A proposal to rescue stalled landscapes, affected by interrupted development. A study carried out in collaboration with Enrique Nieto, for Murcia Cultural, within the Workshop TISSPAS for the Observatory of Design and Architecture in the Region of Murcia. February 2008 to June 2010.
Context
Our collected data about golf resorts in various stages of development throughout the region of Murcia, confirmed by a series of visits on the ground, unveil a double edge problem. The planned housing around these resorts would be sufficient to multiply by two the population of the region of Murcia, from 1,5 M inhabitants to almost 3 M. On he other hand, almost all this development is stalled. The size of the problem is enormous, both if we consider the viability of such an amount of housing, or the importance of the financial muscle that has been blocked in this paralysis.
The financial implications are extremely important: many loans that were granted to carry out all these operations have no prospect of a return in the near future. One aim of this paper is to propose strategies for the management of these areas, so that they can be productive, considering that they will not be developed for housing in the short to medium term.
The strategy to adopt depends on the point of development of each resort at the time of its interruption. In some cases the process was merely initiated, with a change of ownership of the land or some other administrative or commercial actions, but with no physical intervention; as a result agriculture may be abandoned, which is I itself a physical consequence. In others cases earthworks have begun. Or, say, 500 homes have been built, 1,000 are half-built, and another batch of 10,000 have not been started yet, so there is people living in the 500 completed houses but they are forced to live in precarious conditions, surrounded by a paralysed building site, and not reaching the critical mass that would make basic services viable.
We found people in difficulty, like lady pink tracksuit as we called her, who sold her home in England to come and live in paradise but now jogs in a desolate half-built site. Or Kevin, who lives in a model home in the desert trying to sell a house because he was promised one if the development went ahead: struggling to survive after the shipwreck, clinging to a piece of wood… in the desert. In the plan that that he showed us the houses marked "sold" did not really correspond with sales but with tradeoffs with builders, mainly for earthworks and planting palm trees.
All this reflects the scale and nature of the problem; now for some possible courses of action to follow.
Productive landscapes and golf
The assumed attractive of the golf resort model in Murcia lies on a number of prestige giving elements based on waste, excess and abundance, of water, grass and leisure. We intend to transform the perception of golf prestige givers replacing the elements based on waste of wealth, with new elements based on production and wealth generation. Ideally, the golf course would produce energy, and rather than of wasting water, it would help to produce it. The general theoretical framework would be focused on that material and measurable bonus of wealth, as opposed to the expense that golf courses and the associated houses currently generate.
Obsolescence
The beauty of agricultural productive landscapes as experienced today is a cultural construction of the Romantic era, a period in which the visual was becoming the main method of transmission of culture. This change takes place during the industrial revolution, when the countryside is no longer the main source of wealth, and the agricultural may be contemplated in an idle mode and not as something merely useful or productive, or at most as a background, standing for wealth.
In the same way as the late eighteenth century began to consider the fields as romantic and bucolic, in the twentieth century a new concept of beauty arises, no longer associated with the natural, but on the aesthetic appreciation of obsolete industrial landscapes. Industrial archaeology, where large old brick factories or riveted metal structures become works of art. The Eiffel Tower for example, is no longer a symbol of technical development and is then appreciated from a romantic point of view for its balance and beauty, becoming an icon of the French capital.
We know that windmills (turbines), which are now also controversial for aesthetic reasons, will in the future be considered heritage, like the windmills of Don Quixote, also considered mechanical monsters in his time, and now protected as historical and artistic monuments.
In this context, we propose to take a step forward and make sure that productive landscapes of our time are considered beautiful as of today. We want the windmills, solar farms, rubbish dumps (which can no longer be outside the bounds of the city, as the city has exhausted its limits) to be beautiful. This is why we are developing projects in which the choreography of the production may be admirable from the point of view of an objective observer, following the classical definition of landscape that requires the presence of someone watching.
In our cultural and moral context, the profit generated by the mills is a negative value that determines the aesthetic judgement that is made of them. We want production, especially production of renewable energy, food, or sustainable processing of waste materials, to be seen as positive because we can no longer disguise the origin of matter or food because there is no "other" place to hide. This transformation implies that we introduce production as a prestige giver, and that we design its physical support with beauty as an aim.
