The nature of any society and its future can be read in its entrails - in what is left behind, what is discarded. Each creates, uses and casts aside its wastelands in very different ways and it seems that a proportion of every city is always wasteland. These neglected or abandoned places are fragile and ephemeral, a transient aspect of a changing, living city, yet development appears unable to clear them away for good, only to move them on to a different site. This book explores some of these wastelands that collectively form a sustained and permanent feature of the modern city.

During Mussolini's Fascist regime (1923-43) 'colonia' - holiday centres for children - were established on the northern Italian coasts. Run by paramilitary youth organizations, they brought together modernist architecture, fresh air and discipline with the intention of converting the body and soul of Italian youth to fascist principle. The colonia were far removed from both the towns of Italy's past and from the traditional structures of family and community. They offered a dramatic daily programme of activity with marching, synchronized exercise and gymnastics, flag raising, saluting and swearing of allegiance to the regime. It was a programme that in turn inspired architectural features in the buildings - including towers, ramps and elevated platforms - all designed to dramatise the parades and presentations by the young people. Even in the context of massive public works programmes, the building of the colonia offered unprecedented opportunities for progressive architects. They became a distinctive type of fascist building that evolved under the directives of the youth organizations. Despite the spectacle of the buildings, official policy declared luxuries as anti-educational and anti-social. Accordingly only the most basic of accommodation was provided. Dormitories were intimidating, open plan and stark; each might accommodate several hundred children. Italian parents routinely admonished recalcitrant children with the threat 'ti mando in colonia!' (Behave, or I'll send you to the colonia!). For a generation of Italians the experience of fascism was a formative one, from which some never recovered.

Ancoats, in Manchester, was once unimaginably different. One of the world's earliest industrial suburbs, it was dark and dense, noisy, frenetic, violent, and unhealthy. It was also vibrant and creative. It had a striking vapor, sound, and feel. The area today has undergone a striking regeneration. New streets, pavements, and civic spaces have been laid down. A series of installations, known as The Peeps, have been created for the area. Built into the fabric of the buildings, the brass peep holes offer a fleeting glimpse of a walled-in space, a tunnel, a disused toilet, a bell tower, a gauge. Dan Dubowitz, given the title of "cultural masterplanner," records through photographs, interviews, commentary, and contemporaneous texts, the recent past and the current regeneration of the suburb. It is a fascinating, beautifully illustrated and designed volume that eloquently depicts the common narrative of industrialization, slow decay, and rebirth.