As cities evolve and resources shift with time, spaces within those cities are often left fallow and abandoned. Cyclical City tells the stories behind these sites, from Philadelphia's Liberty Lands park to Lisbon's Green Plan, and it looks at the ways in which these narratives can be leveraged toward future engagement and use. Jill Desimini posits a fundamental role for spatial design practice to transform abandoned urban landscapes through time. She argues for approaches that promote the specific affordances of the land itself (hydrology, vegetation, topography, geology, infrastructural capacity, occupation potential); the importance of cyclical change; and the particularities of the cultural, political, and physical context. These themes are explored in five cities - Philadelphia, Berlin, Lisbon, Amsterdam, and Saint Louis - and across centuries, from periods of great upheaval to ones of relative stability and even economic growth. Desimini considers what landscape-driven design can bring to cities losing people and economic resources, how design practice can be more inclusive in a context of market failure, and the ways in which abandoned landscapes can become our commons.

From Fallow is a curated collection of 100 ideas for abandoned property. Through drawing and text each idea is elaborated and each entry serves both as documentation and speculation. The intention, here, is to think differently about pre-existing conditions and to be particular about them. Examples are offered of different spatial characteristics around abandonment in North American legacy cities. The variations are mesmerisingly complicated and varied. A vacant lot is never one thing. Terrains have different scales, elevations, adjacencies, uses, climates and cultures. And just as no one territory is the same, so no one idea is sufficient. The goal, in considering these disparate ideas, is not to imagine any singular solution but to understand the many possibilities. Ideas can be tested, substituted and combined.