If we ceased looking at land as purely something to be exploited, we would suddenly be confronted with a large number of undefined spaces, not serving any particular function, difficult to name with any accuracy. Together they belong to neither shadow nor light. They exist at the margins of things: at the forest edge, along main roads and next to rivers, in the most forgotten corners of culture and in places where machines cannot go. They sometimes cover modest areas and may be scattered as wide as the remote corners of a field [ditches]. They have in common that they form a privileged area of receptivity to biological diversity. Cities, farms and forestry holdings, sites devoted to industry, tourism, human activity, areas of control and decision permit diversity and, at times, totally exclude it. The term Third Landscape does not allude to the Third World, but to the Third Estate. It refers to Abbé Siéyès’s question in 1789:
– What is the Third Estate? – Everything.
– What role has it played to date? – None.
– What does it aspire to? – Something.
‘Manifesto of the Third Landscape’, Gilles Clément