Expeditions There is a long tradition, especially in this part of the United States, that associates a physical practice—walking—with the elaboration of a thought. In several “expeditions” along the eastwest and north-south sections we merged the concrete experience of the site and the projective approach. We borrowed this term from MacKaye who insisted on the value of fieldwork and walking, subsequently titling his second book Expedition Nine: A Return to a Region.30 The concrete experience of a site, the encounters and exchanges we have, the confrontation between a space and the words used to describe it, or the gap between its concrete and imagined features, all have a constructive role in defining an interpretation and by these operations to reveal relations, through the continuity of the experience of space. During the expeditions, sometimes in the form of a dérive, other times structured by fixed programs and interviews, we found, paraphrasing Julian Green, not what we were looking for, but many things we were not seeking out.31 The fieldwork along the two sections has clearly revealed the existence of fractures inside-
the New England “common ground” and the need to escape any preconceived interpretations.
1 This text expands the essay my essay “Territorialism I,” New Geographies 6 (July 2014). 2 See Robert Fishman, ed., The American Planning Tradition: Culture and Policy (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000); and Marie-Claire Robic, “Ville et région dans les échanges transatlantiques entre géographes de la première moitié du XX siècle: convergences et diversité des expériences,” Finisterra XXXIII, no. 65 (1998). 3 See Bruce Kats, The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013); James C. O’Connell, The Hub’s Metropolis: Greater Boston’s Development from Railroad Suburbs to Smart Growth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013). 4 See Fred Hirsch, The Social Limits to Growth (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977). 5 See André Corboz, “Le territoire comme palimpseste,” Diogène 121 (January–March 1983): 14–35. 6 Paola Viganò, I territori dell’Urbanistica. Il progetto come produttore di conoscenza (Roma: Officina, 2010); French translation: Les territoires de l‘urbanisme (Geneva: Metispresses, 2012). 7 John Friedmann and Clyde Weaver, Territory and Function: The Evolution of Regional Planning (London: Edward Arnold, 1978), 89. 8 See John L. Thomas, “Holding the Middle Ground,” The American Planning Tradition, 38. 9 See http://www.worldaudit.org/democracy. htm and http://www.globaldemocracy. com; and Patti Tamara Lenard and Richard Simeon, introduction to Imperfect Democracies: The Democratic Deficit in Canada and the United States (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013). 10 See ibid, in which the authors say that there is a paradox, “a gap between the theory and the ideal of democracy and the gritty, messy practice.” Democracy is characterized by collective self-determination and the reality is of disillusion. 11 “I argue that Eliot and Baxter viewed open space planning as a means of combating
Territorialis(m): An Introduction
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of a relative homogeneity. In Geddes’s conception, the river valley and the section were related by this possibility. In the case of the Boston territory, the New England plateau is a complex geological and hydrological structure whose specific context deems a particular analysis and understanding necessary.28 Distinct from other uses of the transect whose scope is the legitimization of a preconceived “theory,” we do not presuppose evident or clear relations among the different parts, neither do we think it possible to simplify the sequences in rigid codes. In Gottmann’s Megalopolis the east-west relations are shown as the result of natural and artificial rationalities. The water supply basin and the watershed define different geographies and interdependencies. If in Geddes’s section, or in Reclus’s Histoire d’un Ruisseau,29 the natural flow of water along the valley and toward the sea structures the changing natural, rural, and urban landscapes, and the streams’ carrying capacity could be used, in contemporary New England, a complex of watersheds describes non-evident relations of dependence, autonomy, or simply of exclusion among the different communities (for example in terms of water quality and drinking water supply). The section is a tool that helps to exemplify the complexity of contemporary territorialism.