A Glossary Of Urban Voids

4
This book began as a research project developed during my time as
the 2014–15 Daniel Urban Kiley Fellow in Landscape Architecture
at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. I want to thank Charles
Waldheim for his support in giving me that opportunity.
I would also like to thank the Harvard Graduate School of
Design for the research support it has provided and my research
assistant Tammy Teng for her invaluable help and constant patience.
Several colleagues and friends have been especially generous
with their time, giving me constructive feedback at different devel-
opment stages of this book. I would like to thank Iñaki Abalos,
Pierre Bélanger, Bradley Cantrell, Jill Desimini, Tomas dePaor,
Gareth Doherty, Kristin Herron, Joyce Hwang, Roi Salgueiro, and
Charles Waldheim for their encouragement and suggestions.
I would also like to thank my publisher Jovis for their
support, and my editor Nina Bergeest for her constant patience and
understanding.
This book has been beautifully designed by Julie Cho from
Omnivore. I am grateful for her perpetually generous attitude and
creative precision. I could not have wished for a better outcome.
Finally, for over a decade, Joyce Hwang listened to my ideas,
reviewed my drafts, and read my texts. No matter what, she was
always there for me, even when pressing deadlines left her with
little time to spare. As a result, if my English language improved so
dramatically during this time, it was not merely due to my diligence,
but also to her constant patience, feedback, and encouragement. My
gratitude goes to you, Joyce, always.
Terms and their definitions have been
placed on the book’s left-side pages
and are arranged in alphabetical
order.The author’s essay contain-
ing analyses, annotations, critiques,
and overall commentary and study
on the urban void is found on the
right-side pages. Consequentially,
endnotes belonging to the glossary
can be found on the left-side pages,
while the endnotes of the essay are
located on the right-side pages.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A Glossary of UrbanVoids is a cri-
tiqued collection of over 200 terms
regularly used to name the urban
void, from terrain vague to buffer
zone. As the landscape architect
James Corner has pointed out, a
void cannot be labeled because “to
name it is to claim it in some way.
”
By listing existing terms, this book
attempts to name the unnamable,
to define that which should have no
precise definition. It records names
and labels used to designate left-
over spaces resulting from process-
es of urban abandonment triggered
by different types of obsolescence
or loss. In addition to their obvious
consequences, these processes
of abandonment open up space,
liberating it from existing ideolog-
ical frameworks (such as financial,
capital, or cultural frameworks),
allowing for different spatialities
to emerge, and ultimately offer-
ing opportunities to imagine and
conceptualize an alternative type of
public space. Using the glossary as
a theoretical tool, this book pre-
sents the most relevant questions
on the issue of the urban void and
its potential role as public space.

6
11
preface
A glossary of urban voids
What does the term urban void imply?
How to define something without naming it?
What is the image of the urban void?
Notes regarding the structure of the essay
31
1. urban voids
Vacancy
Voids of the urban fabric
On the origins of the term urban void
“Terrain Vague”
Internal yet external to the city
The exterior of a pervasive interior
51
2. an alternative type of public space
Terrain vague versus public space
Open or public?
Accessibility
The conundrum of public property
Publicness out of emptiness
A return to culture? A return to nature?
73
3. intervals of space
Holes within the continuous city fabric
States of suspension
Curation as publicness
Self-determination as publicness
Recirculation as publicness
91
4. gaps of time
Is temporality an intrinsic characteristic or an emerging quality?
Interruptions within hegemonic spatial discourses
Temporary and autonomous zoning
Extracted openness and inserted publicness
10 Notes regarding the
assembly of the glossary
12 Definitions
184 List of terms
192 Bibliographic sources
206 List of terms by author
220 Bibliographic sources by year
232 Endnotes
Table of contents: Glossary
TABLE OF CONTENTS: ESSAY

8
143
5. the whiteout effect
What effects does a whiteout process have?
Opportunities in inherent exteriors
Subjectivities from places outside of culture
Reflections of empty mirrors
Inversions of representations
159
6. unspecified and underspecified
Neither this nor that
Places that just are and that are designed for people to just be
The unnamable complex
Unspecified programs
Underspecified grounds
We know what they look like
175
7. unneutral neutrality
Patterned reality
Neutrality as divorce between intention and act
Neutrality as commitment
Neutral buffers
Blankness as break between frame and content
Blankness as commitment
Blank or empty spaces
193
8. voids as things
A thing is a hole in a thing it is not
How to design a void
Protecting the void I
Protecting the void II
Neglecting reconciliation
Neglecting codification
215
endnotes
TABLE OF CONTENTS: ESSAY

