Urban industrial landscapes

Since the beginning of industrialization, the history of industry and the history of cities have been closely intertwined and in constant flux. To understand how urban industrial landscapes shape our cities, their potential and possible futures, it is necessary to better understand the relationship between industry and cities, their past and present, and their interdependence.

Urban industrial and commercial areas tend to have close links to supra-regional or global territories, but little or no connection to their immediate surroundings. They follow the logic of supply chains, economic demands and technological requirements, but hardly embed other (urban) needs in their built environment. This leads to spatial, social and ecological disruptions with their surroundings, and even to the isolation of these areas within our cities. At their edges, industrial and commercial areas and other urban uses and users converge, often leading to idiosyncratic encounters, contrasts, tensions and even conflicts. Urban industrial and commercial areas are practically ‘invisible’ to a large proportion of their (human and non-human) inhabitants, because they are difficult to access and thus often become barriers in the urban fabric, dividing both physically and socially. At the same time, however, the spatial proximity of these coexistences can create new interrelations and synergies.

The dissertation examines the spatial phenomena and socio-ecological dynamics of urban industrial landscapes in relation to their surroundings and their urban embeddedness. It addresses the questions of how these spaces interact with their neighborhoods, how they are integrated into the urban space, what potential they hold and what we can learn from them. Using the cities of Vienna and Brussels as examples, exemplary industrial areas are studied, overlaid and interpreted using mixed methods, based on the situational analysis (according to Adele E. Clarke). A special emphasis is placed on cartographic and visual research methods. The graphic superimposition of the data material results in a multi-layered artistic cartography – an intermedial, processual and performative practice that transcends the conventions of traditional cartography. The aim is not only to describe these urban spaces, but also to explore them in depth, to make them tangible, to document and interpret the realities and collective memories found.