Radical Heritage: The Introduction of Urban Fallows and the Value of Cyclical Rest

Source abstract

In the context of climate breakdown and socio‐economic precarity, this article introduces the novel concept of urban fallows as fertile grounds for rethinking urban heritage through the dynamic interplay of space, value, agency, and time. Building on our previous summer school on “Staying with the Fallows” within rural commons, we extend its ecological and temporal insights to the urban realm, proposing a typological framework for reimagining the dynamic cultural and material worth of underused urban fabric. Rather than conceiving disused buildings or sites as vacant voids awaiting reintegration into cycles of capital accumulation, this article reframes them as latent commons, as spatial and cultural reservoirs imbued with social memory, ecological potential, and the capacity to host alternative, speculative urban futures. Drawing from place‐based investigations of urban assets across scales, this article explores how practices beyond conventional use such as situated care, custodial stewardship, and collective reimagining can serve as relational modes of heritage production through which urban value, agency, and temporal rhythms are reconfigured beyond logics of permanence, productivity, and exchange. These practices challenge dominant value logics tied to property, permanence, extraction, and productivity, offering alternative temporalities grounded in rest, repair, and relational use. The article asks whether the often static, narrow notion of heritage can be expanded to generate new value from our existing resources. This article draws on data collected from the Radical Heritage summer school, a collaborative, research‐driven initiative. By embedding fallow thinking into practice, this project seeks to activate new value channels and cultivate new spatial sensibilities oriented towards long‐term care, time, and cultural revaluation in the urban environment.