10
GLOSSARY Preface
A GLOSSARY OF URBAN VOIDS
This book is a critiqued glossary of terms regularly used to name the
urban void.
A Glossary of Urban Voids records terms, names, and labels
used to designate leftover spaces resulting from processes of urban
abandonment that originate from some kind of obsolescence or loss
(economic value, spatial integrity, urban connectivity, etc.). Besides
their obvious consequences, these processes of abandonment also
open up the space, liberating it from previous ideological frame-
works (financial, capital, cultural, etc.) and allowing for alterna-
tive counter-dominant spatialities to emerge. In consequence, the
demise of urban space that comes out of processes of abandonment
also transforms the resulting space (urban voids) into potentially
unique agents in the construction of the public realm. Despite their
losses, then, processes of abandonment bring along opportunities for
the imagination and conceptualization of an alternative public space.
In 1995, Ignasi de Solà-Morales published “Terrain Vague,”
a text that launched widespread interest in the vacant areas of the
city within the design disciplines of the built environment (archi-
tecture, landscape architecture, urbanism). He used the term “terrain
vague” to refer to the “empty, abandoned space in which a series of
occurrences have taken place”1
that could provide an alternative to
the “planned, efficient, and legitimated city.”2
Until its publication,
most texts3
on the topic of vacant land had seen these empty spaces
as a problem to be solved, as land that needed to be redeveloped
and reabsorbed again by the productive spatial fabric we call city. As
Notes regarding the assembly
of the glossary
This glossary includes over 200
terms. All definitions as well
as their descriptors (acronym,
usage, origins, antonyms, and
synonyms) have been sourced
from the texts listed at the end
of the book under the heading
“Bibliographic sources.
”
While this process of extracting
terms, definitions, and descriptors
has relied in many cases on my
own personal interpretation, the
definitions listed are exact quotes.
Only in a handful of rare cases
have prepositions been substi-
tuted, added, or deleted, or verb
tenses modified for purposes of
clarity. In some cases, however,
ellipses (…) have been introduced
when sentences were being par-
tially quoted. Original spelling has
been retained and for this reason
the reader will see both American
and English spelling conventions
used throughout the glossary.
Both emphasis and ‘single’ and
“double” quotation marks have
been maintained as originally
placed by their authors. Multiple
definitions of a single term com-
ing from the same vicinity within
the original text are separated
by semicolons (;). In the cases
in which extracting a definition
proved too difficult or inappropri-
ate, the full sentence or set of sen-
tences has been included under
the descriptor “Usage.
”
The use of spatial labels (for exam-
ple, area, lot, property, or space)
leads to terms that could be
considered synonymous (such
as abandoned areas, abandoned
lot, abandoned property, or
abandoned space). However,
individual authors have typically
preferred to use one term over
the other, and for this reason,
several seemingly synonymous
groups of terms have all been
included (for example, derelict
city space, derelict land, derelict
lots, and derelict zones, or emp-
ty areas, empty lots, and empty
space). I have interpreted and
respected the authors’ selections
of words to the best of my ability
and I hope that the reader can
benefit from all these inclusions,
even if differentiating between
terms might appear at times to be
slightly superfluous.
Whenever an author cited or quoted
a term or a definition that had
been used previously, I tracked
down the provided bibliographic
reference to reach the original
source. At times, however, the
original term or definition had
been further developed by the
secondary author in an enriching
manner that has led me to include
this secondary text in addition
to, and sometimes in lieu of, the
original reference. In all cases, I
have listed the original source as
well as the new reference.
11
A GLOSSARY OF URBAN VOIDS

12
ABAND
ONE
D
STR
U
CTURES
ABANDONED
AREAS
we will see later, a handful of authors had already argued for and
proposed a shift away from this perception but, while other spatial
labels4
had been used before the appearance of “Terrain Vague,”
Solà-Morales’ essay is considered a turning point in the under-
standing and appreciation of urban voids. [See: terrain vague.]
In the twenty-plus years since its appearance, many other
texts as well as several collections5
of them have been published
continuing the study of urban voids from different perspectives and
with different points of focus. These publications have advanced
the study of the urban void via two different strategies: they have
developed a particular term through its multiple characteristics and
applications (i.e.: urban interstices, loose space, vague spaces) or they
have shown varying physical manifestations of the terrain vague as
different types of spaces (i.e.: Terrain Vague: Interstices at the Edge of
the Pale “presents innovative ways of looking at marginal urban space”
through an array of different spaces: vacant lots, railroad tracks, slots
in-between buildings, urban wilds, etc.).
Regardless of the strategy followed, each of these works has
envisioned the urban void in a unique manner—different spatial
characteristics,different processes of formation according to different
forces, and different roles to be played within the urban continuum.
And, for this reason, most authors have felt the need to introduce
their own specific terminology, in many cases unrelated to previous
or future ones, in an attempt to precisely describe and evidence
specific characteristics about urban voids. For example, in some cases
voids are leftovers (terrain vague), in some others they are produced
through violent means (tabula rasa) or by manipulating infrastruc-
tural flows (timed space),while in others they are the result of cultural
protocols (maidan).As a whole,these efforts have led to a rich field of
study with relatively defined boundaries that is of interest to various
disciplines. However, it has also resulted in an extensive and haphaz-
ardly constructed vocabulary that includes multiple terms coming
from different disciplines and areas of knowledge, each with its own
histories and loaded meanings.6
While some authors have previously
pointed out that this situation is a clear indication of the difficulty
involved in defining these spaces,7
there is no book providing an
overview of the variety of terms used to refer to the spaces we can
group under the generic term “urban voids.”
abandoned areas
1. designates the withdrawal of
humans from a space, with
the intention to return; such
areas remain, for a while,
undocumented; the area is not
abandoned for everyone; this
term, the height of anthropo-
centrism, discards whatever is
not linked to human activity.
Synonyms: fallow. Related:
secondary environments. [See:
Clément (2011), 278.]
2. whatever is abandoned by
humanity offers a welcoming
surface for plants and animals—
especially those that are out-
competed elsewhere; the flora
and fauna of abandoned areas
are not necessarily ubiquitous;
abandoned areas produce a bio-
logical series that exponentially
increases global diversity. [See:
Clément (2011), 278–279.]
3. whether the mountain is natu-
ral or artificial matters little to
pioneer species; just one critical
condition is needed: the soil
must be disturbed; in a natural
state such disturbance is rare;
abandoned areas constitute the
principal refuge for the pioneers
of exhausted, bare, “turned over,
”
or littered soil—and an opportu-
nity for a certain expression of
diversity. [See: Clément (2011),
279–280.]
4. Usage: Humanity… in its all-out
pursuit of an activity, scratches,
wounds, lifts up, cultivates the
earth, opening the field for vag-
abonds. Be it through plowing
or abandonment, the welcome
area for pioneer species grows
in tandem with human activity.
For through its actions humanity
produces ever more abandoned
areas. [See:Clément (2011), 279.]
abandoned lot
1. an abandoned lot with remnants
of previous industrial uses may
become an “accidental play-
ground,
” vibrant with various,
unpredictable activities that are
constantly changing, remaining
largely unknown to the larger
public. Citation: Campo.1
[See:
Franck, 164–165.]
abandoned property
1. has generally not been ad-
dressed as a problem; it has
been viewed as a symptom,
and not a cause, of urban
disinvestment. [See: Accordino
and Johnson, 302.]
2. Synonyms: vacant proper-
ty. Citation: U.S. General
Accounting Office.2
[See:
Accordino and Johnson, 301.]
abandoned space
1. no apparent “ownership;” a pre-
vious use is no longer present,
and current uses, should they be
present, are probably not official-
ly sanctioned. [See: Franck, 154.]
2. characteristic that seems to
most clearly distinguish terrains
vagues from other kinds of pub-
lic space. Related: terrain vague.
[See: Franck, 154.]
abandoned structures
1. no standardized definition of
abandoned structures and the
definitions imposed by mu-
nicipalities vary greatly. [See:
Pagano and Bowman, 2.] 13
PREFACE

