Wastelands: Vanishing picturesque of the urban commons
Prelude.
Wastelands, barrens, brownfields, intermittent spaces, spontaneous nature, no-man-lands, Brachen (German), jäätmaad, tühermaad (Estonian), пустыри (Russian) – these are only some of the names used for the urban ostensibly empty spaces. The mere definition of the most of these terms presupposes uselessness, object of no interest, irrelevancy. And yet, wastelands are gaining popularity in the urban discourse and are becoming an inevitable object of discussion for city planners, urban ecologists, architects and municipalities. The meaning of the term varies across cultures: the English term barrens refers to the land unable to produce plants or fruit, infertile (Cambridge Dictionary), whereas Estonian tühermaa is an empty, unused, left-behind space, which leaves us wondering – so, what is it that construes a wasteland?
Wastelands tend to be approached through the dichotomy juxtaposing “desirable natural landscapes” of ecological, economical and aesthetical value versus “undesirable spaces of abandonment” (Gandy 2013), in which the latter are treated as non-places, the sole value of which lies in its potential to be turned into something else. “Utilitarian approaches concerning unproductive places”, as wastelands are often perceived, “and their supposed “emptiness” narrowly frame [these] urban open spaces… as waiting for development.” (Barchetta 2019:177). This concept of “emptiness” commonly adhered to the understanding of wasteland is, in fact, almost never present. As it has been stated already by Aristotle, “nature abhors a vacuum”, and in practice, as to the morphological composition, urban wastelands have often higher diversity than rural landscapes. What makes these sites empty is the human eye, human perception, which has a tendency, as long as the site does not fulfill any functionality from the point of view of a collective human being and is not able to be “consumed”, claims them as wasted and of no use. This anthropocentric attitude gives me a reason to approach wasteland as a form of a social landscape, where human figures in two different ways: as a natural species of the urban ecosystem on one hand, and as a collective entity approaching these sites from the point of commodification in a utilitarian approach.
Insects’ Highway
The case study under consideration is the pilot project in progress Insects' Highway (Putuvkaväil), located in the former high-voltage (110 kV) power line air-cable network corridor in Tallinn, which is to be substituted with underground cables. The project is led by the City of Tallinn in cooperation with Tallinn University and EU-funded international project Augmented Urbans focused on resilient urbanism.The territory under the powerlines used to be unreformed state-owned land (reformimata riigi maa, land that has not yet been assigned a use in the Estonian Land reform process) the future of which has not been confirmed yet. The comprehensive plan under development by the Tallinn Urban Planning Department will serve as the basis for municipalization of the area, transferring it into the ownership of the City of Tallinn.
The goal of the project, as the name suggests, is to enrich Tallinn’s urban ecosystem by providing pollinator species with a more favorable environment to promote their existence and distribution. “The objective is to keep and enhance the value of the area for pollinators” and to create “a green corridor for wildlife and people” (Leisner A. and Uustal M. 2019).
Importance of pollinators has been a hot topic over the last years, considered to be crucial for preserving and increasing biodiversity in the city, which in the urban context is beneficial not only to the wild species propagation (the plants dependent on pollinators and birds that feed on insects), but also to the garden owners, contributing to greater crops. 90% of flowering plants depend on pollinators for propagation, and the number of pollinators worldwide continues to decrease causing endangerment of multiple species. Insects’ Highway draws on the idea that biodiversity plays not only an important role in the climate-change mitigation process, as urban “green spaces perform important ecosystem services, such as filtering dust, absorbing carbon dioxide from the air and improving air quality”, but “biodiversity also delivers important health benefits. Studies have shown that proximity to trees can reduce the prevalence of childhood asthma and allergies.” (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2012)
Natural Habitat
As entomologists have shown (Sõber, Soon, Tiitsaar, Mesipuu 2019) the range of species in the investigated area was evaluated as medium to poor. In the areas with better indicators the number of pollinator species reached 26 (including bees, bumble bees and butterflies), overall there were over 50 different species registered. Despite the name of the project, Insects’ Highway, implying a transition corridor, the analysis showed that far more important was distribution of the sites favorable to pollinators throughout the city and, most importantly, their adjacency to natural sites such as Merimetsa forest. According to the entomologists, adjusting the site to pollinators’ needs requires minimizing human interference by reducing mowing to maximum once a year and abandoning territory “clean-up and refurbishment” works. Such regime would allow pollinators to find shelters for winter in the piles of old leaves or rocks, as well as establishing connectivity to the sites of non urbanized nature.
