Drosscape

Do you really know what is under that new house you just bought? How about what lies beneath the neighborhood playground? Was that "big box" retailer down your street built atop a toxic site? Will the warehouse just beyond your backyard be converted into a shopping center, factory, or trucking hub? These are just a few of the worrisome scenarios facing us all as our cities begin a stealth relocation of industrial facilities from the inner city to the urban peripheryplaces Alan Berger has coined "drosscapes." Now available in paperback, Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America is your guide to this vast, hitherto largely ignored field of waste landscapes.

Alan Berger is an associate professor of landscape architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He is also the author of Reclaiming the American West (2002).