Unnaming the common: landscape encounters in the anthropocene

Katy Overstreet and Tim Flohr Sørensen

Landscape Research, 2025, vol. 50, issue 2, 302-318

Abstract: This article explores a particular ruderal landscape in Denmark: Amager Fælled, which is a common located two kilometres from the city centre of Copenhagen, currently embroiled in a fierce controversy over housing development. This controversy is rooted in contested definitions of what counts as nature and what kinds of nature deserve protection. Authorities aiming to redevelop the common as well as organisations working to protect it both operate by an extensive and very forceful strategy of classifying, identifying, and quantifying the elements encountered at the common. As we take note of how these practices of naming shape the landscape, we respond to this strategy of counting and measuring with an unnaming approach inspired by Ursula Le Guin’s short story, ‘She Unnames Them’. This approach resists the tendency to value this place through logics of identification and datafication, attending instead to the multispecies and multi-material encounters unfolding in Amager Fælled.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2024.2391442

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