It seems quite challenging to implement this clear message of “minimizing human interference” while taking into account the goals of Tallinn city municipality, which sees this project as the means of increasing public space and promoting alternative types of mobility (e.g. cycling etc.) alongside with the growth of real estate and overall Northern Tallinn district’s development. According to the research, compiled by the city planning department, the “objective is to make new public space between two large apartment estates, improve its pedestrian, cyclist’s connectivity with neighboring areas and to build a new tramline for improving public transport with city center” (Semjonova, 2018. 10). This balancing interests of stakeholder groups: insects, locals, municipalities and developers leaves us wondering whose interest, in the end, will be catered to.
metamorphosis of space
As previously established in my project, wastelands are to be approached as socially constructed landscapes, so it would be important to take into consideration historical and geographical peculiarities having influenced the area formation.
Till the beginning of the 20th century the given territory laid just outside the Tallinn city borders being occupied with wetlands and creating hardly-accessible areas, which also gave the name to the future neighborhood subdistricts – Pelgulinn and Pelgurand – a city and shoreside to seek refuge in/to hide in. Among the first residents were outlaws, representatives of opposition to the authority in power, as well as poorer families having difficulties with paying taxes (Dictionary of Estonian Place Names). The connotation of the place name Pelgulinn used to be unarguably derogatory: it literally means “town of refuge” presupposing that the habitants have something to hide. This historical aspect allows us to bring forward the oppositional character of the urban wasteland, the liminal character of which is quite often marking the border between “us” and “them” and planting the seeds of marginalization.
The advancement of the site development was triggered by the construction of Sitsi Baltic Cotton Factory and the railway line that opened in 1898. Till the 1950s the investigated area served as croplands and pasture for animals owned by the workers of the factory. There were also two ponds (for swimming and fishing), later substituted with the garages. According to interviews with local residents conducted by students of Tallinn University, only the elder group of respondents, who preserve the memories of the site as surrounded by wetlands and adjacent to unplanned nature, retained sentimental connection to the area (Allikas-Pürn, Barsegjan, Kajamäe, Kask, Vabson 2019). Warm reminiscences of one’s father sun bathing under the chestnut tree or fishing in the pond indicate undeniable emotional value this site used to carry for its locals. Due to their private nature and proximity to the former industrial sites, as well as to the dwelling originally constructed for those sites’ workers “marginal spaces such as wastelands form a fundamental element in public cultures of nature for the poorest urban communities” (Gandy 2013), often providing a more intimate environment than municipal parks. These urban memories drastically differ from the younger generations’ perception of the area as primarily a utilitarian transit zone – indeed having appeared in 1950-60s, the garages turned the area into a mere transit corridor with the paths connecting residential areas to the shops and bus stops. So it gives us reason to believe that adjacency to the untouched nature sites, feeling of unsupervised freedom and openness are the factors constructing the emotional value of urban landscape.
Further advancement of the development gives us another reason to return to the “us vs. them” dichotomy. According to an official communication of the Urban Planning Department (Semjonova 2018) the “Area locates between most populated residential sub-districts in Northern Tallinn built during soviet era time - Pelguranna and part of Pelgulinn – large apartment estates, built to ease the housing shortage and to cope with massive immigration from Soviet-Russia.” Hereby the topic of ethnic and social segregation is introduced. This dimension adds another degree of complexity for the project development if we take into account the aspect of ownership. As the project is being developed for the process of municipalization of the previously state owned unreformed land surrounded with the privately-owned garages, it seems that the aspect of ownership could not get any more entangled taking into account the diversity of interest represented.
