The Call of the Post-Industrial Edgelands: Encountering animate places and everyday placemaking on Glasgow's 'vacant' land

Urban shrinkage commonly results from shifting global economic patterns, causing the decline of populations and land use in former industrial urban centres. The vacant sites that emerge in these cities can become valued ad hoc spaces for humans, animals and plant-life alike, providing social and ecological benefits at the community level . But they are often overlooked as empty spaces-in-waiting by city planning and development systems. Therefore, this thesis delves into these marginalised yet animate landscapes, termed here as the post-industrial ‘edgelands’, examining how they evolve into meaningful places through their everyday use and the potential role of planning and placemaking.

The research investigates how everyday activities shape place in the post-industrial edgelands, the contribution of artistic research in understanding them and how planning institutions respond to them. The thesis combines social science methods and artistic research practice, analysing five post-industrial edgeland sites in Glasgow, Scotland and the related policy debate.

The findings show that the post-industrial edgelands undergo continual change with many different actors involved in shaping the kind of places that they are. Relationships between humans, animals and plant-life are constantly being made and remade in these locations and site users often adapt the ways that they interact with them. Artistic research practice facilitates discussions about the unofficial and ephemeral relationships that individuals form with these sites by creating open-ended representations. Finally, incremental and collaborative placemaking practices rooted in deep engagement with sites are needed to address the complexities of post-industrial edgelands effectively.