14
A
BAN
DONMENT
ABANDONED
URBAN
LANDSCAPES
This book is a glossary of the wide array of terms, labels,
and spatial denominations used by different authors to discuss the
voids existing within the urban environment: it is a multifaceted
volume agglutinating the multitude of positions and vantage points
from which to approach these empty spaces. As a whole, this book
should be considered a transversal section through the most relevant
and unique positions and texts on the issue of the urban void and it
exposes the wealth of approaches and definitions exhibited by the
different disciplines involved in the design of the built environment.
Working both as a guide and a reference book, the glossary
flows in parallel to a series of analyses, annotations, and critiques
that expose how these spaces give an unparalleled insight into the
construction of our public realm. Despite their marginality—or
rather, precisely because of it—urban voids are spaces engaged in
temporary processes of abandonment and appropriation, simultane-
ously empty of regulated urbanity but also filled with unexpected
possibilities.
As the terms included in this glossary demonstrate, urban
voids are not scale specific.Their scale oscillates between the scale of
the city and the scale of parks and other public spaces to the building
scale—for example, see the definitions of scraped grounds, park,
and interim lots to get an overview of the scales related to urban
voids. As the terms included in this glossary also demonstrate, urban
voids are not discipline-specific. Rather, the void as a federating and
dissipating element of the urban fabric is situated within a variety of
fields including but not limited to architecture, landscape architec-
ture, and urbanism. In this regard, the terms collected in this glos-
sary correspond to a variety of disciplines and come from a variety
of different sources. For these two reasons, A Glossary of Urban Voids
could be of interest to a diverse population of planners, designers,
scholars, organizers of community and neighborhood associations,
students, and others, as well as the public at large. [See: interim lots,
park, scraped ground.]
Due to its clearly structured nature, this book can be
presented as an introductory volume to the topic of the urban void.
At the same time, this glossary can also appeal to the more advanced
reader as it may be used as a guide for secondary and closer readings
of some of the key texts on the topic: the listing of terms facilitates
abandoned urban landscapes
1. have frequently been venerat-
ed as places of reverie; buried
beneath these representations,
however, are significant disloca-
tions in terms of class, gender,
and ethnicity between the “de-
serted” characteristics of these
spaces, as encountered by the
figure of the late-modern flâneur
or male wanderer, and those
communities cut adrift within the
marginal spaces of the contem-
porary city. [See: Gandy (2013),
1310.]
abandonment
1. makes waste. [See: Lynch (1990),
149.]
2. may be forced or voluntary; it can
be protracted, or sudden and cat-
astrophic; usually, it is a gradual
process, a slow relinquishment of
concern and rights. [See: Lynch
(1990), 149.]
3. differs from decline, which is
a gradual diminution of value
or vitality; decline may lead to
abandonment, but need not, nor
must abandonment be preceded
by decline; abandonment can be
painful when it is involuntary; in
other cases, it may be a libera-
tion. Related: decline. [See: Lynch
(1990), 149–150.]
4. of a property as occurring when
the owner stops taking responsi-
bility for it; “neighborhood aban-
donment” or “city abandonment”
refers to places where large lev-
els of population and household
loss have led to large amounts
of property abandonment, man-
ifested in a high percentage of
vacant houses, buildings, lots,
and/or blocks, which jeopardize
the quality of life for remaining
residents and businesses. Usage:
“abandonment.
” [See: Dewar and
Thomas, 3–4.]
5. Usage:The term “abandonment”
has varying definitions. Mallach
defines abandonment as prop-
erty whose owner has stopped
carrying out basic functions and
which is therefore vacant or will
soon become vacant. Wilson et
al. count abandoned houses as
those that have been withdrawn
from the housing market and
that the owner does not intend
to return to the market for the
same use. Scafidi et al. define
“abandonment” in terms of build-
ing owners who have stopped
paying taxes and whose property
subsequently has been demol-
ished by city government. Hillier
et al. suggest that abandonment
is a process or a cycle, with three
possible aspects: functional,
meaning a property is no longer
used as a dwelling; financial,
meaning the property owner is
not meeting minimal financial
obligations; or physical, when
owners neglect upkeep. Citation:
Mallach,3
Wilson et al.,4
Scafidi et
al.,5
Hillier et al.6
[See: Dewar and
Thomas, 317–318.]
6. abandonment in shrinking cities
is problematic at the scale of a
single building or property, the
city block, the neighborhood, and
city as a whole, causing different
problems at different scales. [See:
Ryan, 269.]
7. Detroit began its process of de-
centralization and urban aban-
donment sooner and pursued it 15
PREFACE

