I have introduced just a fragment of a world of remarkable places, one that reveals the range and power of the geographical imagination. I believe it also tells us something about our own relationship with the places around us. Unruly places have the power to disrupt our expectations and to reenchant geography. They force us to realize how many basic human motivations—such as the need for freedom, escape, and creativity—are bound up with place. From Sandy Island to Stacey’s lane, we have seen how people pour their hopes and fears into place.
The book’s journey, from places that are lost and hidden to places that are designed and crafted, has followed the human instinct to shape and create. Yet none of these encounters has offered reassurance or comfort. We have had to confront some of the oddest but also some of the bleakest and most difficult locations on the planet and learn that their stories matter to us; that what happens to sinking islands and new deserts or towns in the grip of brutal authority concerns every place.
We have also had to confront the fact that our relationship to place is riddled with paradoxes. Ordinary places are also extraordinary places; the exotic can be around the corner or right under our feet. Another striking paradox is the way borders both trap us and give us our sense of liberty. Some of the places in Unruly Places, especially those I have labeled as no man’s lands, appear to have escaped the claustrophobic grid of nations and, hence, offer a promise of freedom. Yet in their unpredictability and sometimes cruelty, these places also impress on us why people find borders so necessary. The paradox can be deepened: the reason we keep drawing borders is not a matter of mere utility. Borders can inspire and excite us. Breakaway nations provide the clearest example, but it’s also an emotion that can be found from Baarle-Nassau to Mount Athos. Not only is a world without borders never likely to happen—it also wouldn’t be much fun.
Another paradox that emerges from the forty-seven disorientating places gathered in this book is humanity’s need for both mobility and roots. “Among the great struggles of man,” Salman Rushdie tells us in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, “there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey.” A few of the places we have encountered try to ride this divide: residential ships like The World, which ceaselessly tour the globe, and ephemeral places like the Nowhere festival, which spring up suddenly then disappear without trace. But this is a dilemma that can never be neatly or completely resolved. The lure of escape and wanderlust is just as deeply implanted as its polar opposite, the desire to anchor oneself in a particular place, to know and care for somewhere that isn’t just anywhere.
Because place is integral to human identity, so too are the paradoxes of place. People’s most fundamental ideas and attachments don’t happen anywhere or nowhere; they are fashioned within and through their relationship to place. This may not be a new argument, but it’s one we still find difficult to discuss. Or, more precisely, we find it hard to talk about with ambition, as something with intellectual content and reach. Thankfully there are some signs that we are at the start of a period of reflection on the nature of place. I find it telling that a book called The Destruction of Memory, by Robert Bevan, is all about the destruction of place, more specifically the last century’s depressingly long roll call of places that were bombed or demolished for the sake of militant ideologies of one sort or another. Such authors as Paul Kingsnorth in Britain, Marc Augé in France, and James Kunstler in the United States, who have put the death of real places and the rise of non-places and “nowheres” onto the cultural agenda, are feeding into the same conversation. Yet while those who care about place have a lot to be troubled about, it would be a shame if this discussion was limited to nostalgic laments. As we have seen, the world is still full of unexpected places that have the power to delight, sometimes appall, but always intrigue. These unruly places provoke us and force us to think about the neglected but fundamental role of place in our lives. They challenge us to see ourselves for what we are: a place-making and place-loving species.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Robin Harvie at Aurum and Courtney Young at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for their tireless help, encouragement, and many suggestions; James Macdonald Lockhart for his faith and patience; and Rachel, Louis, and Aphra for their numerous ideas and for listening.
Index
Ababda people/territory, [>]
Ackroyd, Peter, [>]
Action Squad, [>]–[>]
Aerial Navigation Act (1911/Britain), [>]
African Development Fund, [>]
Afweyne (Mohamed Abdi Hassan), [>]–[>], [>]
Adam
before conflict, [>]
ethnic war over Karabakh and, [>], [>]–[>]
ignored/forgotten, [>]–[>], [>]
rebuilding and, [>]–[>]
ruins/description, [>], [>]–[>], [>]
soccer and, [>]
Adam Brandy Company, [>]
airspace
/>
above seas, [>], [>]
airborne cities, [>]–[>]
balloon flights and, [>]–[>]
international airspace, [>], [>]
legal issues and, [>]–[>]
national airspace, [>]
spy zone/satellites and, [>]
Al Qaeda, [>], [>]
Almeida, Alfredo Wagner Berno de, [>]
alveolar echinococcosis, [>]
Ames, Justin, [>]
Anastasia Movement, [>]–[>]
Andaman and Nicobar islanders’ origins, [>]–[>]
Andrews, David, [>]–[>], [>]
anti-claims
purpose/examples, [>]
See also Bir Tawil
Aral Sea
Amu Darya/Syr Darya rivers and, [>]
description/history, [>]–[>], [>], [>]
fishing/human settlements and, [>]
irrigation/results, [>]–[>]
island within/nature reserve, [>]
maps and, [>]
See also Aralqum Desert
Aralqum Desert
climate/health impacts, [>]
description, [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]
history, [>]–[>]
natural adaptation vs. human impact, [>], [>], [>]
primary succession limits and, [>], [>]
“Small Aral Sea” and, [>]
See also Aral Sea
Arc of Triumph, North Korea, [>]
Archaeological Park of Sicilian Incompletion, The
Alterazioni Video/tour guide, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]
Bonnett’s visit, [>]–[>], [>]
children’s city, [>]
Giarre/incomplete structures, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]
Archigram, [>]–[>]
architectural propaganda, [>]–[>]
Argueta, Marcos, [>]
Aristotle, [>]
armed rebels
revolutionary socialist ideologies and, [>]
See also FARC
Armenian genocide (1915), [>]
Armstrong, Louis, [>]
Arne
“decoy” history, [>]–[>]
today, [>]–[>]
asbestos
“fibro shack,” [>]
See also blue-asbestos mining
Athos, Mount
ban on female animals, [>]–[>], [>]
ban on women, [>], [>]–[>]
defense of ban, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]
description, [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]
legend of, [>]
monasteries/monks, [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]
as self-governing, [>]–[>]
Atkinson, Rowland, [>]
Augé, Marc, [>], [>]
Aunty (Ana Teresa Barbosa da Costa), [>]
Austen, Jane, [>], [>]
Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, [>]
Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog and borders, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]
Babaev, Agajan, [>]–[>]
Babcock, William, [>]
Bailey, Richard, [>]
Bakunin, Mikhail, [>]
Ballard, J. G., [>], [>]–[>]
Bates, “Paddy” Roy/family, [>], [>]–[>]
Bay of Bengal waters, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]
Bay of Biscay waters, [>]
Bechvovinka, Russia, [>]
Bedouins of Negev Desert
al-Talalqah clan, [>]
history/culture, [>], [>]
Israeli demolitions/policies and, [>], [>]–[>]
sense of place and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]
Twayil Abu Jarwal village, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]
village examples, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]
Wadi al-Ne’am village, [>]
Beeferman, Leah, [>]
Bell, David, [>]–[>]
Bevan, Robert, [>]–[>], [>]
bin Laden, Osama, [>]
biophilia, [>], [>], [>], [>]
Bir Tawil
border disputes and, [>]
description/history, [>]–[>]
Hala’ib Triangle and, [>]
Internet and, [>]
Sudan/Egypt not wanting, [>]–[>]
Biwi, Jaimona, [>]–[>]
black sites
description, [>]
See also interrogation/detention centers
Blandy, Sarah, [>]
blue-asbestos mining
Koegas, South Africa, [>]
See also Wittenoom, Western Australia
Bogotá Declaration (1976), [>]
Boiler Fires (World War II), [>]
borders
attitudes toward, [>]–[>], [>]
Conference of Berlin and, [>]
meanings/purposes and, [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]
See also enclaves; land between border posts; Nahuaterique
Bountiful
Anastasia Movement and, [>]–[>]
description/values, [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]
location, [>]
See also utopia/pursuit
Boym, Svetlana, [>]–[>]
Bradbury, Paul, [>]
Brick, Greg, [>]
Bright Light interrogation/detention center
CIA and, [>], [>]
description/location, [>]–[>], [>]
detainees treatment, [>]
high-value inmates, [>]–[>]
as non-place, [>]
British Admiralty map, Sandy Island, [>], [>]
Brodsky, Joseph, [>]
Brotas Quilombo
attitude change toward, [>]–[>]
issues of past/present and, [>]–[>]
“ranching sprouts” term, [>]
See also quilombos
Brown, Matt, [>]–[>]
Bucharest’s Palace of Parliament (House of Ceaușescu), [>]
Bulgaria’s Buzludzha Monument, [>]
Burning Man, [>], [>]. See also festivals as places
Cameron, David, [>]
Camp Zeist/trial
bombing of Pan Am flight and, [>]
Netherlands/Scotland and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]
outcome, [>]
preparations/outcome, [>], [>]–[>]
views on, [>]–[>]
Cappadocia
history/Christians, [>]–[>]
See also underground cities of Cappadocia
Carr, David McLain, [>]
Casey, Edward, [>], [>]
Castellanos, Salome, [>]
Castrillo, Roberto Hidalgo, [>]
Catherine II, Empress of Russia, [>]
Ceaușescu, Nicolae, [>]
“cellar fishing,” [>]
cemetery living
description/examples, [>]–[>]
See also City of the Dead, Cairo; North Cemetery, Manila
Centralia, Pennsylvania, [>]
Chamumbala, Don Muatxihina, [>]
Charles, Prince, [>]
Chayanov, Alexander, [>]
Chernobyl nuclear power plant. See Pripyat
Child in the City, The (Ward), [>]
children creating places
decline in, [>]–[>]
description/importance, [>]–[>]
Stacey’s Lane (Bonnett/brother), [>]–[>], [>], [>]
virtual places, [>]–[>]
China
detainees at secret locations, [>]
ghost towns and, [>], [>], [>]
Mongols/Han Chinese relations, [>]
piracy and Canton, [>]
See also Kangbashi New Area, Ordos, China
chitmahals
description/examples, [>], [>]–[>]
origins and, [>]–[>]
Choisy, Maryse, [>]–[>]
Christian Science Monitor, [>]
City and the City, The (Miéville), [>]
City of the Dead, Cairo
description, [>], [>]
family tombs and, [>], [>]
living residents/amenities, [>]–[>]
climate change
coastline changes and, [>], [>]
floods and, [>]
Maldives and, [>], [>]–[>]
&nb
sp; sea level rise/islands, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]
closed cities
businesses/economy and, [>]–[>]
examples, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]
gated communities comparison, [>], [>]
See also Zheleznogorsk
communist regimes
architectural propaganda, [>]–[>]
mass demolitions, [>]–[>]
places without people, [>]–[>]
Concrete Island (Ballard), [>]–[>]
Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies Page 21