Golf and fiction
It is interesting to note that the idea of a golf resort has been established as a work of fiction, in a long tradition of urban fiction originated in the United States from the Sixties. It is the construction of a fictional landscape: an evocative creation that does not correspond with the place, and must be artificially maintained.
It is also a social fiction: it is advertised as a meeting point for VIPs, and a potential generator of business relationships among co-owners. This is not real, as the owners of these desert outposts do not even coincide in time. It is a fictional evocation of the life of the wealthy, which becomes accessible to the lower middle classes.
Productive landscapes and sustainability
Sustainability, in a market economy, can only be achieved if we visualize and register all explicit and implicit costs, whether internalized or externalized, of everything we consume. The proposal Productive Landscapes aims to contribute to that visualization in a positive spirit, simultaneously providing a new opportunity to enjoy life.
Windmills and Beauty
Windmills are placed in locations where air currents are stronger. Their presence over a horizon translates into visuals the wind patterns. They are closely related to topography, rolling hills and natural landscape. They therefore provide an enhanced reading, an augmented reality of the forces of nature and allow us to see where and how that concentrated energy is channelled. In that sense they are highlighters and visualizers of the landscape of wind, through their position, alignment and concentration as a group. The units themselves, with their aerodynamic qualities and successful design (white towers, white rounded capsules, cylindrical columns with entasis), are endowed with a classic beauty that everyone can appreciate.
Methodology: Classification
As a first step, we have classified the paralysed resorts of Murcia according to a series of parameters related to the degree of development. The following table indicates the state of insecurity or helplessness at the point of interruption of the resort’s development.
For each degree of helplessness we propose different and specific strategies, for management, earthworks, urbanization, housing, golf course and growth areas. The lowest level corresponds to the most basic situation: only a simple administrative act has taken place, such as the purchase of land. We call this category delegitimized landscapes. Agricultural production has stalled due simply to the new legal situation. The new owner does not have the will nor the means or knowledge to manage agricultural production in this area, an area that, on the other hand, now has a different value simply by the fact that a new engagement has occurred. In this climate, the abandonment of agricultural production involves the disuse of irrigation systems, decay of vegetation, degradation and progressive erosion of fertile mantle in a process of rapid desertification.
In other cases the golf course is already there, as a foundation stone, the first physical intervention, implemented only for commercial reasons and in order to boost home sales. In other cases, development has begun. Sometimes only the earthworks have been implemented, and some rows of palm tress Sometimes there are ducts, a recognizable centre and even some housing. These are unplaces, non-viable sites that will not develop over the next 30 or 40 years.
Unfinished places can be very different. There are a few resorts with some completed housing but where the rest of the development is only half-built or just starting. In others some houses are completed and inhabited but do not have facilities, nor the golf course, because maintenance is not feasible due to the small size of the population. These houses are arranged around a wasteland, a vacuum, which in principle should be the most valuable of all because, in fact, the plan shape of golf courses is designed to maximize its perimeter and therefore have the most homes in the forefront. This supposedly green spot, which was the raison d’être of this place, has become a wasteland full of snakes and scorpions.
By definition, a resort is built where land is cheap. This implies that there is a considerable distance from the city and therefore no schools, bakeries or basic facilities.
Finally, there are successful places, but this success should be measured with different parameters. For example, consider a resort where all the buildings were completed, all homes were sold and all went according to initial plan, but it is empty. There is a shopping mall, but most of the shops are empty, and so are the houses: the resort is only inhabited by 10% at any given time, since the owners do not spend more than two weeks a year in their holiday homes. Shops and leisure opportunities are not viable. Public space is empty. Success is therefore relative.
The transformation of market conditions after the global financial crisis has forced the promoters of these supposedly finished places to find new niches. From that moment, they began to advertise the finished houses in the same region, offering them as a cheaper alternative to housing in the real urban tissue. The inhabitants of the latest "successful" resorts are 50% people of the region, which radically transforms the prospects for success of the public areas. However, permanent and simultaneous occupation of a majority of homes in the resort can generate a very different problem. In one of the unfinished resorts, one where the golf course was never built, the engineer who controls the water tank told us that the system can only manage water for 5 or 6% of the built houses at the same time, so that a change in the factor of simultaneity could have catastrophic consequences.