The position of the Tallinn Urban Planning Department is that one of the biggest threats to implementation of the project is “possible opposition against renewalisation from garage owners, their low interest in investments”(Semjonova 2018). Indeed, once the project is to be built based on participatory practices, during the public gathering of ideas over 60% of respondents were female aged 30-40 years, whereas the research of the garage owner focus group (Jakson, Sibul, Veldre 2019) exhibited predominantly male composition of the actual decision makers unwilling to engage into the participatory practices. The interviews of the garage owners revealed consensual agreement on the topic: no change is needed and development of the site is being seen more as a risk than an opportunity.
This fear of change leads to another phenomena to address, which is getting more acute due to the geographical transformations of the city borders. Because of the urban sprawl and the city's borders expansion, once marginal wastelands can now be situated in quite central and prominent locations (e.g. Rottermanni, Kalarand) and be re-evaluated as a potent opportunity for the engines of gentrification. According to the Planning Department analysis, it is “estimated that when all detail-plans will be implemented the amount of population in Northern Tallinn will grow up to 100 000 inhabitants (currently approx. 60 000)” “causing pressure and high demand on public space, social infrastructure and mobility issues” (Semjonova 2018). The city is hoping to address these issues by implementing the project.
Thus, the infrastructure of the still in planning phase Insect’s Highway is already a part of a sales package for the newly constructed residential development Sitsi Apple Orchard (Sitsi Õunaaed) advertising Insects’ Highway as a green passage to the seashore. On the visualizations of the real estate agency we come to witness how nature becomes “transformed into different types of landscapes” (Barchetta 2019:176) providing green infrastructure for the gated community.
Conclusion
Close reading of physical space and the multiple inventory reports led me to a surprisingly obvious take away: locals should be regarded as an inseparable social construct of urban landscape, not less than the pollinators are, and the affinity of interests only proves it. As a bumble bee is looking for winter shelter in the pile of old leaves, the local may find his calm while fixing a car in an old garage – both of them are reluctant to change. Both a pollinator and a garage owner feel fragile and endangered by the advancing city development and as the photo series devoted to the introspective geography of traces of life shows – comforted by the connectedness to the wild nature. As the entomologists reports confirm, pollinators do not need a highway to commute throughout the town – they need an access to the wild nature and enhancing the environment would mean to minimize the human interference.
The main challenge for Insects’ Highway is how not to doom local inhabitants to isolation and therefore “extinction” by cutting them off with green infrastructure and “islands of biodiversity”. Though compromises are inevitable in the urban planning domain, sometimes you have to decide – who comes first..
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References:
Allikas-Pürn L., Barsegjan A. M., Kajamäe K., Kask K., Vabson K. Eakad. 2019. Accessed May 18, 2020.
Barchetta L. “Green is not alway perfectly green”, Post-Industrial Precarity: New Ethnographies of Urban Lives in Uncertain Times, ed. Evans G., Vernon Press, 2019.
Cambridge Dictionary. Accessed May 18, 2020.
Dictionary of Estonian Place Names. Accessed May 18, 2020.
Gandy M. “Marginalia: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Urban Wastelands”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103:6, 1301-1316, DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2013.832105
Jakson A., Sibul J., Veldre H. Garaažide kasutajad. 2019.
Mändlo, Mati. Photos of Pelgulinn, Tallinn, ca 1960-61. www.ajapaik.ee
Semjonova A. Inventory Report, 2018.
Sõber, Soon, Tiitsaar, Mesipuu. Putukaväila tolmeldajate uuring, 2019.
Ulman P.-E. Illustrations to the Insects' Highway project. Linnaplaneerimise Amet