Madanipour A. Ephemeral Landscape and Urban Shrinkage. Landscape Research (2017) DOI
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Madanipour A. Ephemeral landscape and urban shrinkage. Landscape Research (2017) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2017.1355445 Copyright: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Landscape Research on 06/08/2017, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2017.1355445 Date deposited: 31/05/2017 Embargo release date: 06 February 2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence Newcastle University ePrints - eprint.ncl.ac.uk Ephemeral landscape and urban shrinkage Ali Madanipour School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, [email protected] Landscape Research, 2017 Abstract The paper investigates the phenomenon of short-lived landscapes in European cities, analysing the causes and contexts of their emergence, exploring their links with urban shrinkage, and examining their roles in urban transformation. Five cases from Liverpool, Glasgow, London, Paris and Brussels are studied in two groups of garden festivals and temporary parks, covering a range of scales, periods, locations and agents of development. Economic, political and cultural changes have created the conditions of urban shrinkage and temporary interventions, whereby landscape is treated as a flexible means to an end, a short- lived event that reflects, and paves the way for, structural change. As the cases demonstrate, however, the instrumental use of landscape for economic purposes is not the only way forward. From popup shops to street festivals, from mobile buildings to temporary gardens, the temporary construction and use of urban space is widely discussed and practised, as part of a growing international trend that is seen as innovative and fashionable in different fields. The subjects of temporary urbanism vary from buildings to cities (Scardino et al, 2004; Koolhaas et al, 2008; Tschumi, 2010; Jodidio, 2011; Geppert, 2013), from the ways of planning them to the ways of making them (Jovis, 2007; Zander, 2008; Temel and Haydn, 2006; Bishop and Williams, 2012 ;Oswalt et al, 2013; Ziehl et al, 2012), and from how they are represented to how they are experienced (Eberle et al, 2001; Weitzel, 2011; Bauman et al, 2010). A critical examination of this trend, therefore, is needed (Madanipour, 2017). In this paper, the focus is on critically analysing temporary landscapes and exploring their links with urban shrinkage. The paper investigates five case studies of temporary landscapes in two groups: garden festivals and temporary parks. The garden festivals include those in Liverpool and Glasgow, which are large-scale projects established in the 1980s by the British government as a strategy for urban regeneration. The temporary parks include three newer, smaller-scale cases: Ruskin Square in London, which is being developed by a private developer; the Parisian beaches, which were started in 2002 by the municipality; and Place St Antoine in Brussels, which was initiated by the local community groups. The cases are selected to reflect a range of periods, scales, intentions, and agents of development, but they all exemplify short-lived landscapes in the circumstances of urban shrinkage. The primary feature of shrinkage that is shared by all five cases is population loss and reduction in the range and intensity of activities, which are associated with structural economic, political, and cultural change. Nevertheless, the cases show different responses to a wide variety of circumstances, ranging from abandoned industrial sites in peripheral regions to hollowed out historic cores of prosperous metropolises. The aim 1 of the paper is to investigate if there are commonalities in these examples of ephemeral landscapes, searching for the ways in which the ephemerality of these landscapes can be understood and explained. Urban shrinkage and temporary space Temporary landscapes and urban shrinkage are emerging in the context of three interrelated structural crises: economic, political, and cultural. The first structural crisis is economic, such as the crisis of deindustrialisation and the global financial crisis of 2007-8, whereby one economic structure is dismantled but the shape of the next structure gradually emerges through cautious and speculative steps. The cyclical nature of the market economy is reflected in the periods of expansion and contraction, expressed in patterns of spatial change. The engine of the market economy ‘represents an enormous productive potential but it is also a blind force’ (Aglietta, 2000:397), regularly going through periods of crisis. The shorter economic cycles mark a crisis of overproduction, caused by a gap between the decline in demand and the continued supply of goods and services. The longer cycles are thought to be triggered by technological innovation, which transforms the context of economic production, whereby some places and processes are considered obsolete and ready for ‘creative destruction’ (Schumpeter, 2003; Perez, 1983). The result is a sequence of shrinkage, experimentation, and, if successful, growth. Global economic change, and the crises that have been associated with this process, have generated a diverse pattern of urban growth and decline (Richardson and Nam, 2014). Economic and demographic shrinkage are interrelated; while economic growth attracts populations, economic decline sends them away. In Europe, larger cities are growing fast, while the populations of small and medium-sized cities are stagnant or shrinking. The growth of larger cities is often on the peripheries, and their centres show long-term decline and population loss (Ecotec, 2007; RWI et al, 2010). The economic and demographic shrinkage finds a clear spatial expression, leading to the proliferation of abandoned or vacant spaces in centres and on peripheries, which no longer have a clear function or role. The pattern of this shrinkage varies from place to place. The former industrial areas have been in longstanding decline, with decaying spaces on the periphery or even at the heart of cities (Kivell and Lockhart, 1996). The central areas of many historic cities have also suffered from long-term decline, intensified by technological change, accelerated suburbanisation, and top-down modernisation. Services are expanded to fill in these spaces and the urban landscape is adjusted to regenerate. The global economic crisis in the recent years has shown, however, that the new sectors of the economy are equally exposed to structural crises and decline, causing a new wave of shrinkage (BBC, 2012). The second crisis is political, whereby the relationship between the state and the market changes, as the state transfers some of its role and responsibilities to the private and voluntary sectors. In what is known as neo-liberalism, two principles are promoted: envisaging the society on the basis of enterprise and promoting competitiveness that regulates the relationship between individuals (Foucault, 2008:160). The process of urban development, which was driven by the state during the postwar welfare 2 state, is transferred to the private sector, which operates on the basis of entrepreneurship and market competition. Re-envisaging the society through an economic lens defines the main problem as ‘one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place’, to be better addressed through the market and its price mechanism (Hayek, 1945:524). As the state changes its priorities and withdraws from direct investment in urban development, the idea of long-term provision of public parks and other hitherto permanent features of the urban environment is replaced with the vision of short-term commodities that should be open to rapid adjustment. The response to urban shrinkage therefore changes from long-term commitments to temporary interventions. Long-term investments, such as the construction of new infrastructure, bring in fresh resources at a general level, framing the conditions of possibility for economic revival. In comparison, temporary interventions are short-term and often small-scale, taking small steps in a cautious process of filling the gaps, waiting for recovery and experimenting with change. The third crisis is that of cultural consumerism, in which cultural products and relationships are turned into ephemeral episodes in the construction of an experience economy. This partly follows technological change, in which the concepts and experiences of time and space are modified, thought to be annihilated, converged (Janelle, 1968), compressed (Harvey, 1989), stretched (Giddens, 1984), and made timeless (Castells, 1996), whereby ‘the strategic value of the non-place of speed’ (Virilio, 1986:133) becomes predominant. It is turning this nomadic urbanity into a permanent experience, narrowing the relation between the visitor and the urban space to a visual encounter (Sennett, 1994), treating the city as a stage for events and performances (Madanipour, 2003), and blurring the boundaries between tourism and everyday life (Urry, 1995). All three crises of structural transformation engender a sense of transience, in the context of which the production of ephemeral landscapes can be analysed. Garden festivals Garden festivals are one of the instruments of bringing life back to the shrinking cities, not as a permanent feature of the city but as a catalyst for change. These festivals are temporary events, and therefore not only the landscape that is created, but also the revitalisation that is hoped-for afterwards,