We distinguish ten types of functional status: no-thing, no-moment, no-landscape, no-opportunity, no-energy, no-selling, no-housing, no-infrastructure, no-future and fully-functional.
Then we will study a sample for each of the different situations listed in this classification, and propose a specific design.
Proposals for Successful Places
The literal application of the American model has brought to the surface some differences in the perception by the original American inhabitant and the local inhabitant, differences which have acquired greater importance as the resorts start to be occupied by permanent local residents. In some pioneering resorts security was too visible and offered a negative image with a huge fence around the perimeter suggesting a concentration camp. This type of overwhelming security derives from American culture, and at first it was advertised as something positive, but it was found to have negative values in the local context. People value security, but not ostentatious security, ie the extreme visibility of the barbed wire, fences, cameras or infra-red cameras. On the other hand, the local culture values positively that malls and restaurants are crowded and accessible, so the shopping and the golf course must allow entry for the general public in order to succeed.
Proposals for unfinished Places
One of our proposals for the reactivation of unfinished golf resorts is to add extra layers of use. As an example, add other sports on the same grounds so as to multiply their use options and expand the market segments for which entertainment space is provided. As a global target, we propose to add layers or uses to public and open spaces, with a strategic overview that balances all sports in order to propose that the sum of all reactivated resorts can become Olympic venue: Olympic Murcia as a candidate in 2015. A related public transport network would be the main investment after the candidature, an it would remain as a permanent benefit for the region.
Productive Golf
Another proposal for unfinished places is to set up innovative golf courses. There are already examples of Desert Golf around the world, where the “green” is brown, or Chocolate Golf of Pakistan, where tar is mixed in with the sands to obtain a smooth surface for the ball to roll. We propose to develop this with a new aesthetic programme; the golf ball of the desert, rather than white, should be fuchsia or fluorescent green to contrast with the colours of the desert. Desert Golf can generate a whole new imagery, a new kind of beauty. We now propose Productive Golf: a type of golf that takes place in a productive environment.
The origins of Golf are to be found in merino sheep pastures among forests patches and streams on the hills of Scotland, Wales and northern England. As a sport that arises in the relationship with a productive landscape: the ball rolls because the sheep eat the grass, forests are productive and not an ornament ... it is a productive environment.
In Murcia, golf courses usually reconstruct the visual image of such rolling green hills, but with connotations of wealth, leisure and British nobility rather than productive connotations. Equivalent elements of productive landscape should be added, as a translation to the local climate, potential and needs, which may not include grazing sheep. One might associate the golf course to a farm for local produce. Do you fancy golf by the almond groves?
Proposals for unviable sites
Consider the cultivation of dry weather species, surrounded by almond trees which do not need added water and yield highly productive crops. Consider also energy producing trees, ie windmills which in addition may absorb the energy of the wind so as not to disturb the game.
We have carried out a typological study of golf courses, considering the interaction between environmental and artificial elements, water, sand, vegetation and urbanization. On the other hand, we have studied different types of golf: underwater golf, urban golf, extreme golf where you have to run from one place to another because time is a factor, indoor golf, low maintenance golf, desert golf, square golf and long distance golf in which the holes are not in the same field and you have to travel miles, just like Burt Lancaster swam back home across suburban New York from swimming pool to swimming pool in the 1968 film The Swimmer. Following this program we can propose a golf tour of Murcia going from hole to hole to see different landscapes: from the green canyons to the scenic desert.
This is where our vision for contemporary sustainable productive landscapes can join in, with guidelines as to what this landscape can produce, what may be its inputs and outputs.
Proposals for delegitimized Places
Finally we must find a way to reactivate delegitimized landscapes. In cases where earthworks have already been carried out, we have noticed there are unusual concentrations of water. We can use these spots to start a kind of oasis, with programmed planting that could be extended later, like the seed of a process of revegetation. The final aim would be to allow nature to recover and reclaim its territory where agriculture is no longer taking care of topsoil.
