Describing mines as places where the organic world had been banished, historian Lewis Mumford discusses their similarities to nineteenth-century cities. For him, the exploitation of the earth’s crust provided a compelling analogue of the city as a synthetic environment. Since Mumford’s writings in the middle of the twentieth century, environmental change whether driven by men’s activities or nature has impacted the globe in equal measure more intensely leading us to understand the world as a deeply injured ecosystem. While important to help establish awareness of the limits of our resources, the analogy of mining landscapes to wounds, has created the belief that mining remediation is the exclusive territory of technical experts whose task is to “restore” or “heal “the ecology. However rather than resisting change and re-establishing a simulacrum of the original landscape that completely erases the industrial past, we have an opportunity to create a new landscape that is sustainable and respectful of its industrial history. Some post mining sites are of course polluted to such an extent, that change can only happen very slowly over many years but the potential for new creative environments is a distinct possibility for many of them. By critically reviewing several post-mining sites, this paper argues that, when rehabilitation is placed within a broad sphere of disciplines that integrate cultural economic environmental and design interests, we can go beyond restoration to create sustainable and uniquely distinct post mining landscapes.
René Davids, FAIA, is a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, a principal of Davids Killory Architecture, and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects who has co-edited 3 volumes of the AsBuilt series published by Princeton Architectural Press and has also edited and substantially contributed to Shaping Terrain: City Building in Latin America published by University Press of Florida.