16
APPROPRIATED
EN
VIRONM
ENTS
ABSENCE
cross-readings and evidences similarities and differences between
the different approaches to the study of the urban void. Finally, with
no other similar publication, A Glossary of Urban Voids can become
a useful reference volume for all those interested in the topic of the
urban void.
WHAT DOES THE TERM URBAN VOID IMPLY?
While this book is a glossary of terms used to discuss urban vacancy,
the term “urban void” will be used as a default label throughout the
book to refer to the urban spaces that are the subject of this book.
Since the objective of this book is to define and portray the constella-
tion of terms used to discuss urban vacancy, it must be clear that this
decision is obviously made for practical reasons only.
The term “void,” however, typically projects bad connota-
tions when discussing urban spaces—primarily those of emptiness
and nothingness—and, thus, the expression “urban void” could be
misunderstood. In fact, people interested in the redefinition of the
city according to other ideologies or points of view that are not
exclusively economic (ecological sustainability or social diversity, for
example) might argue that these spaces are not empty: in fact, they
are full of other alternative (non-economic) potential. Due to their
marginality, these spaces offer opportunities (ecological or social, for
example) that other public spaces do not—and cannot. Following
this line of thought, it could be argued, then, that another term
should be used—even if it is only for practical reasons.
However, the term “void” is not used in this book to imply
that these spaces are emptied of everything. As the reader will see,
the term “void”—along with many others that could offer similar
controversies—implies that these spaces are emptied of the value
that is associated with the prevailing ideology of cities as places of
capital accumulation. But this emptiness (of capital, real estate value,
efficacy, or production) is precisely what enables other sensibilities
and opportunities to emerge. In other words, a lack of value is what
makes these vacant spaces appear as marginal and this marginality
is precisely what gives the urban voids the possibilities that other
urban spaces do not have.
So, rather than using a term that puts forward a counter-dis-
course, so to speak, against the predominant capitalist nature of
more completely than any other
city in the modern world; Detroit
offers a seminal case study of
post-fordist urbanism; Detroit
was the only city that dared to
publicly articulate a plan for its
own abandonment and con-
ceive of organizing the process
of de-commissioning itself as a
legitimate problem requiring the
attention of design profession-
als. [See:Waldheim and Santos-
Munné, 106.]
absence
1. absence does not only charac-
terise but even structure the city;
the now absent Wall, as being
the enigmatic absence of Berlin,
remains in many ways a struc-
turing principle for the united
city in the same way as the
divided city parts were defined
by the absence of their coun-
terpart. Citation: Shusterman.7
[See: Cupers and Miessen, 79.]
2. Synonyms: space of expectation,
space of the possible, void. [See:
Solà-Morales, 120.]
absence of use
1. Usage:The relationship between
the absence of use, of activity,
and the sense of freedom, of
expectancy, is fundamental to
understanding the evocative
potential of the city’s terrains
vagues. [See: Solà-Morales, 120.]
accidental playground
1. could not have been designed or
planned for, and the evolution
of similar experiences will likely
be unforeseen. [See: Campo, 27.]
2. provided visitors with a plethora
of historic materials and objects
ideal for manipulation and play.
[See: Campo, 16.]
3. while you were free to create,
others were equally free to
destroy. [See: Campo, 23.]
alternative urban futures
1. it is in places that are not coded
by market-led urban develop-
ment—since temporarily left
aside from the hegemonic visions
of configuration of urban space
(due to their having become
obsolete in terms of their original
function and use-value)—where
distinct possibilities for practices
of innovation and playful inter-
vention arise. Usage: ‘alternative
urban futures.’ [See: Groth and
Corijn, 506.]
antispaces
1. making no positive contribution
to the surroundings or users.
Synonyms: lost space. [See:
Trancik, 4.]
anxious landscapes
1. a sort of hell, or purgatory: cranes,
immense bridges spanning plat-
forms lined with containers, refin-
eries and factories between which
are creeping swamps, everything
in poor condition and rusted out,
as though irreparably polluted
yet somehow endowed with a
strange beauty. [See: Picon, 65.]
appropriated environments
1. its physical condition or “design”
was often created, modified, or
shaped by the immediate ways
17
PREFACE

