Reviving Wastelands

Marina Khrustaleva describes how planting beautiful parks on abandoned land can revitalise an urban region.

- Marina Khrustaleva

Architecture is treated as one of the most creative human activities close to the creativity of the gods. Architects were responsible for the beautification of the Earth and erecting solid, attractive and useful buildings. Nevertheless, it becomes more and more obvious that construction is an aggressive business: it pollutes the environment, exhausts natural resources and contributes to the greenhouse effect. Everything built in the 20th century far surpassed all that had been built throughout history. Many of those structures have nothing to do with beauty and even with function. Monotonous concrete blocks form ugly scars on the planet’s surface and, unfortunately, some of them will outlive their use. Acres of man-made landscapes all over the world look disgusting and cry for revitalisation. They desperately need healing and parks often become the cure.

In the past few decades, parks have become a kind of new urban religion. They make cities more liveable, the air fresher and people happier. They bring nature into the built environment, are home to wildlife, encourage communication and also diminish social tensions and crime. Any park contributes to these aspects, but some parks bring additional advantages like healing urban wounds. They are set up at places of long-abandoned sites, which had lost their value years ago, replace irretrievably lost urban functions with new ones and give the exhausted land a second chance.

Parks instead of industry