Rethinking the waste of planetary urbanization for urban challenges: Potential, Strategies and Governance in Terrain Vague projects

Abstract

We live in a world of Planetary Urbanisation (Brenner & Schmid, 2011) a process increasing the pressure on undeveloped spaces in cities. Perceived as wastelands, such spaces are often of unacknowledged socioenvironmental value. Conceptualised as Terrain Vague (Solà-Morales, 1995), Vacant Lots, or Urban Voids, they lie in a state of neglect or underuse, temporarily cut off from capitalist space production processes and planning control. They are liminal spaces: between rural, wild, and urban dimensions, built and void, center and periphery, local and global, temporality and long-term vision. Terrain Vague spaces have great potential to address current urban challenges - the right to the city, spatial justice, urban ecology - representing a rare opportunity for social and ecological interests to meet. However, due to their unstable nature, they are fragile and in danger of disappearing, and risk being "reinserted into the speculative dynamics of capitalist urbanisation at multiple scales" (Gandy, 2022). To activate and enhance the potential of the Terrain Vague, an approach is needed that preserves its current value as a place of daily appropriation, informal uses, activities not permitted elsewhere, and a refuge for spontaneous nature, which can grow undisturbed here, far from human control (Kamvasinou & Roberts, 2014). Approaching the Terrain Vague as Urban Commons can enhance and generate ecological, social, and economic benefits that are usually not considered or calculated, for example "water recycling, soil and biodiversity improvement" (Petrescu et al., 2021), or artistic and participatory design experimentation through tactical and guerrilla urbanism.  

This paper aims to demonstrate how the Terrain Vague can be activated and enhanced through alternative repurposing strategies and governance, addressing current urban challenges. Methodologically, after an introduction to the theoretical context and definitions of Terrain Vague, we present a qualitative and comparative case study analysis of three projects indicative of diverse strategies adopted, chosen intentionally from different European contexts: Porto Healthy Corridor, a nature-based solution designed as part of URBINAT research project, a green corridor in the city of Porto, realized through co-creation processes; R-Urban (2013-2017), a community garden in Colombes, near Paris, with agriculture and cultural events, managed as Urban Commons; Cody Dock, a community-led regeneration, river revitalisation and social enterprise project on a post-industrial site in Newham, East London, that emerged in 2009 at the time of global financial crisis and represents a slow process of placemaking. The analysis shows how rethinking the waste of planetary urbanization through commoning practices of care can support the circular economy, biodiversity, urban ecology, community development, and sustainability against climate change.