Prismatic immersion of urban ruins: A framework for the integration of ruins' multiple geographies in urban regeneration

Abstract

This research focuses on how city-makers can work to expand the potential of ruins to manifest diverse histories and geographies. We argue that nuanced and ethical approaches to integrating ruins in cities can enhance communities connections, combatting the creeping placelessness of neoliberal urbanism, and promoting overall wellbeing. This study offers a framework to integrate ruins in urban regeneration – what we describe as “prismatic immersion.” Springing from a transdisciplinary literature interrogating urban ruins, and illustrated by a heterogeneous set of international examples, we examine how historical, geographic, design, cultural, and environmental dimensions can shape the experience of communities in, and with urban places. We identify five inherently interrelated threads of “best practices”: a) multi-historical memory that runs through ruins, b) polyvocality – giving voice to diverse groups who occupied and used the ruin, c) holistic urban integration, to make the ruin a living, engaged part of the city, d) capacity for the ruin to evolve, change and continue to engage the city's communities, and e) a recognition of the interplay between human and more-than-human. This aims to ignite critical thinking on the potential contributions that ruins can make to contemporary cities as interactive learning environments for community connection.