These receding spaces

What to do with disused space is a daily task local authorities ask. Developers would normally move in or fees could be quickly reaped from the quick-fire solution of a car park. Space can be used and does get used in an independent manner. Art squatters, performers and people at play have long been documented. Guerilla gardening is creeping in, orderly though it may seem is closely related to us wanting nature to reclaim unwanted spaces.

Whatever it may be it puts its mark back into the urban swirl of change and domineering zones of commerce. There is a growing trend of not-so-much nostalgia but of the need for something that summons a past, a story, a history...something that shows us that something has gone but not forgotten. Ironically it is some of the spaces with traces of before lives that is just about left. We see the beauty in derelict things and we are able to reflect or meditate, for now at least.

The zones of our cities are new, calculated, clinical and carefully mapped for instruction so that space recedes and all pasts with it too...

Wastelands pose questions about what Manuel Castells calls space of flows; the internal city rhythm of commodity, high finance, technology, communication, distribution and production...The wasteland is a closed zone to this capitalistic generated network.

New things can begin from nothing but in this way a neglected, forgotten or disused space can turn off any impending investor/developer, especially if an area in need of regeneration is stretched over a long period. Unblessed towns without the fast track of elusive investors slip back in times of recession to their former rugged selves. Some authorities in Lancashire such as those in Preston have been holding on to the dream of investment from major companies but are tied until it happens. In an area closely overlooked by the city's impressive brutalist structure that is the bus station, is a block of varying wastelands. Some have laid waiting since the recession of the 1990s. And new pockets are opening up.

Between, Marginal but not Beneath

Writing on the works of Victor Turner in What is Liminality? Charles La Shure* drives toward people and hierarchal forms in society, by saying, "...in spatial terms, they are in between (liminality), on the edges (marginality), and beneath (inferiority)."

The same could be said of these city-spaces except I would be prompted to mention that with will of community and legal procedure, liminal city spaces can be 'managed' and therefore be removed from the eyesore category and evolved into an alternative spaces that doesn't require much in the way of financial and time input to recreate a 'free space'.

www.liminality.org/about/whatisliminality/*

Oct 2005.*

Dilemmas of space

The spaces that have laid so long echo that ghostly voice of a changed landscape; the problems of industry and investment. The spaces left go on like uncertain pauses and unanswered questions.

Since the mid-1990s Manchester has developed itself as a very strong cultural centre and with its spirit has bounced back into the Northern arena as being an important city as any classy European one with much investment, new industries and strong bonds with corporations and business capital.

Smaller, peripheral towns and cities, like Preston don't have the same clout or force and its for these reasons the challenge of interest and potential investment is less on a relative scale.

Church Street in the city's heart has a list of wastelands and scarred spaces.

There tend to various stages of wasteland. The first I'd consider as 'vacant land' where it is both obviously available for development but also open to interpretation. Whether the idea of entering a site is deemed as trespassing or not it is certain that youths and some younger children will want to explore. Usually the land has remained fenced off for some time. Problems arise from time scales. The next stage tends to be the 'liminal stage' where it feels neither owned nor remembered. Other activity can happen. People pass through, walk their dog, motorbikes get dumped, kids play. It becomes an 'other' space.

In Preston, Lancashire, one site (below) is part of an area that requires regeneration. It was once a Booths depot but has since laid open, although it is one of those rare ones in this case that is awaiting development. Once an area needs regeneration it is difficult to develop interest. Meanwhile, nature returns. 

'Friendship' Social Club, Percy Street

This space was once a social club. This photo was taken on Fujifinepix around 2004.

They tore the building down and it's been a wasteland since (2020). There's a worn path that runs through. These inner city spaces have a different reasons to attract different kinds of people. The spaces can serve as simple short cuts while for others it can be a place to hide things or with less emphasis on discretionary acts, leaving huge TV sets.

The space has been in this state for many years since the club was sold, but what of the land?

The more curious of locations are those that have not changed. One in particular on Church Street, in an area that has been promised regeneration is an idiosyncratic feature of the city's aesthetic. The building that was here has long been torn down to reveal a backdrop of old tiles, still in place. The trace of previous lives here leads me to step aside from this project. I realised it isn't just about economy, aesthetics and redevelopment and more to do with layers and histories.

Apart from the interest in open spaces that has evolved the years, there are three main things that contribute to making it an open ended and ongoing project. Walking with a camera, taking visual field notes is one, double decker bus rides through Lancashire and Google Earth. surprising I have found the latter an enormous help. All these viewpoints let a map unfold.

Locations are vital to understanding the fabric and flow of the city and its make-up.

An example in Preston is where within a short radius or square mile, I found up to ten plots of wasteland. Some were in stages of wild nature reclamation while others were in no doubt due for redevelopment; a proud sign tied to fencing reads: 'To be...'

Deepdale St, now a car park

A view through the fencing on Deepdale St. Deepdale football ground is just visible.

These peripheral spaces

When the North/North West of England's industries started to break down in the 1980s new questions were raised about the environment. Docklands and pits closed and other heavy industries went down adding to knock on effect and eventually creating a very changed landscape that felt worn, forgotten and broken.

The scars of that post-industrial past can still be seen. The result of neglected places, often noosed by financial uncertainty, became difficult propositions; sites with To Let signs standing for years. During the 1980s and 90s the North was plagued with the aesthetic of dereliction and abandonment. Many buildings have now gone, a few have been reconstructed while some have been cleaned and transformed.

Its been two years since my last posting and I'm aware as will many be that sometimes life stands in the way of such indulgent tasks as blog-keeping. Well, I'm back and going to be changing the look of this blog-mag...

Absurdity is a wonderful wry thing we have but my concerns zip back to my work I followed upon graduating as a photographer at University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) ; the wasteland project.

Beyond those first photo essays and mappings etc I managed to sift through many subject matters to finally find something I was satisfied with personally.

Wastelands have sub-consciously occupied my mind for over ten years and it is an ongoing project. A friend, fellow photographer and journalist, Antonia Charlesworth, (another former UCLAN student) has recently had BLUR magazine published as part of her MA. By featuring some of my work in there helped me to get back to it and focus on finalising some more printwork.

Although the work may seem a mile away from 'absurdities' and my previous 'walls and textural studies', to me its all fairly well linked in that they relate to marginal spaces.