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    Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies
    Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies
    Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies
    Audiobook7 hours

    Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies

    Written by Alastair Bonnett

    Narrated by Derek Perkins

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    At a time when Google Maps can take you on a virtual tour of Yosemite's remotest trails and cell phones double as navigational systems, it's hard to imagine there's any uncharted ground left on the planet. In Unruly Places, Alastair Bonnett goes to some of the most unexpected, offbeat places in the world to reinspire our geographical imagination.

    Bonnett's remarkable tour includes moving villages, secret cities, no man's lands, and floating islands. He explores places as disorienting as Sandy Island, an island included on maps until just two years ago despite the fact that it never existed.

    An intrepid guide down the road much less traveled, Bonnett reveals that the most extraordinary places on earth might be hidden in plain sight. Perfect for urban explorers, wilderness ramblers, and armchair travelers struck by wanderlust, Unruly Places will change the way you see the places you inhabit.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 30, 2014
    ISBN9781494575823

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    Reviews for Unruly Places

    3.5/5

    121 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I have a fascination for lost, hidden, and forgotten places, so I enjoyed learning about several new ones mentioned in this book. The book is a collection of essays about these places, some of which the author visited. Others are off limits, so he relied on other primary sources. The essays are thoughtfully written and often touch on larger issues related to the place itself. I liked that, although I found myself wishing for more - more actual information about the locations, and photos, which I suppose would make it more of coffee table type of book. All the same I found the writing as engaging as the subject matter and would love to find more books on this somewhat obscure topic.
    • 4/5
      Some of the 47 sketches of "place" in this volume fascinated me, some left me bored. But the underlying concept, that there is a unique human understanding, and desire for, "place" is a very thought-provoking concept.
    • 3/5
      A blend of history, anthropology, and theory, Bonnett's writing here often has the journalistic feel of a series of particularly engaging New Yorker articles. I'm not sure the book will make me think about my own relationship to places and spaces -- which is a slight failure of the theoretical parts -- but there were at least enough "Wow, really?!" moments that I would happily recommend it to friends who are interested in random interesting geographical bits.The places are grouped into the following categories/chapter headings: Lost Spaces, Hidden Geographies, No Man's Lands, Dead Cities, Spaces of Exception, Enclaves and Breakaway Nations, Floating Islands, and Ephemeral Places. I found the first six sections better than the final two. The former had more detail about each place while the latter by their very natures were more theoretical. Like some other reviewers, I would have preferred either a longer book which covered each place in greater detail, or a book of the same length which covered fewer places, leaving room for... greater detail. In a book about places, and peoples' relationships to them, why not write even more about, well, the places themselves?One of the main takeaways for me is that I now want to seek out more information on some of the places that Bonett discusses so briefly. Make of that what you will. Overall its great reporting but personally I found the book a little lacking in artful prose. A John McPhee Alastair Bonnett is not.
    • 4/5
      Apart from some obscure bits of the Amazon rainforest and Indonesian jungles we think that there can be no undiscovered parts of the world; can there? Surely, we must have discovered everything on Google Earth by now. Off The Map sets about putting that record straight. In this book, Bonnett helps us discover secret places, unexpected islands, slivers of a metropolis and hidden villages. Russia seems to have more than its fair share of secret and abandoned cities. There is Zheleznogorsk, a military town that never existed on any map and still retains some of its secrecy today. Probably the most infamous is Pripyat, abandoned days after the nuclear explosion at Chenobyl, it is slowly being reclaimed by nature; the amount of radiation means that the area will not be safe for humans to reoccupy for at least 900 years. Give or take…

      Bonnett tells us about disputed borders that mean that the people still living there are unattached to any nation, a man in New York who bought the tiny strips of land alongside tower blocks for a few dollars each. There is Sealand, a fortress built in World War Two and now a self-declared principality in the North Sea. Other islands exist in out oceans too, some that are on maps that have never been there, others made from rubbish that has collected together and occasionally floating rocks; or pumice as it is better known, the residue from underwater volcanoes. There is also a huge vessel called the World, collectively owned by the residents, it ploughs the seas keeping all the riff-raff away. He mentions the abandoned villages of England from the second world war, including one just down the road from me; Arne.