18
AS
FOUND
AREA
the city, the term “void” resists reintroducing vacant areas into “the
city’s effective circuits and productive structures.”8
And by doing so,
it attempts to protect the opportunities that these spaces and their
vacant marginality can offer.
HOW TO DEFINE SOMETHING
WITHOUT NAMING IT?
An urban void must absolutely remain unnamable in order for it to
retain its openness, marginality, and indeterminacy. As James Corner
has pointed out, a void cannot be labeled because “to name it is to
claim it in some way.”9
Naming is a process of fixing an identity and it is an unstop-
pable process in the construction of knowledge. As such, naming is
an activity that requires power—the power to fixate—and has inev-
itable consequences—the fixation of an identity always happens
according to one prevailing ideology. Due to its nature, naming the
urban void appears to be inherently contradictory, as fixing its iden-
tity would certainly cause its delicate qualities to vanish. However, it
is also necessary to define the urban void in order for its qualities to
be understood, valued, and protected. Therefore, the question that
arises is this: how do we define this type of urban space without
naming it? I have addressed this apparently paradoxical question
through two research and publication decisions: the glossary and the
parerga.
A glossary is a dictionary assembled for a specific subject: a
glossary defines the parlance to be shared by those involved with
that subject. For a glossary to be operative, then—for it to liter-
ally make sense—it must refer to a clearly defined area of study. At
the same time, however, constructing a glossary also constitutes
the means to define an area of knowledge. A glossary defines the
bounds of an area of knowledge via the selection of its terms: which
terms must be included and which terms need to be left out are both
operative and epistemological decisions. Consequently, the terms
included in any glossary have to be carefully selected and, while they
may be listed in the typical sanitized alphabetical order of a dictio-
nary, they are closely interrelated. They are not closely interrelated
by accident: they need to be closely interrelated because it is through
people were using it at any given
time. [See: Campo, 14.]
2. there had been no professional
planning, design, or mainte-
nance; nothing was provided: no
paths, benches, plantings, or na-
ture trails; no baseball diamonds
or basketball or tennis courts; no
grassy lawns or meadows; no re-
built recreation piers or waterside
esplanades; no comfort stations;
no movie nights, concert series,
corporate sponsorships, or fund-
raising campaigns; no security
to provide for public safety. [See:
Campo, 13–14.]
3. Usage: Intuitively responding to
the lack of constraint and the em-
powering dynamic of “make your
own environment,
” many people
engaged the landscape in a way
that was impossible or prohibit-
ed elsewhere.They built, altered,
and occupied the various leftover
spaces of this waterfront to suit a
variety of needs and whims: play
spaces, social spaces, creative
spaces, event spaces, practice
spaces, meditative spaces, and
spaces of exploration. But most
of these appropriated environ-
ments lasted only as long as they
were occupied; the next set of
recreators would be just as free to
reshape, rebuild, or destroy. [See:
Campo, 14.]
area
See:
abandoned areas
areas of impunity
empty areas
vacant area
areas of impunity
1. sites in which the practices of a
new civil society coalesce; oppor-
tunities for developing programs
free of restrictions and hierar-
chies, centers of rhetorical figures;
opportunities and programs (to
be invented, for the most part)
in which the modes and practic-
es of the new social subject can
be developed. [See: Abalos and
Herreros, 206.]
artificial landscape without cultural
precedent
1. Usage: Later I discovered some
abandoned airstrips in Europe—
abandoned works, Surrealist
landscapes, something that had
nothing to do with any function,
created worlds without tradition.
Artificial landscape without cul-
tural precedent began to dawn on
me. Quotation:Tony Smith. [See:
Wagstaff, 14.]
as found
1. Usage: In architecture, the “as
found” aesthetic was something
we thought we named in the early
1950s when we first knew Nigel
Henderson and saw in his photo-
graphs a perceptive recognition of
the actuality around his house in
Bethnal Green: children’s pave-
ment play-graphics; repetition of
“kind” in doors used as site hoard-
ings; the items in the detritus on
bombed sites, such as the old
boot, heaps of nails, fragments of
sack or mesh and so on …Thus
the “as found” was a new seeing
of the ordinary, an openness as
to how prosaic “things” could
19
PREFACE

20
B
ORD
ER
VACU
UM
BLACK
HOLES
their connections that the terms both define the shared parlance and
construct the bounds of the area of knowledge.
Through its terms, a glossary gives precise presence to what
used to have fuzzy edges. Because of this, a glossary can become the
means for naming the unnamable. In that it collects all the existing
terms, A Glossary of Urban Voids is an attempt to respectfully and
consciously define the urban void without filling it by naming it
with a new singular term. This glossary is an attempt to define that
which should have no precise definition, to close on a space that
needs to remain open, and to bring to the forefront a space that must
remain marginal.
Due to the complexity of the topic of the urban void (multiple
scales, disciplines, etc.), it is difficult to clearly define the bounds of
this subject. And, due to this lack of precise boundaries, the question
of which terms can and which terms cannot be included in a glossary
such as this one is a pertinent but also persistent one. This may have
been the most important intellectual effort required in the assembly
of this glossary. This is the reason why this book is intended to be a
basic and introductory glossary. It is exhaustive in the sources refer-
enced but it is by no means a finite vocabulary or an encyclopedic
listing. A Glossary of Urban Voids is as definitive as the portrayal of an
urban void could ever be, given the urban void’s elusive nature.
A parergon is “something subordinate or accessory.”10
Neni
Panourgia, an anthropologist who has repeatedly used this relation-
ship between complementary texts in the production of her work,
argues that “parerga are not commentaries. They do not interrogate
a stable main text or invite further commentary. Rather, they are, in a
sense, what Derrida has called a ‘lean on,’ a space where I, the author,
offer you, the readers, the chance to hold onto something: an idea,
an explanation, a question, an interrogation, a dissent.Together, they
are a metatext that seeks to unseat any certainties that might exist in
the main text, any convictions that might have developed in the
narrative …”11
Using the parergon as a structuring device, this book has
been written and is organized as two interrelated threads: one is
the glossary listing the terms and their definitions and the other
is my essay containing analyses, annotations, critiques, and overall
commentary and study on the urban void. In this book, the essay
re-energise our inventive activity.
[See: Smithson, Alison and Peter,
201.]
black holes
1. unplanned and nameless land-
scapes; nondescript places;
very ugly and banal places. [See:
Girot (2006), 100–101.]
2. the in-between scenes of land-
scape beauty; we travel
daily through a multitude of
unexplained black holes;
dominant feature of peripheries
and urbanized countries. [See:
Girot (2006), 100.]
3. we need to consider these long
non-entities as probably equally
significant as the most celebrated
vistas of the Alps; require a long
process of aesthetic acceptance;
need more time and memory to
decant their specific identity and
to operate a veritable change in
our appreciation of them. [See:
Girot (2006), 100.]
4. these blind “after the fact” envi-
ronments—call them landscapes
if you will—require both discern-
ment and an exquisite intuition
to make any kind of sense out of
them. [See: Girot (2006), 101–102.]
blank space
1. readily accessible, openly shared,
yet non-descript, banal, and
ordinary; lack of identity and (re)
cognizance; genericized form of
space; undesigned, unbuilt, and
open. [See: Corner, 125.]
blot
1. from block and lot, i.e. a block of
lots; when a homeowner takes,
borrows, or buys one or more
adjacent lots, the connected lots
form a blot. [See: Interboro, 243.]
2. expanded lots; the building blocks
of the New Suburbanism. [See:
Interboro, 243.]
3. important for three reasons:
i. at the scale of the individual
parcel, the conjoining of mul-
tiple lots into a single, larger
parcel creates opportunities for
new residential configurations
that differ significantly from
the historic housing stock.
ii. through taking vacant prop-
erty off of the city’s tax rolls,
these land purchases offer an
incremental and small-scale
approach to urban develop-
ment that doesn’t rely on the
“mega-project.
”
iii. because they occur frequently
and all over the city, the
cumulative effect is rewriting
of the city’s genetic code, a
large-scale, unplanned “re-plat-
ting” of the city that happens
through the bottom-up actions
of individual homeowners.
[See: Interboro, 243.]
border
1. the perimeter of a single massive
or stretched-out use of territo-
ry; forms the edge of an area of
“ordinary” city; often borders are
thought of as passive objects, or
matter-of-factly just as edges;
however, a border exerts an ac-
tive influence. [See: Jacobs, 257.]
border vacuum
1. borders can thus tend to form
vacuums of use adjoining them;
or to put it another way, by over-
simplifying the use of the city at 21
PREFACE

