Wastelands speak to us as “waiting lands” (to borrow from the German term die Brachen) – but what are they saying to us? What knowledges, skills and practices do we need to engage with them? What kind of futures could wastelands have in the city (of Glasgow and beyond)? Often seen as dormant, useless or derelict land, wastelands are also places of nature and social life. They are sites of risk and play; non-design and regulation; property rights and trespass; contamination and renewal. Wastelands are, then, places of paradox, which lay bare the complex actualities of cities whilst also suggesting alternatives ways of making them. Glasgow – still – has a large number of wasteland sites and these offer us the occasion to explore ongoing practices, histories and futures.

The University of Glasgow & Glasgow School of Art Seminar Series, Wastelands and the City, will bring together ecologists, planners, social scientists, activists, archaeologists, artists and others to think dynamically and openly about the possibilities afforded by such sites as well as to reveal the engagements already taking place in Glasgow and other cities.

Our inaugural seminar, What is the ‘waste’ in the wasteland?, unpacks the idea of 'waste' to reveal both its multiple meanings and deeply contested character. Our three speakers provide diverse perspectives on wastelands, drawing on contemporary and historical cases in Glasgow and beyond, to engage with the complex economic, ecological and social concepts and practices through which these spaces of the city are commonly defined and how they can be understood anew.

Matthew Gandy

Ghosts and monsters: reconstructing nature on the site of the Berlin wall

“In this presentation I seek to develop a larger argument from a small place that no longer exists. Since 2004 I regularly visited a wasteland or Brache, located on the site of the former Berlin wall, before a process of enclosure and erasure that culminated in the construction of luxury apartments. I draw on my engagement with this temporary space, as a source of reverie and also as a site for ecological fieldwork, in order to reflect on the meaning of urban nature under the speculative dynamics of capitalist urbanization.”

Matthew Gandy is Professor of Geography at the University of Cambridge and an award-winning documentary film maker. His books include Concrete and clay: reworking nature in New York City (MIT Press, 2002), The return of the White Plague: global poverty and the “new” tuberculosis (Verso, 2003, co-editor), Urban constellations (jovis, 2011, editor), The acoustic city (jovis, 2014, co-editor), The fabric of space: water, modernity, and the urban imagination (MIT Press, 2014), Moth (Reaktion, 2016), The botanical city (jovis 2020, co-editor), and Natura urbana: ecological constellations in urban space (MIT Press, 2022).

Kenny Brophy

From wasteland to wonderland – Glasgow Garden Festival

The Glasgow Garden Festival in 1988 was a seminal event in the modern history of Glasgow. Much of the 120-acre site was, until the Festival, a post-industrial wasteland of in-filled docks. This talk will share results from the After the Garden Festival project (https://www.glasgowgardenfestival.org/), an exploration of the material history and legacy of the Glasgow Garden Festival. This will include insights into how this wasteland was transformed and what has happened to the site since.

Kenny Brophy is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Glasgow. His current research interests include the contemporary archaeology of prehistory and he blogs as the Urban Prehistorian. He has over 25 years of experience of researching, excavating and writing about Scotland’s Neolithic period (the last part of the Stone Age) and is President of the Glasgow Archaeological Society. He is one of three members of the After the Garden Festival Project team, reflecting a broader interest in the archaeology of 20th century Glasgow.

Mary Redmond

The Verge brownfield garden and art project, tucked under a rail bridge in Glasgow

“Long-term permission was obtained for “The Verge” site in 2021. The site, in a post-industrial area, is underneath a railway bridge and was derelict for over 25 years. It had become a dumping ground for litter and other larger tipped objects. Amongst the debris an elder, buddleia and two small ash trees managed to seed and grow. I will talk on gaining permission, developing the site into a brownfield garden and art project space, and the reactions to this forgotten unexpected place being valued.”

Mary Redmond is a Glasgow-based artist and graduate of the Environmental Art Department at Glasgow School of Art (GSA), she then completed a Masters of Fine Art at GSA. She has shown in Scotland at Queens Park Railway Club, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Hospitalfield, and Internationally at The Henry More Institute, Neus Museum and Kunststhall Oslo. She is a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn award for artists.