Residual City: Decoupling Amenity from Capital through the Wedge

Abstract

This thesis examines the crisis of amenity and public space in the contemporary city, wherein neoliberal policies placed the needs of citizens onto the free market while divesting in public spaces and services. Today these services fail to meet the needs of more and more people, as may be seen in the many unhoused shelters in public parks. The project proposes that residual sites, and in particular wedge-shaped sites that are unsuitable for capitalist development, can be reclaimed to serve local communities and marginalized groups. Focusing on the Halifax peninsula, the project proposes three speculative interventions on wedge-shaped sites that challenge specific norms of the capitalist built environment: private property, the upward concentration of profit, and over-consumption. In transforming conventional programs and typologies (residential home, market, landfill) by decoupling amenity from monetary exchange, the interventions encompass scenarios where alternative economic practices become vehicles for reclaiming space in the built environment.