Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies Read Online Free PDF

with greater frequency, a phenomenon that has been noted at other estuaries across the world. One of the most famous new islands emerged in France in January 2009, after Cyclone Klaus hit southwestern France. The Gironde estuary deposited what was soon named L’île Mystérieuse seven miles out to sea. Covering 250 acres at low tide, L’île Mystérieuse was caused by many of the same processes as New Moore. The waters of the Bay of Biscay are not rising as fast as those of the Bay of Bengal, and with luck L’île Mystérieuse may be around for longer than New Moore, since new islands off lowland coasts can be very useful. Their environmental worth doesn’t lie in pushing back territorial claims but in protecting coastal areas from storms and inundation. They could also provide additional land for overpopulated nations. In a world where coastline change is speeding up and becoming more unpredictable, such outcrops should be given a helping hand. New Moore could be raised up and bulked out and held in place with mangrove trees. It would be an inexpensive task, at least when compared with the construction of entirely new islands.
    As has become clear, sea level rise doesn’t augur a dawn of fun holiday islets but a wearisome struggle to protect low-lying land. Projections suggest that much of the Bay of Bengal, from Kolkata in the west to Myanmar in the east, will soon be under water. Initial predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warn that Bangladesh will lose about 17 percent of its landmass by 2050. More recent work by the Dhaka-based Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services indicates that much of this land will not be lost permanently but seasonally, during monsoon. Either way, it’s a growing problem in a country where every hour an average of eleven people already lose their homes to rising water.
    New Moore represents far more than a dispute over territorial waters. It is a serendipitous and heavy nudge toward a more proactive approach to sustaining coastal islands. Living in a delta-based country, Bangladeshis are used to the idea that islands can come and go, and they have the skills to hang on to them. Another recent arrival shows how it is done. Nijhum Dwip, or Silent Island, emerged in the early 1950s. Although much of the island is regularly flooded, it has now been stabilized and consolidated, largely thanks to the planting of mangrove trees. More than ten thousand people live there, along with deer, monkeys, and a planned tiger sanctuary. In 2001 it was designated a national park.
    Given assistance, new islands like New Moore can become viable places. It’s true that we don’t know if land-building activities can outpace the rise of the sea, and pessimistic forecasts suggest that the only long-term solution for many coastal areas is abandonment. But for the time being there is no reason to run for the hills. Rather, we need to extend our idea of what local conservation consists of. Twenty-first-century conservation will need to include not just protecting species and ecosystems but island-making too. Islands do not need to be left to sink; they can be managed and sustained. With help, New Moore could rise again.

Time Landscape
    40° 43′ 37″ N, 73° 59′ 58″ W
     
    At the corner of LaGuardia Place and West Houston Street in New York is a rectangle of land, fenced in and inaccessible to the public, that since 1978 has been given over to lost nature. This quarter-acre plot was planted by the artist Alan Sonfist with species native to the area. Red cedar, black cherry, and witch hazel, along with groundcover of Virginia creeper, pokeweed, and milkweed—the kind of flora that would have been found in the city before the seventeenth century.
    Time Landscape
was the first major work to emerge from ideas that Sonfist had been nurturing for some while. In a manifesto published in 1968, “Natural Phenomena as Public Monuments,” he called for environmental