22
CIT
Y
BROWNFIELD
does not illustrate the definitions any more than the definitions
provide a context for the essay: both the definitions and the essay act
as subordinates, as parerga to each other. Similar to a pair of clutches
that must work in unison and cannot operate individually, defini-
tions and essay continuously and repeatedly lean on each other as
reciprocal parerga to construct and convey the arguments that are
useful for engaging with the urban void. This book must be under-
stood as two interrelated filaments, each of them with its own iden-
tity but working in unison toward the presentation of the insights
and opportunities encapsulated in the urban void. This is my way
of carefully tiptoeing around the subject of the urban void without
having to provide a full frontal portrait—something that is difficult
if not plainly undesirable to do due to its evasive and delicate nature.
A Glossary of Urban Voids is not a choral work but it includes
different voices in an attempt to define a unique urban space without
forcibly having to name it.
WHAT IS THE IMAGE OF THE URBAN VOID?
As will be discussed in the section “We know what they look like,”
one of the characteristics of the urban void is that all urban voids
tend to be similar regardless of their location.
It is by now accepted, both through scholarly work and
through sheer physical evidence, that the purest forms of capital
accumulation and consumption in cities (glass curtain wall office
towers or high-end shopping malls, for example) tend to be self-sim-
ilar and appear to be almost identical regardless of their location.
Urban voids shall be considered the opposite of these spaces: they
are the purest form of capital dissipation and idleness in cities.
So, despite them being the other side of the coin of urbanization
processes, urban voids share similar characteristics to office towers or
shopping malls: they also tend to be self-similar and, consequentially,
they appear almost undistinguishable from each other regardless of
their location.
This glossary includes a collection of images of urban voids
in different cities around the world that construct a collective imag-
inary of the urban void and accompany the glossary with the same
multifaceted and kaleidoscopic spirit. My intention in the selection
of these images has been to build upon the systematic nature of the
one place, on a large scale, they
tend to simplify the use which
people give to the adjoining ter-
ritory too, and this simplification
of use—meaning fewer users,
with fewer different purposes
and destinations at hand—feeds
upon itself. Related: border. [See:
Jacobs, 259.]
2. Usage: Here is a good charac-
terization of a vacuum, in The
Wapshot Chronicle, a novel by
John Cheever: “North of the park
you come into a neighborhood
that seems blighted—not perse-
cuted, but only unpopular, as it
suffered acne or bad breath, and
it has a bad complexion—color-
less and seamed and missing a
feature here and there.
” Quotation:
Cheever.8
[See: Jacobs, 261.]
brownfield
1. [Note: Legally defined as
brownfield site.] [See: U.S. EPA
(Brownfields).]
2. cleaning up and reinvesting in
these properties increases local
tax bases, facilitates job growth,
utilizes existing infrastructure,
takes development pressures
off of undeveloped, open land,
and both improves and protects
the environment; it is estimat-
ed that there are more than
450,000 brownfields in the U.S.
Synonyms: brownfield site. [See:
U.S. EPA (Brownfields).]
brownfield site
1. real property, the expansion,
redevelopment, or reuse of which
may be complicated by the pres-
ence or potential presence of a
hazardous substance, pollutant,
or contaminant. Usage: ‘brown-
field site.’ Synonyms: brownfield.
[See: Public Law 107–118, 2361.]
buffer zone
1. Nicosia is a city that is traversed
by a boundary created after a
war… between the two parts
of Nicosia city, a so-called buf-
fer zone was instituted and is
controlled by UN forces. [See:
Stavrides, 50.]
2. Nicosia’s buffer zone is a peculiar,
empty space, or rather a violently
emptied space, that explicitly di-
vides the city … and includes large,
“unused” areas. [See: Stavrides,
50–51.]
capacity for ruination
1. the regular rhythms of nature
have been replaced in our time by
the enormity of our capacity for
ruination. Quotation: Roth.9
[See:
Jorgensen andTylecote, 451.]
2. no longer the work of an indis-
criminate fate but an ineluctable
part of the post-modern world
order; the cycle of building and
dereliction seems to have accel-
erated to the point where there is
no distinction between the pro-
cess of building and the process
of ruination. Related: process of
ruination. [See: Jorgensen and
Tylecote, 451.]
city
See:
city in decline
derelict city space
diffused city
dispersed city
holes in the concept of city fabric
post-it city 23
PREFACE

