A waste of time? On spatial planning and ‘wastelands’ at the city edge of Malmö (Sweden)

City edges have been associated with waste and wastelands for centuries. Refuse dumps have frequently been located at the outskirts of the city, and the metaphor of ‘wasteland’ has been used to depict landscapes at the urban fringe. In this paper, the relationship between actual waste dumps and metaphorical wastelands is brought forward to facilitate an analysis of landscape transformations at the city edge and to reveal the neglect of transient landscapes within spatial planning. In the first part of the paper the interactions between dumps and ‘wastelands’ at the city edge are discussed. In the second part, a case study at the edge of Malmö (in southern Sweden) is presented as an illustration of the transformative city edge and in particular the invisibility of this landscape in local planning. Major landscape transformations during the 20th century are examined along with representations of the area within spatial planning. The primary sources of information have been the archives of the local and regional waste management divisions, local planning documents and field studies. The case study illustrates how the present fringe landscape is constantly camouflaged by a green future; it is always about to be transformed, and therefore ignored. Consequently, an everyday landscape, with hazardous waste as well as places of great potential for recreation, has been disregarded for decades. The paper concludes with a discussion emphasising the importance to unveil such utopian representations, and the need to highlight the present day situation at the city edge.