      It is a fascinating book, full of weird and wonderful trivia about places that you really wouldn’t want to visit on your holidays. It is also an exploration of what makes a landscape and the things we draw from it. Worth reading for anyone who is fascinated by those places that just don’t fit the map. 3.5 stars
    • 5/5
      The best part of this book is that it's not just some fact book or sensationalized travel guide. It touches on the human aspects of the places mentioned and fits them into a variety of psychological and sociological theories. Even at that, it reads fluently and provides a lot of directions for further reading.
    • 5/5
      Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies by Alastair Bonnett is essentially a sociological and philosophical study of what 'place' really means to each of us. The author explores 47 different locales around the globe (usually with GPS coordinates included) and divides them by type (floating cities, underground bunkers, and places without borders to name a few). He examines the dichotomy in wanting a place which is set in stone and also desiring to be itinerant travelers like our ancestors. Until I read this I had never really thought about the significance that we as humans associate with place. The historical and geographical facts Bonnett detailed were especially fascinating (examples include: pumice rafts, Sealand (they have their own passports!), and the enclaves of Belgium). The pacing was just right and the material kept me engaged throughout (which by this point in the year is a challenge). I really like to learn about places that are far removed from the everyday and Bonnett delivered on that in spades. For those with wanderlust in their heart or a desire to learn about phenomenally odd and/or out of the way locales then this is a great little book. I bet it would make an excellent travel companion on any vacation! 10/10
    • 4/5
      A tale of unclaimed spaces from man-made floating islands to unclaimed green islands in highway patterns. Unclaimed or secret or unwanted (like Chernobyl). Interesting premise, the exotic and unusual hiding in plain sight. I enjoyed the trip.
    • 4/5
      A fascinating little book that gives the curious layman a wonderfully readable rundown of geographical oddities, theory relating to cartography and place, and historical and current thinking about what the concept of "place" might mean to us. The author writes in a style that is both accessible and precise: he packs a lot of big ideas into these little essays, which don't run to more than a handful of pages each. And it's obvious he loves his subject: he seems to have gone to considerable expense to visit and provide first-hand accounts of many of the places he discusses here. And many of them are truly fascinating. They range from an Italian "museum" of unfinished construction projects to a chunk of Sudan nobody wants to a gigantic cruise ship whose owners seem to have forsaken land entirely. The book is littered with failed utopias, potential futures, and unconventional thinking about the space we inhabit. But what "Unruly Places" really useful to the reader who's just getting into this subject is the the author's talent for contrast and paradox. Do borders trap or free us? Does place mean more or less than it used to? How "real" are the borders we draw? These essays could be read as a series of arguments and counter-arguments, and, therefore, give the reader a lot of food for thought. I get the idea that many professional geographers or map fans would consider this to be a bit of a sensationalistic, surface-level treatment of their discipline, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned a few readers on to this. I've had a bit of an interest in the theory urban planning ever since I read Greil Marcus's "Lipstick Traces," so "Unruly Places" was a great fit for me. Fortuitously, the book has an extensive and promising bibliography for anyone who wants to delve deeper into theories of place.
    • 3/5
      Great premise, but surprisingly boring, and I found the punctuation practices distractingly annoying.
    • 5/5
      This book was intriguing and captivating cover to cover. The author flits around the globe briefly profiling places that don't "fit" our standard ideas of geography, from an island that was in the map for years but never existed to the enclaves of the Netherlands and Bangladesh, places where the edges of two countries intermingle. The author brings in history, geography and philosophy while never letting the book settle into a plod. A fun, informative read that makes me want to learn more about these places.
    • 3/5
      This is a great book to pick up when you don't have the time (or attention span) to sit down and get engrossed in something lengthy. It feels almost like a compilation of a column from a magazine - a couple of pages devoted to each entry.

      The theme is interesting places around the world. The focus is on the interstitial - things that are caught in the margins, between one thing and the other, not one thing or the other, overlooked, decaying, forgotten. Like many others, I find such things fascinating, so I picked up this book both as a potential guidebook and to hear the author's take on such places.

      At a few junctures, the authors pontificating can get slightly pompous, in the manner of an academic lecture. Overall, however, his ideas about the psychology of topography: our conception of space, place, and borders (and how those change over time, are affected by politics, etc.), are quite fascinating.

      The chosen places, and the factual information on each of them, was also interesting. I did know about a decent percentage of the places mentioned, but I still kept raising my head up from the book to say to whoever was around: "Hey! Did you know...?"

      Each item that the author has included an essay on is accompanied by its longitude and latitude... however, what would've really brought this book up to 5 stars is if the author had teamed up with a National Geographic-quality photographer in order to illustrate these locations. For nearly every item, I found myself longing to see it as described - not just to peer at it via Google Earth. A coffee-table edition, with photos, would be a great project!

      An advance copy of this book was provided by NetGalley. Thanks so much for the opportunity to read... As always, my opinions are my own.
    • 3/5
      In this book, the author describes a number of unusual places around the world. Many parts of this book were incredibly interesting, I wish I could remember some of the odd places I learned about. The author uses his description of the places to illustrate the ways that human societies view place and how our spaces reflect our culture.

      My main complaint is that I felt the author was trying to find philosophical meaning where there wasn't any. I often felt I would have rather just had the facts, and not reflections on the meaning behind the facts.

      I think I would have liked the book a lot better if I had read only a few sections at a time.
    • 4/5
      This book was ok. I've decided to give it 4 starts because it was well written and more importantly well researched. I think the only challenge I had was that I really need to be in the correct mood to read about places that I will never visit. Also, Bonnett does get a bit too philosophical for me from time to time.
    • 3/5
      Fascinating premise. It's hard to categorize this book. It's not quite a travel book, for example. Unruly Places by Alastair Bonnett is more a lovingly curated encyclopedia of locales and spots that are unchartered and removed from maps. Some places Bonnett describes aren't exotic in the sense that they are some pristine, undiscovered spot in Papua New Guinea. Instead he gives us territories and places that aren't even really definable. For example, he covers international airspace, pumice and trash islands, all kinds of crazy things like a traffic island in Newcastle. As amazing as it was, many of the 'profiles' felt rushed and superficially described. I craved more, in-depth description, more narrative. Ultimately, Unruly Places is a book about places without a solid sense of place.