Shifting Sands, Layering Meanings: A tale of the Goodwin Sands, told through its social production

Abstract

The Goodwin Sands is a sandbank located four miles east of Kent, in southeast England. At low tides the intertidal areas become accessible, and this has led to the marine space being put to numerous, often contradictory, uses. The rich history and mythology of the Goodwin Sands is juxtaposed with a contemporary marine consent application to dredge aggregate from the subtidal sandbank areas. This article uses the triad of perceived, conceived and lived space found within Lefebvre’s Production of Space thesis to tell a tale of Goodwin Sands. This methodology allows for temporal connections between archival and contemporary expressions of the marine space to be understood. Using the marine consent application as its departure point allows for the story of the Sands to unfold as layered meanings emerge. But this is more than just a story of Goodwin Sands – an attempt to explain what they are – it is an exploration of social production within marine space, and an opportunity to rethink how space is represented within marine planning decision-making.