Jill Desimini, Fall 2026 Lecture Series: From Fallow: Past, Present, and Future of Abandonment

Join us in 175 Warren Hall for a lecture by Jill Desimini, From Fallow: Past, Present, and Future of Abandonment. This lecture is part of the Department of Landscape Architecture's fall 2026 lecture series, How Can Landscape Architecture Have Actual Agency?

As cities evolve and resources shift with time, spaces within those cities are often left fallow and abandoned. This talk posits a fundamental role for spatial design practice in transforming abandoned urban landscapes over time. It argues for approaches that promote the specific affordances of the land itself (hydrology, vegetation, topography, geology, infrastructural capacity, occupation potential); the importance of cyclical and reciprocal change; and the particularities of the cultural, political, and physical context. Through the lens of specific cities and sites, it is possible to consider what a landscape-driven design approach can bring to cities under attack, how design practice can be more inclusive in a context of economic, social, and political failure, how abandoned landscapes can support well-being, and how we can transcend barriers collectively.

Jill Desimini is a landscape architect and Program Director and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Connecticut. Her work focuses on developing design frameworks, tools, and collaborations to support local climate advocates, activists, public agents, and organizations. The research investigates the critical intersection of social and climatic threats over time to identify potential for land reform to spread wealth and enable reciprocal human and nonhuman relationships. Ongoing projects address abandoned landscapes and devalued properties, land banking, wildness in cities, climate adaptation, alternative narratives, and data generation, as well as long histories, non-linear models of time, and cartographic methods. She is the author of Cyclical City: Five Stories of Urban Transformation (UVA Press, 2022), From Fallow: 100 Ideas for Abandoned Urban Landscapes, (ORO 2019), and co-author of Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary (PAP 2016).
 

Image credit Jason Sheldon for portrait of Jill Desimini.