Landscapes are created out of people’s understanding and engagement with the world around them. They are always in process of being shaped and reshaped. Being of the moment and in process, they are always temporal. They are not a record but a recording, and this recording is much more than a reflection of human agency and action; it is creative of them. Landscapes provoke memory, facilitate (or impede) action. Nor are they a recording, for they are always polyvalent and multivocal. There is a historicity and spatiality to people’s engagement with the world around them. This paper begins with the untidiness of spatial temporalities, with structural inequalities that emphasize–or marginalize–people’s sense of place and belonging, and with the subjective positioning of the commentator. A phenomenological position is adopted, but it is one that moves beyond the local to encompass a nested series of sociopolitical landscapes. Three recent projects are then described. The agendas that inform the projects are different, but each attempts to understand how people, differently placed, engage with the world around them and with the past embedded in the landscape.