Pilot Proposals
In addition to the theoretical project, we have produced a series of pilot proposals for Monte Aledo in Aledo, Torre Golf in Torre Pacheco, La Serena in Los Alcázares and Country Club in Mazarron.
The financial implications are extremely important: many loans that were granted to carry out all these operations have no prospect of a return in the near future. One aim of this paper is to propose strategies for the management of these areas, so that they can be productive, considering that they will not be developed for housing in the short to medium term.
The strategy to adopt depends on the point of development of each resort at the time of its interruption. In some cases the process was merely initiated, with a change of ownership of the land or some other administrative or commercial actions, but with no physical intervention; as a result agriculture may be abandoned, which is I itself a physical consequence. In others cases earthworks have begun. Or, say, 500 homes have been built, 1,000 are half-built, and another batch of 10,000 have not been started yet, so there is people living in the 500 completed houses but they are forced to live in precarious conditions, surrounded by a paralysed building site, and not reaching the critical mass that would make basic services viable.
We found people in difficulty, like lady pink tracksuit as we called her, who sold her home in England to come and live in paradise but now jogs in a desolate half-built site. Or Kevin, who lives in a model home in the desert trying to sell a house because he was promised one if the development went ahead: struggling to survive after the shipwreck, clinging to a piece of wood… in the desert. In the plan that that he showed us the houses marked "sold" did not really correspond with sales but with tradeoffs with builders, mainly for earthworks and planting palm trees.
All this reflects the scale and nature of the problem; now for some possible courses of action to follow.
Productive landscapes and golf
The assumed attractive of the golf resort model in Murcia lies on a number of prestige giving elements based on waste, excess and abundance, of water, grass and leisure. We intend to transform the perception of golf prestige givers replacing the elements based on waste of wealth, with new elements based on production and wealth generation. Ideally, the golf course would produce energy, and rather than of wasting water, it would help to produce it. The general theoretical framework would be focused on that material and measurable bonus of wealth, as opposed to the expense that golf courses and the associated houses currently generate.
Obsolescence
The beauty of agricultural productive landscapes as experienced today is a cultural construction of the Romantic era, a period in which the visual was becoming the main method of transmission of culture. This change takes place during the industrial revolution, when the countryside is no longer the main source of wealth, and the agricultural may be contemplated in an idle mode and not as something merely useful or productive, or at most as a background, standing for wealth.
In the same way as the late eighteenth century began to consider the fields as romantic and bucolic, in the twentieth century a new concept of beauty arises, no longer associated with the natural, but on the aesthetic appreciation of obsolete industrial landscapes. Industrial archaeology, where large old brick factories or riveted metal structures become works of art. The Eiffel Tower for example, is no longer a symbol of technical development and is then appreciated from a romantic point of view for its balance and beauty, becoming an icon of the French capital.
We know that windmills (turbines), which are now also controversial for aesthetic reasons, will in the future be considered heritage, like the windmills of Don Quixote, also considered mechanical monsters in his time, and now protected as historical and artistic monuments.
In this context, we propose to take a step forward and make sure that productive landscapes of our time are considered beautiful as of today. We want the windmills, solar farms, rubbish dumps (which can no longer be outside the bounds of the city, as the city has exhausted its limits) to be beautiful. This is why we are developing projects in which the choreography of the production may be admirable from the point of view of an objective observer, following the classical definition of landscape that requires the presence of someone watching.
In our cultural and moral context, the profit generated by the mills is a negative value that determines the aesthetic judgement that is made of them. We want production, especially production of renewable energy, food, or sustainable processing of waste materials, to be seen as positive because we can no longer disguise the origin of matter or food because there is no "other" place to hide. This transformation implies that we introduce production as a prestige giver, and that we design its physical support with beauty as an aim.
Golf and fiction
It is interesting to note that the idea of a golf resort has been established as a work of fiction, in a long tradition of urban fiction originated in the United States from the Sixties. It is the construction of a fictional landscape: an evocative creation that does not correspond with the place, and must be artificially maintained.
