Representation and Recycle. Disclosing the geography of waste in the European context

“Just as to understand poverty we must study the very rich: so to understand value we must study rubbish. The one is the dark side of the other.” (Thompson, 1981)During the last decade, the concepts of waste and wasteland have been central to western society. If we translate Thompson’s expression into a spatial dimension, wastelands are the unpleasant consequences of our cultural values associated with land use. The consecutive productive shifts of many western countries coincided with a massive disposal of industrial areas and infrastructures. Today, a legacy of abandoned and derelict landscapes appears. In order to study both concepts, this paper proposes mapping as a way of inquiry and unfolding this complexity. It presents constructions of original cartographies of the Veneto Central area (Italy) and the Charleroi region (Belgium) in order to understand past and contemporary forms of wasteland. They embody macro and micro forms of what A. Berger defined as ‘drosscape’ emerging from different economic and productive cycles (Berger, 2006).The first part of the paper will investigate through historical cartographic explorations how spatial distribution of wastelands results from the cultural value construction. First, the paper, based on the assumption that maps can be considered as representations of social intent on the territory, emphasises how the notion of wasteland transforms according to the technological and cultural concepts of productivity (Harley, 2001).Second, the paper studies how the complexities of recycling and remediation are amplified at the territorial scale, especially when they involve ecological cycles of post-industrial sites and waste flows (Belanger, 2007). Mapping wasteland dynamics is the first step to question the conventional way to see these spaces and to reveal new life cycles. It also provides a way to view the problems from a different level by shifting the negative perspective of wastelands towards focusing on the territorial systemic character of recycling.In short, unfolding the wasteland problematic of the Veneto Central area and the Charleroi region, through a cartographic approach, is a pretext to study the spatial dialectics between waste, culture, and value. In conclusion, the paper claims that a critical representation lies at the heart of understanding (and finding the potential for) reclaiming landscape.

ISBN:978-0-9943360-7-1

Publication year:2015