A Margin of Indeterminacy: Reevaluating the Potential of Residual Landscapes in Future Urban Development Strategies

This paper intends to reflect on the importance oflandscape conditions, processes over time and change,particularly in transitioning countries like Albania,where cities are subject to fast urban growth andthe proliferation of residual spaces, which result inantagonistic and confused landscapes – landscapes ofmutation and crisis. Although residual spaces are aresult of the rational organization of the urban territory,they have become the opposite of the organizedworld. Analyzing these landscapes at the micro scalewe can learn from the natural order that shapes themand from the way the urbanized territory influencestheir existence; whilst at the macro scale they appearas scale less fragments, interruptions of the urbanfabric that reveal a new geography. Their temporarysuspension and availability to transformation – butalso their unstable, dynamic, heterogeneous and chaoticcharacter – generates an opportunity for designersto reframe the urban design discourse, acknowledgingthe value of indeterminacy and open-endedness.Residual spaces have the potential to become test sitesfor experimenting new urban landscape managementstrategies aimed at guaranteeing people’s comfort andhealth, responding to social needs, and contributingto the restoration of degraded urban ecosystems andthe preservation of the environment. Residual spacescan become the genesis for possible futures.

Volume Editors
Luis Francisco Rico-Gutierrez & Martha Thorne

ISBN
978-1-944214-08-1