This issue of AD examines the intent and consequences of large-scale human intervention in the landscape within urban and other man-made environments. It approaches the conflict between demands of ecology and of development in terms of the specific identity of a place rendered by the initial use of the site in relation to its potential reclamation for human activities. The sites made toxic through a recipe of urbanism, industry and science are now often the only ones available to us at the centres of human concern – from our great water thoroughfares to our garbage landfills. Too often the approach to their remediation is driven by economics and litigation rather than by a conceptual framework of landscape, urbanism and culture. The purpose of this issue is to bring together those in the vanguard of conceptualizing this situation from a multiplicity of viewpoints and disciplines.
