Blackfields

Is the world heading towards an intelligent global organism, the combination and synthesis of human and natural systems into a new ecological urbanity? Unlikely, at least in the near future. Furthermore an ideology that we are part of a planetary being is far from common and is still relegated to fringe group environmentalists and some planetary scientists. As a result, the historical dichotomy between human and 'nature' is ever present. There is still a deep fascination with the anti-human environment, the sublime, the wild, the inhospitable and the unknown. Is concept of the inhuman environment good? Are there places that we should not go? Things that we should not see?

Contemporary landscape architecture praxis is about a new revolutionary combination between urbanism and environment and at its worst it rings of a utopia. If only we can integrate ourselves fully into 'natural' systems we will be saved. Having said that, this integration is a good development. It is good to see the classic biblical dichotomy between man and the environment slowly being eroded away by science. We have no dominion, we are not stewards of the earth. Science does point to the fact that humans are not separate but part of a global organism.  However one cannot ensure that that this belief in an environmental duality, will completely and entirely disappear under a sea of scientific rationality. Science cannot dispel hubris. How then do we approach nature as other? Is it a myth that needs extinguishing or is it a tool for expressing the inexpressible? Blessing or curse, this is an idea here to stay.

Adding to the impossibility of a complete acceptance of man in nature we continually see the dichotomy emerge and reinforces itself in peculiar ways. As one becomes more urban there is a concurrent longing for the wild. Nature becomes abstracted and mutated in the mind of the urbanite until what is originally seen as a deep moral ill is seen as a contemporary virtue. Wolves become beautiful, insects are signs of ecology not disease, swamps are renamed as wetlands. Many of these re-associations are correct, for example wetlands truly are natural cleaning systems, not disease carrying entities. What is more poignant though is that the dichotomy persists as nature becomes virtuous. Now more than ever, the anti-human, the natural is seen as the cleaner and mediator of all our problems.

In this way, what I call 'Blackfields'  I find the most fascinating landscape typology of our contemporary society, a landscape that typifies this reversed moral standard. Blackfields are anti-human but they are good. They are completely inhospitable but still they are beautiful. They are dangerous, mysterious and even poisonous but they are worth protecting. Like brownfields they have been 'contaminated' by human intervention and need cleaning, need healing and qualities of 'nature' are forever more equipped for the task than humans. They are landscapes of retribution, of human folly, where hubris has been decimated and 'wilderness' is seen as the cure. Warzones, minefields, radioactive redzones, DMZs, poisoned rivers, military test sites, internment camps and prisons all are temporary, cosmopolitan deterring landscapes. The ecology of wastelands creep back in, quite quickly. Nature isn't picky.

The Korean Demilitarised Zone now a near pristine landscape devoid of human alteration. There are no eco-lodges and no wildlife tours. People peer over a barbed wire fence where the red crowned crane and the Korean tiger live quiet lives. This truly is a non human landscape. Landmines and auto turrets ensure no one enters the zone. There are noble efforts, after the war, to turn the zone into a national park but at least for the time being the best the flora and fauna of the DMZ can hope for is for both powers to continue this unique and fragile state between peace and all out war and unwittingly perpetuate this beautiful blackfield.

Soldiers patrolling near the Korean DMZ

A sign on the South Korean side of the DMZ

The Chernobyl disaster has also unwittingly created a polluted, yet maybe more prolific, blackfield. The ecological quality of the site is highly contested. It is still unsure whether the site is acting as an ecological sink, enticing healthy animals from other areas in, poisoning and killing them or acting as a perfectly functioning ecological system. In the worst case scenario where the findings of Møller and Mousseau are true, that Chernobyl is radioactive graveyard, the landscape is lost and we should stop even other animals entering the zone. Anything better than that would be a scenario where animals live uninterrupted with slight mutations but there is still enough radiation to scare off human inhabitants. This would ensure this area stays as an ecological blackfield.

Radioactive Wolves, Chernobyl

Con Dao Island, just off the coast of Vietnam, was an prison during French occupation and an internment camp during the Vietnam war. This was where anti colonialist revolutionaries and captured Viet Cong soldiers were secretly imprisoned and tortured. As a prison and an island far away enough from the war zone and having a monofuction as a terrible place of torture turned this island into a blackfield that completely deterred any other form of human habitation. As a result the island has been an environmental haven for many plants and animals for near 150 year. But since the war and the rebuilding of Vietnam tourism has flourished and as a result. Con Dao is no longer a blackfield but a post-blackfield that is now suffering environmentally. Though the island is 80% national park and supported by the WWF and the United Nations there is no environmentalist culture in Vietnam, people fish in the protected waters and there are reports of endangered Hawksbill and Green turtles being killed and dried at the Anh Dao hotel. The quiet and pristine environmental history of Con Dao, afforded by the brutal torture of thousands of Vietnamese, is over. From here on in this is a blackfield in disintegration.

Checking out a turtle's snatch

 These environmental anomalies, these extreme anti-human landscapes have tumultuous and fragile histories. For the plants and animals that inhabit them they cannot be relied on for too long. The febrile politics of man can change these landscapes overnight, from a nature reserve into a warzone. But even in their fragility they are better than any national park. There is little or no poaching, no tourists, no rubbish and no music.