24
CORPOR
ATE
RESERV
E
CITY
IN
DECLINE
glossary, and, for this reason, I have decided against using photo-
graphs from professional photographers as I do not wish to present
this space through an artist’s eyes. Rather, I have looked for data-
bases and collections of images that could offer a methodical (in
terms of altitude, angle, camera lens, resolution, frame, or size, for
example) yet varied (from all around the world) picture of the urban
void. For this reason, all images in this book have been sourced from
Google Earth as these images are the most consistently unmediated
sets of images that I could obtain.
NOTES REGARDING THE STRUCTURE
OF THE ESSAY
This essay is divided into eight chapters, each of which aims to put
forward the following sets of ideas.
Chapter 1,“Urban voids,” introduces the generic term “urban
void” by describing its genesis and meaning. It explains how vacancy
is typically framed as a solvable economic urban problem, and it
describes when and how this point of view first changed with the arti-
cles by Bernardo Secchi and his use of the term “void.” This chapter
also portrays the relevance of the article and term “Terrain Vague” by
Ignasi de Solà-Morales and the pivotal role it played in the framing
of these urban spaces. In order to further understand the meaning of
the term “urban void,” this chapter follows Solà-Morales’ ideas and
presents these spaces as places that are both internal and external
to cities.
“An alternative type of public space” is the title of chapter 2,
which describes the typical characteristics of standard public spaces
and establishes the argument for how urban voids can contribute to
the public realm of the city in unique and relevant ways.
Chapter 3, “Intervals of space,” presents and discusses the
spatial characteristics of urban voids. Urban voids can reframe the
spatial and temporal qualities of the collective realm, offering a new
type of space that enables the temporary circulation of different
types of publics. Due to both their marginality and their contain-
ment, urban voids are bounded and localized spaces that allow for
unregulated freedoms. As will be seen in the next chapter, this
containment is simultaneously spatial and temporal.
residual city
those marvellous empty zones at
the edge of cities
vacant city space
voids to remain “unfilled” within
the horizontal city
wonderful city steppes
city in decline
1. one that boomed in the past,
dominated by a single economic
activity in which it specialized;
when that activity faded, or found
a more advantageous locale, the
city failed to shift to new enter-
prise. [See: Lynch (1990), 96.]
commons
1. that part of the environment
that lay beyond a person’s own
threshold and outside his
own possession, but to which,
however, that person had a
recognized claim of usage—not
to produce commodities but to
provide for the subsistence of
kin; neither wilderness nor home
is commons, but that part of
the environment for which cus-
tomary law exacts specific forms
of community respect. Quotation:
Illich.10
[See: Mathur, 206.]
2. even though the maidan and
the English commons cannot
be merged with respect to their
specific history and evolution,
the idea of the commons as
discussed by Illich is very similar
to that of maidan. Usage: English
commons. Related: maidan. [See:
Mathur, 218.]
3. when we examine seventeenth-
century literature, whether
husbandry treatises, government
documents, or popular pamphlets
and broadsides, we find a striking
slippage between the terms
“common” and “waste;” com-
mons were lands defined not by
their ecologies, but, like waste-
lands, by their relation to notions
of use. Related: wasteland. [See:
Di Palma, 25.]
conceptual Nevadas
1. where the laws of architecture
are suspended. Synonyms:
liberty zones. [See: Koolhaas
(1995a), 201.]
contemporary urban space
1. the vast, unoccupied, and
neglected residuum that is pre-
sumably emptied of ideological
intention; parking lots, gutted
central business districts, unde-
veloped or abandoned lots,
corporate buffer zones, and
endless carscapes are all spaces
hostile to physical occupation;
they are not neutral spaces
or spacings; they are instead to
be understood as absences,
vacancies, hiatuses, or empty
centers that are as full of po-
tential significance as the space
of an urban environment. [See:
Pope, 231–232.]
corporate reserve
1. parcels of land owned usually
by locally represented business
corporations such as utility com-
panies; the objective in owning
such vacant parcels is to provide
space for expansion as it be-
comes needed or for relocation of
the business enterprise; a hedge
against raising land costs, espe-
cially in core areas where space 25
PREFACE

