ABSTRACT
Deindustrialization phenomena imperil urban form and infrastructure caused by the acute alteration of topographies that are vulnerable to ecological, economic, and social decline. This chapter explores the innovative processes associated with public policy and land reclamation while adding to the current discourse of sustainable landscapes. While post-industrial landscapes should be recognized as dynamic or in flux, and in constant transformation, six forms of waste landscapes operate in the contemporary urban context including wastescapes of dwellings, transition, infrastructure, obsolescence, exchange, or contamination. The unwavering knowledge-oriented economy marked by digital industry comes with the consequence of urban deindustrialization phenomena. The process of reprogramming a post-industrial waste landscape dramatically alters the social, ecological, and economic fabric of communities. Clusters of urban blight and decay amass post-industrial areas and their surrounding communities throughout the United States, where more than 40,000 US manufacturing sites have closed between 2001 and 2008.
