Large tracts of abused land on the peripheries of cities and beyond, where urban sprawl meets urban dereliction; landscapes of wasted land where the planners gave up: The creative team of architects submitted their plans for the use of drosscapes under the freeways which crisscrossed the city

Drosscapes have been developed from a world of contaminated former industrial sites, mineral workings, garbage dumps, container stores, polluted river banks, sewage works, and expanses of tarmac (black top) used for airport parking lots and military compounds.

Alan Berger of Harvard University's department of landscape architecture coined the term to describe urban badlands.

Drosscapes are said to be most prevalent in the United States, where the wide-open spaces beyond many city limits invite abuse.

In Europe, where land is in shorter supply, drosscapes take slightly different forms because Europe recycles land more efficiently, but even so the continent is dotted with "brownfield" sites waiting for redevelopment. Some are toxic, some are havens for wildlife and, disturbingly for conservationists, a large number exist as a combination of both components.

1. To create new developments on landscapes that transform waste into more productive urbanized landscapes to some degree: The local government officials were trying to drosscape the area around the city in order to utilize regions of land in practical ways.
2. To conceive of plans that emphasize the productive integration and reuse of waste landscapes throughout the urban world: Landscape architects and city designers like to drosscape as a challenge to use existing conditions which others have condemned as unusable.
3. Etymology: a conception that dross, or "waste", is scaped, or "resurfaced", and reconstructed for the benefit of human existence.