Urban Studies· 2026Q1
Narrating ontologies of ruination in the disciplinary blur: Ruins as temporal gardens, trees as legal witnesses and birds as world-makers
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
This commentary argues that urban and architectural studies should incorporate botanical and ornithological ontologies into their taxonomies of ruination, viewing nonhuman elements as active agents in transforming obsolete ruins into plural, transdisciplinary debates.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Ruination is reframed beyond urban/architectural and ecological binaries to embrace multispecies and interdisciplinary perspectives.
- Nonhuman temporalities, linked to industrial contamination and abandonment, shift ruin narratives from singular to plural and transdisciplinary.
- Urban nature's temporalities are theorized to provide anthropogenic ruins with collaborative ecological agency.
- Botanical and ornithological ontologies are proposed as additions to urban and architectural taxonomies of ruination.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
This commentary investigates the disciplinary blur that challenges the dual ontology of ruination as being both an urban/architectural transformation and an ecological phenomenon. It defies categorizations of objective knowledge and comes to terms with multispecies and interdisciplinary approaches, both historiographically and ethnographically, readjusting to the multiple temporalities of the nonhuman world-making projects that the human-made ruin becomes part of. Drawing on the urban ruin of 19 th -century Manchester (Cottonopolis), England, and the architectural ruins of contemporary Mogador, Morocco, it argues that the temporalities of the nonhuman, intersected respectively with periodicities of industrial contamination and human abandonment, transform the singular obsolete narrative of ruins into a plural transdisciplinary debate questioning the unyielding becoming of urban space. The text’s historiographical and ethnographical micronarratives, woven together through storytelling, theorize the transformative temporalities of urban nature and their capacity to provide the anthropogenic ruin with a collaborative ecological agency. This, the commentary argues, adds botanical and ornithological ontologies to urban and architectural taxonomies of ruination. By positioning oneself in the disciplinary blur, the commentary ideates on how architectural and urban studies can accommodate unfamiliar rhythms of nonhuman-constructed botanical and ornithological ruins.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Urban Studies, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Geography, Planning and Development
Geography, Planning and DevelopmentSocial Sciences