It is also a social fiction: it is advertised as a meeting point for VIPs, and a potential generator of business relationships among co-owners. This is not real, as the owners of these desert outposts do not even coincide in time. It is a fictional evocation of the life of the wealthy, which becomes accessible to the lower middle classes.
Productive landscapes and sustainability
Sustainability, in a market economy, can only be achieved if we visualize and register all explicit and implicit costs, whether internalized or externalized, of everything we consume. The proposal Productive Landscapes aims to contribute to that visualization in a positive spirit, simultaneously providing a new opportunity to enjoy life.
Windmills and Beauty
Windmills are placed in locations where air currents are stronger. Their presence over a horizon translates into visuals the wind patterns. They are closely related to topography, rolling hills and natural landscape. They therefore provide an enhanced reading, an augmented reality of the forces of nature and allow us to see where and how that concentrated energy is channelled. In that sense they are highlighters and visualizers of the landscape of wind, through their position, alignment and concentration as a group. The units themselves, with their aerodynamic qualities and successful design (white towers, white rounded capsules, cylindrical columns with entasis), are endowed with a classic beauty that everyone can appreciate.
Methodology: Classification
As a first step, we have classified the paralysed resorts of Murcia according to a series of parameters related to the degree of development. The following table indicates the state of insecurity or helplessness at the point of interruption of the resort’s development.
For each degree of helplessness we propose different and specific strategies, for management, earthworks, urbanization, housing, golf course and growth areas. The lowest level corresponds to the most basic situation: only a simple administrative act has taken place, such as the purchase of land. We call this category delegitimized landscapes. Agricultural production has stalled due simply to the new legal situation. The new owner does not have the will nor the means or knowledge to manage agricultural production in this area, an area that, on the other hand, now has a different value simply by the fact that a new engagement has occurred. In this climate, the abandonment of agricultural production involves the disuse of irrigation systems, decay of vegetation, degradation and progressive erosion of fertile mantle in a process of rapid desertification.
In other cases the golf course is already there, as a foundation stone, the first physical intervention, implemented only for commercial reasons and in order to boost home sales. In other cases, development has begun. Sometimes only the earthworks have been implemented, and some rows of palm tress Sometimes there are ducts, a recognizable centre and even some housing. These are unplaces, non-viable sites that will not develop over the next 30 or 40 years.
Unfinished places can be very different. There are a few resorts with some completed housing but where the rest of the development is only half-built or just starting. In others some houses are completed and inhabited but do not have facilities, nor the golf course, because maintenance is not feasible due to the small size of the population. These houses are arranged around a wasteland, a vacuum, which in principle should be the most valuable of all because, in fact, the plan shape of golf courses is designed to maximize its perimeter and therefore have the most homes in the forefront. This supposedly green spot, which was the raison d’être of this place, has become a wasteland full of snakes and scorpions.
By definition, a resort is built where land is cheap. This implies that there is a considerable distance from the city and therefore no schools, bakeries or basic facilities.
Finally, there are successful places, but this success should be measured with different parameters. For example, consider a resort where all the buildings were completed, all homes were sold and all went according to initial plan, but it is empty. There is a shopping mall, but most of the shops are empty, and so are the houses: the resort is only inhabited by 10% at any given time, since the owners do not spend more than two weeks a year in their holiday homes. Shops and leisure opportunities are not viable. Public space is empty. Success is therefore relative.
The transformation of market conditions after the global financial crisis has forced the promoters of these supposedly finished places to find new niches. From that moment, they began to advertise the finished houses in the same region, offering them as a cheaper alternative to housing in the real urban tissue. The inhabitants of the latest "successful" resorts are 50% people of the region, which radically transforms the prospects for success of the public areas. However, permanent and simultaneous occupation of a majority of homes in the resort can generate a very different problem. In one of the unfinished resorts, one where the golf course was never built, the engineer who controls the water tank told us that the system can only manage water for 5 or 6% of the built houses at the same time, so that a change in the factor of simultaneity could have catastrophic consequences.
