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Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America
Do you really know what is under that new house you just bought? How about what lies beneath the neighborhood playground? Was that big box retailer down your street built over a toxic site? Will the warehouse just beyond your backyard be converted into a shopping center, factory, or trucking hub? These are just a few of the worrisome scenarios facing us all as our cities begin a stealth relocation of industrial facilities from the inner city to the urban periphery-- places Alan Berger has coined "drosscapes." Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America is your guide to this vast, hitherto largely ignored field of waste landscapes.
Landscape architects must learn to accommodate these wastelands along with the more traditional challenges of site and construction. This will require a radical reconceptualization of thinking about landscape before potential solutions can be effectively addressed or devised. Ten cites are examined both visually and analytically through the use of aerial photography and geospatially derived maps, charts, and graphs.
Landscape architects must learn to accommodate these wastelands along with the more traditional challenges of site and construction. This will require a radical reconceptualization of thinking about landscape before potential solutions can be effectively addressed or devised. Ten cites are examined both visually and analytically through the use of aerial photography and geospatially derived maps, charts, and graphs.
255 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 1, 2019
‘Drosscape’ must have been on my to-read list for about a decade. It stayed on there because, a) the expanses of wasted built environment in the US are fascinating in a horrifying sort of way, b) it is not an easy book to get hold of. I eventually found it in a well-stocked university library that was unusually willing to lend something classified as a folio. As I should perhaps have predicted, the photos are superb but the text nowhere near as compelling. Berger advances a broad theory of wasted space in the centres and fringes of American conurbations, in a style that is rather repetitive and not as profound as the seriousness of his tone would imply.
Starting with dense text rather than imagery was a tactical error, as I began the book irritated by Berger’s treatment of urban sprawl and wasted land as inevitable and ‘natural’. Indeed they are not. A complex interplay between economic, historical, cultural, geographical, and social factors have made America look like this. Nowhere in Europe does sprawl and inner city urban decay coexist to anything the same extent. Post-Soviet Russia might be comparable, ironically. The UK, by contrast, has encased its cities in green belts for more than fifty years. It’s very frustrating when American writers treat the state of things in their country (or ‘nation’ as it is pompously called) as an inevitable blueprint for the world. Particularly in cases like this, when the American way is manifestly dreadful. There is no one right way for urban development to proceed, of course, but it’s pretty clear that Los Angeles does not invite emulation. Although the book depicts spatial waste as a discrete* phenomenon, sprawl only became possible thanks to dependence on oil-powered vehicles. The size of American motorways required by incredibly low density development is terrifying. One reason I never want to go to the US is that every time I saw a highway I’d immediately have an anxiety attack.
Anyway, I found Berger’s classification of drosscape into sub-types reasonable enough, but the analysis of why it exists and what to do with it was slight and vague. It suffered in part from not mentioning the role of investment banks in the pre-2007 housing boom, as their insatiable appetite for subprime-mortgage-backed derivatives created a massive bubble. The reader looks at these endless identical suburbs and wonders, who built and bought this shit? Bergen does not elucidate. Frankly, the sitcom Arrested Development analyses the economics of speculative low density housing development much more effectively. Thus there isn’t much of note here in terms of theory, other than the very basic idea of reusing previously developed land for something different. Which surely would not be a novel concept in any other country in the world. In the UK we call it ‘regeneration’.
Nonetheless, the photography is stunning and makes the text worth slogging through. The pictures of drosscapes from the air are genuinely haunting and make this book a very appropriate Halloween read. America’s built environment scares the shit out of me. There’s a photo of LA International Airport which, at least 13 years ago, had twenty-five thousand parking spaces. As far as I can see, these were all at ground level, resulting in a gargantuan expanse of tarmac that dwarfed the actual runways. Why? This is the kind of thing I imagine whatever intelligent life survives into the next few centuries will hold up as evidence of human (well, American) folly. My fascination with photographs of wasteful development has limits, however. When graphs of population density and changes in dispersion of manufacturing jobs are presented, the superimposition of photos makes them frustratingly hard to read. Also the axes should be labelled more clearly. Recently I’ve been marking student assignments that contained some truly tragic graphs, so am more sensitive to this than usual. In conclusion, America is an environmental nightmare, but from the air its incredible spatial profligacy attains a certain toxic beauty.
