns of use of the city. The article also aims space, the zoning policies, the unwillingness of public to contribute to the discussion on the role that artis- institutions to relate with public space and the aban- tic narratives can play in transcending architectural donment of former industrial, military and transpor- and urban design stereotypes in acknowledging, and tation uses.2 Trancik uses the term “leftover” in order documenting the leftover sites and possibly re-intro- to describe the chunks of ‘lost space’ that remain after ducing them in the urban environment. the rest of space has been consumed by “positive” design. According to this positivist/negativist binary understanding, these spaces are seen as “negative” 1. LEFTOVER SITES: THE BY-PRODUCTS OF sites that should be re-incorporated in the life of the URBAN FRAGMENTATION. city and become ‘positive’ again with the use of urban design: The Leftover City is a phenomenon that emerged after the Second World War, grew over the second Generally speaking, lost spaces are the half of the twentieth century due to urban fragmen- undesirable urban areas that are in need of tation, was acknowledged by theory and practice redesign—antispaces, making no positive in the 1970s and 1980s, and continues to influence contribution to the surroundings or users. life in Western cities today. I use the term Leftover They are ill-defined without measurable City to describe the presence in the city of a sum of boundaries, and fail to connect elements sites that are abandoned, underused and, most of the in a coherent way. On the other hand they times, neglected by the dominant patterns of urban offer tremendous to the designer for urban use. The Leftover City however is something more redevelopment and creative infill and for than a mere sum of sites with similar qualities. It is rediscovering the many hidden resources related with artistic, urban or architectural practices in our cities.3 Papastergiou, Christos. 2020. “The Leftover City Leftover Sites as Disruptors of Urban Narratives in the Work of J.G. Ballard, Jim Jarmusch, and Wim Wenders.” informa 13: 208–221. necessarily due to their re-design as open public spaces, can help “rediscover the hidden resources” of our urban environments, as Trancik mentions. The leftover sites may address specific needs and aspects of the city’s informal living, which official, channelled and fixed patterns of use may ignore and fail to address. Moreover, their often ambivalent legal status or ownership offers a positive alter- native to official city policies that tend to exercise authority and are based on controlling activity. 2. THE ROLE OF CRITICAL PRACTICE IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE LEFTOVER CITY. There are architecture and urban practices that have used the phenomenon of leftover sites in ways that transcend the positive/negative dichotomy and have contributed to the holistic view of what I call the ‘Leftover City’. The British architect Alison Smithson in her 1977 article “The City Center Full of 5 Fig 1. Fig Holes” argues for the importance of preserving the ‘holes’ in the city, and for the need of architectural Although Trancik acknowledges the leftover sites’ and urban practice to focus on the “abandoned rail- contribution in “rediscovering the many hidden road right-of-ways and areas adjacent to freeways”.6 resources of our cities” his general understanding of Smithson introduces the term ‘holding operations’ these spaces is related with the way that many plan- to describe the way that the city can benefit from ning policies in Western cities understand today these sites without necessarily overcoming their such sites. Many urban policies use the generic term negative connotations of abandonment, but instead “green spaces” to describe public or private owned by using this abandonment and wilderness as leftover sites, which, along with other sites in the landscape opportunities for creation of an urban city containing wild or cared nature, such as smaller landscape and eventually as connecting opportu- or bigger parks, should form a network of public nities between the city centre and the surrounding open accessible spaces. Leftover sites, according sprawl.7 Almost 20 years earlier the Dutch architect to such policies are considered from a utilitarian Aldo van Eyck was starting his, more than thirty point of view as sites that should be redesigned and years long, project of the Amsterdam Playgrounds, utilised in order to be again organic parts of the which, at its peak in the 1970s, numbered 745 play- network of public spaces. In this way they are not grounds placed in small- to medium-sized sites seen as distinguishable from city life or as places with leftover characteristics, scattered over the city that continue bearing characteristics that can be in various contexts, such as parks, traffic islands, considered as negative.4 junkyards and empty plots.8 Van Eyck’s project was based on using abandoned and derelict plots for For the Leftover City however, the negative per- playgrounds by applying small and cheap altera- ceptions of the leftover sites and their in-between tions, such as paving and adding play objects. Liane character act as a starting point. The Leftover City Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis note that “Van Eyck’s asks: What are the varied forces, circumstances achievement was to transform leftover city sites and actions that make and maintain a site leftover from ‘blind spots’ on a city map into what a con- and how do they influence the broader city? The temporary and sympathetically inclined architect article aims to discuss leftover sites as conditions in and urbanist, John Voelcker, called ‘an inescapable the city that, due to their “negative” aura, and not reality’”. 9 [Fig. 1] 01. Trancik, Roger. Finding Lost Space: McCullough (eds.). London: and modest landscaping was based Theories of Urban Design. New York: Routledge, 2008. p.122 on their observations on children’s John Wiley & Sons, 1986. p.4 07. Ibid., p.122 ways of informally using abandoned 02. Ibid., p.4. 08. Aldo van Eyck’s Amsterdam sites for play and the debris 03.

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