We distinguish ten types of functional status: no-thing, no-moment, no-landscape, no-opportunity, no-energy, no-selling, no-housing, no-infrastructure, no-future and fully-functional.
Then we will study a sample for each of the different situations listed in this classification, and propose a specific design.
Proposals for Successful Places
The literal application of the American model has brought to the surface some differences in the perception by the original American inhabitant and the local inhabitant, differences which have acquired greater importance as the resorts start to be occupied by permanent local residents. In some pioneering resorts security was too visible and offered a negative image with a huge fence around the perimeter suggesting a concentration camp. This type of overwhelming security derives from American culture, and at first it was advertised as something positive, but it was found to have negative values in the local context. People value security, but not ostentatious security, ie the extreme visibility of the barbed wire, fences, cameras or infra-red cameras. On the other hand, the local culture values positively that malls and restaurants are crowded and accessible, so the shopping and the golf course must allow entry for the general public in order to succeed.
Proposals for unfinished Places
One of our proposals for the reactivation of unfinished golf resorts is to add extra layers of use. As an example, add other sports on the same grounds so as to multiply their use options and expand the market segments for which entertainment space is provided. As a global target, we propose to add layers or uses to public and open spaces, with a strategic overview that balances all sports in order to propose that the sum of all reactivated resorts can become Olympic venue: Olympic Murcia as a candidate in 2015. A related public transport network would be the main investment after the candidature, an it would remain as a permanent benefit for the region.
Productive Golf
Another proposal for unfinished places is to set up innovative golf courses. There are already examples of Desert Golf around the world, where the “green” is brown, or Chocolate Golf of Pakistan, where tar is mixed in with the sands to obtain a smooth surface for the ball to roll. We propose to develop this with a new aesthetic programme; the golf ball of the desert, rather than white, should be fuchsia or fluorescent green to contrast with the colours of the desert. Desert Golf can generate a whole new imagery, a new kind of beauty. We now propose Productive Golf: a type of golf that takes place in a productive environment.
The origins of Golf are to be found in merino sheep pastures among forests patches and streams on the hills of Scotland, Wales and northern England. As a sport that arises in the relationship with a productive landscape: the ball rolls because the sheep eat the grass, forests are productive and not an ornament ... it is a productive environment.
In Murcia, golf courses usually reconstruct the visual image of such rolling green hills, but with connotations of wealth, leisure and British nobility rather than productive connotations. Equivalent elements of productive landscape should be added, as a translation to the local climate, potential and needs, which may not include grazing sheep. One might associate the golf course to a farm for local produce. Do you fancy golf by the almond groves?
Proposals for unviable sites
Consider the cultivation of dry weather species, surrounded by almond trees which do not need added water and yield highly productive crops. Consider also energy producing trees, ie windmills which in addition may absorb the energy of the wind so as not to disturb the game.
We have carried out a typological study of golf courses, considering the interaction between environmental and artificial elements, water, sand, vegetation and urbanization. On the other hand, we have studied different types of golf: underwater golf, urban golf, extreme golf where you have to run from one place to another because time is a factor, indoor golf, low maintenance golf, desert golf, square golf and long distance golf in which the holes are not in the same field and you have to travel miles, just like Burt Lancaster swam back home across suburban New York from swimming pool to swimming pool in the 1968 film The Swimmer. Following this program we can propose a golf tour of Murcia going from hole to hole to see different landscapes: from the green canyons to the scenic desert.
This is where our vision for contemporary sustainable productive landscapes can join in, with guidelines as to what this landscape can produce, what may be its inputs and outputs.
Proposals for delegitimized Places
Finally we must find a way to reactivate delegitimized landscapes. In cases where earthworks have already been carried out, we have noticed there are unusual concentrations of water. We can use these spots to start a kind of oasis, with programmed planting that could be extended later, like the seed of a process of revegetation. The final aim would be to allow nature to recover and reclaim its territory where agriculture is no longer taking care of topsoil.
Pilot Proposals
In addition to the theoretical project, we have produced a series of pilot proposals for Monte Aledo in Aledo, Torre Golf in Torre Pacheco, La Serena in Los Alcázares and Country Club in Mazarron.