* Not ‘discreet’. That typo gets on my nerves when found in turgid academic prose, as is the case here.
Starting with dense text rather than imagery was a tactical error, as I began the book irritated by Berger’s treatment of urban sprawl and wasted land as inevitable and ‘natural’. Indeed they are not. A complex interplay between economic, historical, cultural, geographical, and social factors have made America look like this. Nowhere in Europe does sprawl and inner city urban decay coexist to anything the same extent. Post-Soviet Russia might be comparable, ironically. The UK, by contrast, has encased its cities in green belts for more than fifty years. It’s very frustrating when American writers treat the state of things in their country (or ‘nation’ as it is pompously called) as an inevitable blueprint for the world. Particularly in cases like this, when the American way is manifestly dreadful. There is no one right way for urban development to proceed, of course, but it’s pretty clear that Los Angeles does not invite emulation. Although the book depicts spatial waste as a discrete* phenomenon, sprawl only became possible thanks to dependence on oil-powered vehicles. The size of American motorways required by incredibly low density development is terrifying. One reason I never want to go to the US is that every time I saw a highway I’d immediately have an anxiety attack.
Anyway, I found Berger’s classification of drosscape into sub-types reasonable enough, but the analysis of why it exists and what to do with it was slight and vague. It suffered in part from not mentioning the role of investment banks in the pre-2007 housing boom, as their insatiable appetite for subprime-mortgage-backed derivatives created a massive bubble. The reader looks at these endless identical suburbs and wonders, who built and bought this shit? Bergen does not elucidate. Frankly, the sitcom Arrested Development analyses the economics of speculative low density housing development much more effectively. Thus there isn’t much of note here in terms of theory, other than the very basic idea of reusing previously developed land for something different. Which surely would not be a novel concept in any other country in the world. In the UK we call it ‘regeneration’.
Nonetheless, the photography is stunning and makes the text worth slogging through. The pictures of drosscapes from the air are genuinely haunting and make this book a very appropriate Halloween read. America’s built environment scares the shit out of me. There’s a photo of LA International Airport which, at least 13 years ago, had twenty-five thousand parking spaces. As far as I can see, these were all at ground level, resulting in a gargantuan expanse of tarmac that dwarfed the actual runways. Why? This is the kind of thing I imagine whatever intelligent life survives into the next few centuries will hold up as evidence of human (well, American) folly. My fascination with photographs of wasteful development has limits, however. When graphs of population density and changes in dispersion of manufacturing jobs are presented, the superimposition of photos makes them frustratingly hard to read. Also the axes should be labelled more clearly. Recently I’ve been marking student assignments that contained some truly tragic graphs, so am more sensitive to this than usual. In conclusion, America is an environmental nightmare, but from the air its incredible spatial profligacy attains a certain toxic beauty.
* Not ‘discreet’. That typo gets on my nerves when found in turgid academic prose, as is the case here.
October 9, 2025
Maybe it’s because this book is kind of old now but this read like an intro to planning class. Completely descriptive which is fine but as a book offering a “manifesto” none of the ideas were really operationalizable
April 29, 2009
As my yearning for understanding what comprises the American landscape has led me to Drosscape. Ultimately, the beauty of the book is neither the writing or prose (as I find architecture rhetoric to be incredibly drab and overvalued) but instead the research, graphs and diagrams allow one to identify the dilmena develop their own conclusions.
April 1, 2024
a wonderful representation of the fertile ground to be tilled (ha) in urban America
July 23, 2008
So I admit I am fascinated with obsolete structures. I am not so inclined on how things are going to be improved, but if you couldn't tell, how they decline. This has some great aerial shots of bizarre lapses in urban development and illuminates the complete ineptitude of most public officials when it comes to planning. Not to mention the crux of the field of any design to design something ethically. You see contaminated lands next to residential developments, sprawl as far as the eye can see, toxic materials, dead malls, etc. There are some great ideas here. Again I definitely side with that in my opinion the human race will probably destroy itself and all the altruism in the world isn't going to prevent it. But it's nice to see someone try to focus on sustainable and responsible land use.
March 22, 2012
Berger's Reclaiming the American West is a beautiful, fascinating 5 star masterpiece. This follow up effort pales in comparison, primarily due to the incohesive text.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews