The emerging discipline of landscape urbanism applies principles of field ecology to the morphology of cities, recognizing the integration of natural and man-made environments and encouraging a more comprehensive reading of urban development. Landscape strategies of succession, transformation, and indeterminacy are particularly relevant to the problems of the post-modern city: remediation of industrial sites and vacancy caused by de-centralization. The 1990 Vacant Land Survey quantified the progressive de-urbanization of the city of Detroit and proposed the decommissioning of whole sectors; its publication established the typology of the declining post-industrial Midwest city and prompted a variety of urban remediation proposals based on landscape urbanism principles.
Cleveland, Ohio suffers from similar conditions of industrial obsolescence and urban decline; the Building Department plans to demolish 2,000 houses per year and stabilize or re-purpose the vacant land. Included in this campaign is a commitment to mechanically deconstruct some of the buildings in order to salvage structural wood and other reusable materials. These buildings are subjected to a process of systematic, hybrid hand- and machine-disassembly, classification, and storage that inverts the construction process. Buildings produce resources. The reversal of building suggests a multi-layered cycle of growth and decay that recommends the landscape urbanism perspective. This thesis explores the ecological principle of succession and its potential for making productive use of post-industrial urban decay and shrinkage.