by Dr Edward Stewart
The study of urbanism has been dogged by the legacies of the enlightenment era fixation on an idealised classical world during the birth of such disciplines as city planning resulted in the construction of idealised forms of the city based of sanitised visions of the classical city. Through the ideologies and actions of politicians, planners and bureaucrats, the representation of the idealised city has resulted in the production of spaces of real urbanism, hidden within and around the city. In these spaces those functions essential to the life of the modern city, yet considered improper in the idealised city, are hidden. These spaces, known as the edgelands, encompass everything from suburban landfill sites and municipal waste treatment landscapes, to abandoned railway yards, derelict factory sites and wastelands within the inner city.
In this research an exploration of the urban edgeland landscape of Mount Vernon and Daldowie, in Glasgow, Scotland, is considered in the production of an archaeology of ‘real urbanism’, concerned not with the idealised city of elite archaeologies of urbanism, but instead with the grim realities of those spaces sanitised from that vision of the city yet essential to its functioning.
Between Mount Vernon and Daldowie the River Clyde flows languidly its meandering course across the flood plain. On its north bank the Crematorium of Daldowie, with its monolithic Garden of Remembrance, the Scottish Water Wastewater Treatment Works (WwTW), Drax sludge fuel plant and Patersons of Greenoakhill Landfill are all that remain of the grand Post-Medieval estate of Daldowie. Earlier than that, beneath the towering mounds of the landfill a Bronze Age cist cemetery, was discovered. The landscape of Daldowie Estate today falls within several classifications, a brownfield site, simultaneous Industrial and post-industrial, it has areas of recreation and commemoration, and areas of restricted access, of toxic wastes and power generation. This is an unorthodox landscape neither strictly urban nor rural, neglected by the sanitising efforts of the council planner, with considerations of aesthetic abandoned in favour of utilitarian design.
An un-landscaped landscape.
This makes the edgeland a perfect case study for an anti-elite archaeology of contemporary urbanism. The edgeland is a physical representation of the ideological sanitising of the city, able to be studied in the fabric of the built environment by the archaeologist and occurring through all landscapes of the urban realm. This project was carried out through a variety of methods archaeological and creative including field walking, archival research, map regressions, site visits, rapid ethnographies, and psychogeographical wanderings. Sites and landscapes were recorded through photographs, assemblages of collected artefacts, catalogues and field sketches, plans, maps and creative responses exploring the deep time, recent, contemporary and future pasts of this landscape.
Acknowledgements
For support given in the design, planning and proofing of this research I would like to thank Dr Kenneth Brophy and Dr Rachel Opitz.
I would like to thank Allan Huggins of Patersons of Greenoakhill, Dylan Hughes of Drax Power and Stephen Winters of Scottish Water for giving me tours of their respective facilities within the study area and for giving their insights into the contemporary landscapes of Mount Vernon and Daldowie. I would also like to thank Stuart Baird of the Glasgow Motorway Archive, Paul Burns and HES Archives for allowing me to access archival materials and for granting permission for the reproduction of the images included in the thesis which this case study is derived from.
Full Thesis
The full thesis can be accessed at: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/82463/ / DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.82463A gallery of responses to this landscape including curated collections from fieldwalking, sketches and photo essay can be accessed here: https://barrowmagazine.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/mount-vernon-and-daldowie-edgeland-landscape-gallery-1.pdf