The City Inside Out: Terrain vague, inner periphery and places in-between

The city is not only buildings, streets, squares, infrastructure, green spaces and parks – that is, places with a clear function – but also thousands of places in between that seemingly “do not serve any purpose”. Some of them we pass by unnoticed, others we find a little frightening with their bushes, weeds and rubbish, others we think of as nature. Places between places – the flip side of the city, a vague terrain whose life we don’t know much about… How did these places come into being in history, how are they coming into being today, and why are there so many of them in our cities today? What kind of urban, ecological and social life do they have? What do their peculiar aesthetics encourage us to do? Do they even have a place in today’s city? This book looks at our post-socialist, post-industrial and globalised cities from an inside-out perspective.