Book - Unruly Places

Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies

by Alastair Bonnett

"...Unruly Places explores the most extraordinary, off-grid, offbeat places on the planet. Alastair Bonnett's tour of the planet's most unlikely micro-nations, moving villages, secret cities, and no man's lands shows us the modern world from surprising new vantage points, bound to inspire urban explorers, off-the-beaten-trail wanderers, and armchair travelers. He connects what we see on maps to what's happening in the world by looking at the places that are hardest to pin down: inaccessible zones, improvised settlements, multiple cities sharing the same space. Consider Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and making his wife a princess. Or Baarle, a patchwork city of Dutch and Flemish enclaves where crossing the street can involve traversing national borders. Or Sandy Island, which appeared on maps well into 2012 despite the fact it never existed. Illustrated with original maps and drawings, Unruly Places gives readers a new way of understanding the places we occupy."

image & summary from world cat.com

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jht comments

I found this book fascinating. “Place is a protean and fundamental aspect of what it is to be human. We are a place-making and place-loving species.” (xviii) Topophilia is the technical terms for this.

Notes from a few of the chapters -

Lost Spaces – islands that never existed but were on maps for centuries, like Sandy Island (see wikipedia's entry and "map" for Sandy Island to the right). Villages sacrificed for war; ancient cities whose old sections are bulldozed to make way for modern buildings; places that appear or disappear with rising or dropping water levels

Hidden Geographies – I’ve long been fascinated by cities under cities. Seattle has an underground that was created when the downtown was raised one level in order to deal with water problems. Seattle wasn’t covered in this chapter but the Labyrinth under Minneapolis was. Then there are "secret” cities that for whatever reason never made it on official maps. The story about Zheleznogorsk, a secret city in Russia (p 42) reminded me of Los Alamos, New Mexico. People who lived in Zheleznogorsk had just a post office box address. For decades the city didn’t even have an official name although 90,000 people lived there.

No Man’s Lands was an interesting chapter – It was about territories that are in between established borders or where border posts of two contiguous nations aren’t contiguous. Sometimes these inbetween spaces develop an atmosphere of a “twilight space” of sorts (p 70). He described Bir Tawil, a place no one wants to claim - and the politics involved. Then there are communities that end up in another country when borders shift or are disputed – or places once important enough to fight over no longer are wanted by either side. This happened to people in Nahuaterique. They were in El Salvador and then Honduras.

Dead Cities – Cities abandoned because of industry and/or environmental calamity (think of Chesire, Ohio although it wasn't in this book). The accounts of ghost cities being built in China was fascinating. 

Spaces of Exception – “normal rules do not apply”. “Sometimes such places escape the rule of government, but they have also been used by governments who wish to undertake activities that would normally be forbidden…” Camp Zeist was established in Holland in 1999 to hold a trial for the Libyan men suspected of blowing up a Pan Am flight over Scotland in 1988. For the time of the trial, the plot of land in Holland was legally Scotland. It was a “legal enclave where Scottish law applied.” That allowed the trial to “take place both in Scotland and outside Scotland.” It's interesting what governments are willing to do - "black sites," "green zones," declaring a room in a Canadian maternity ward part of the Netherlands so a little girl who is born can claim Dutch citizenship and be a princess.

Enclaves and Break-away Nations – Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog (178) is a story of convoluted borders of the Netherlands and Belgium. To make it even more complex there are seven Dutch exclaves within the Belgian exclaves. There’s a similar situation between India and Bangladesh. On the border there are 106 Indian enclaves and 92 Bangladeshi enclaves. Supposedly the enclaves were stakes in card or chess games between two regional kings centuries ago. Wikipedia has a list of enclaves and exclaves here. Have you heard of Sealand? It’s an independent state built on an abandoned World War II gun platform off the coast of England. A retired British Army major bought it and proclaimed himself “Prince.” He and his family rule. They have their own currency and issue passports. The author talks about the birth of new nations, often based on ethnicity and a group that feels it is being ignored.

Floating Islands – Trash islands & pumice islands float in the oceans. Ice islands are created with spray that freezes; buildings are constructed on these islands. 

Ephemeral Places – This is the chapter where the author talks about spaces created by children. He called it "den-making," playing with place instead of toys. I thought of all the spaces we created as children. He also talks about the parking lot at the Los Angeles airport. One lot has been filled with RVs which have become housing, a “commuting settlement” for pilots, mechanics, flight attendants who need sleep between flights. 

If you read this book, try to get an edition with photos and maps. The edition available at our library had no pictures and no maps! Very unusual for a book about places. The author did include coordinates so you could find the places on Google Earth.

Reading this book will cause you to look at "place" very differently.