26
DEAD
Z
ONE
CRACKS
Building on the ideas put forward in the previous chapter,
chapter 4 is entitled “Gaps of time,” and it presents and discusses the
temporal characteristics of urban voids.
This book records terms used to name leftover spaces
resulting from processes of urban abandonment and chapter 5,
“The whiteout effect,” outlines and analyzes the four effects that
emerge out of this whiteout process. The first effect shows that the
urban void’s lack of economic value creates an exterior to the urban
fabric. The second effect demonstrates that the urban void’s posi-
tion outside of culture transforms it into a place able to engender
multiple individual subjectivities. The third effect reveals that the
urban void’s ambiguous spatial quality offers unique and invaluable
insight about the built environment. And, finally, the fourth effect
suggests that the urban void’s aesthetic qualities can allow for a new
representation of the nature of the city.
Urban voids have an evasive character. It is difficult for
authors to pinpoint the salient characteristics capable of fixing the
character of these spaces: the ambiguity of an urban void eliminates
the possibility of its definitive portrait. At the same time, however,
most authors are aware that this ambiguity is what gives urban voids
their spatial openness, and it is for this reason that, in their efforts to
describe them, authors tend not to be satisfied with the use of stan-
dard spatial categories. Chapter 6, “Unspecified and underspecified,”
analyzes the ambiguous character of the urban voids through the
concepts of unspecification and underspecification.
Chapter 7, “Unneutral neutrality,” argues that as enclaves
within the urban realm, urban voids can be places that enable the
emergence of unexpected forms of expression different from those
afforded by standard paradigmatic public spaces. For this reason, it
is necessary to protect urban voids—if they do not pose any risk to
human safety, of course—and hold a neutral view toward them by
accepting them for what they are: blank, empty, abandoned spaces
with no productive purposes; places that, if protected, can open gaps
within the paradigms of everyday life and enable the appearance of
spontaneous intensities.
Despite their apparent emptiness, urban voids can have
as much presence as built forms. Obviously, then, the question
that comes up is: how to design them? Firstly, by protecting their
for business operations is espe-
cially desirable; generally they
are of large size involving tens
or hundreds of acres each and
are more centrally located than
other types. Usage: “corporate
reserve.
” Related: vacant land
parcels. [See: Northam, 345.]
cracks
1. a metaphor for the fractured
discontinuities encountered in
the physical and social context
of American cities; ‘in-between’
spaces—residual, underutilized
and often deteriorating—that
frequently divide physical and
social worlds. [See: Loukaitou-
Sideris, 91.]
2. gaps in the urban form, where
overall continuity is disrupted;
the residual spaces left unde-
veloped, under-used or deterio-
rating; the physical divides that
purposefully or accidentally sep-
arate social worlds; the spaces
which development has passed
by, or where new development
has created fragmentation and
interruption. [See: Loukaitou-
Sideris, 91.]
3. perceived not as anti-spaces, but
rather as ‘forms awaiting realiza-
tion.’ [See: Loukaitou-Sideris, 92.]
curious landscapes of
indeterminate status
1. Usage: As Detroit decamps
it constructs immense empty
spaces, tracts of land that are
essentially void spaces.These
areas are not being “returned to
nature,
” but are curious land-
scapes of indeterminate status.
In this context, landscape is the
only medium capable of dealing
with simultaneously decreas-
ing densities and indeterminate
futures. Synonyms: void spaces.
[See:Waldheim and Santos-
Munné, 110.]
dead space
1. bare derelict land, roughly veg-
etated wasteland, abandoned
buildings, and an assortment
of various temporary uses such
as material dumps and real or
supposed construction sites.
Synonyms: disturbed space. [See:
Coleman, 103.]
2. the result of mistaken land-use
policies which have given a high
priority to demolition; perpet-
uated by the financial impasse
that arises from the destruction
of self-financing and rate-pay-
ing land uses such as private
housing, commerce and industry,
combined with the expansion of
non-rated and subsidised uses
such as green space, roads and
council flats. [See: Coleman, 106.]
dead time
1. time period between the present
and the start of the project; gen-
erally marked by waiting until the
desired conditions for develop-
ment arise (planning, economic
and legislative circumstances).
[See: Urban Catalyst, 286.]
dead zone
1. translated from a slang Hebrew
term meaning an area that is
derelict, abandoned and empty.
Usage: “dead zone.
” Synonyms:
no-man’s-land, tabula rasa,
27
PREFACE

28
DECOMM
ISSIO
NED
LANDS
DECAMPMENT
emptiness. Secondly, by paradoxically neglecting qualities that
are typical of standard public spaces. Chapter 8, “Voids as things,”
furthers some of the issues put forward in the previous chapter and
serves as a closing summary to the book.
terrain vague, void. [See: Doron
(2007a), 211.]
2. mainly former industrial areas
of nineteenth-century infrastruc-
tures such as slaughterhouses,
abandoned barracks, dysfunc-
tional harbors, and train yards;
the zones usually have strong
boundaries that render access
to them somewhat restricted
and make the sites look inward;
emptied of their former offi-
cial uses, they were overtaken,
sometimes temporarily, by
myriad informal activities. [See:
Doron (2007a), 216.]
3. appear in any part of the urban
fabric, when this part is temporar-
ily (hours, days, months or years)
not in use; occur every night
in the emptied office district, in
parks, squares and streets; they
occur every day in residence-only
neighborhoods; all of these areas
are abandoned maybe for a third
of the day, and could be consid-
ered dead places, waste or simply
voids. Usage: Dead Zone. [See:
Doron (2000), 257.]
4. spaces in which the formal pro-
gram has been suspended and
replaced by informal activities.
[See: Doron (2007a), 217.]
5. has probably existed throughout
history; it is the space that is nei-
ther sacred nor everyday. [See:
Doron (2008), 206.]
6. a gap, if not a total break, be-
tween the signifier and the signi-
fied. [See: Doron (2008), 204.]
decampment
1. a legitimate practice for those
interested in the future of con-
temporary urbanism; stages
and choreographs the process
of decommissioning, depopulat-
ing, and reconceiving of vacant
territories. [See:Waldheim and
Santos-Munné, 110.]
decay
1. antithesis of growth; growth and
decay are integrally linked, both
going on simultaneously in most
places; it is only when the rate
of decay overwhelms the rate of
growth that dereliction is seen
as setting in. [See: Jakle and
Wilson, 13.]
decline
1. begins in landscape when struc-
tures, built to contain efficiently
and symbolize prescribed func-
tions, prove less efficient; physi-
cal obsolescence may be at work
to make a facility less useful; or
demand may have slackened
in the face of new technologies,
making a place functionally
obsolete; disinvestment results
when maintenance is withheld in
a building or area in the face of
declining returns. [See: Jakle and
Wilson, 6.]
2. abandonment differs from
decline, which is a gradual
diminution of value or vitality;
decline may lead to abandon-
ment, but need not, nor must
abandonment be preceded by
decline. Related: abandonment.
[See: Lynch (1990), 149–150.]
decommissioned lands
1. large-scale public, decommis-
sioned, and marginalized lands
within or at the edge of cities;
such spaces resist popular 29
PREFACE

A Glossary Of Urban Voids

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