Parkwood Springs – A fringe in time: Temporality and heritage in an urban fringe landscape

Abstract

This paper aims to advance the theory and practice of landscape heritage planning, design and management, focusing especially on the question: what are the relationships between landscape narratives – the ways in which we tell the story of a landscape – and landscape heritage outcomes (landscape practice – planning, design, management – based on particular readings of the past)? The paper explores this question through a critical examination of three different narrative accounts of Parkwood Springs, an urban waste site in the city of Sheffield, UK: a conventional history, a personal experiential account, and an analysis based on the Sheffield Historic Landscape Characterisation. The critique is informed by a cross-disciplinary theoretical discussion of the ways time is conceptualized and presented in narrative, and how these conceptualizations influence future landscapes.