LANDSCAPE AS INFRASTRUCTURE by o p e n s y s t e m s

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First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Pierre Bélanger Layout, Design, Cover: OPSYS Media Copyediting: Danika Cooper, Erin Wythoff, Karen Moser, Hernán Bianchi Benguria Image Editing & Permissions: Séréna Vanbutsele The right of Pierre Bélanger to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Dedicated to the memory of Michael Hough—landscape architect, urban ecologist (19282013): “Total control is impossible, biodynamics can only be triggered, manipulated, amplified, attenuated or registered. Nothing is new; everything exists already in one form or another.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Landscape as Infrastructure : A Base Primer / Pierre Bélanger. New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. Includes bibliographical references and index. LCCN 2015049549 Subjects: 1. Landscape Architecture. 2. Sustainable Development. 3. Infrastructure (Economics) SB472 .B3585 2016 DDC 712 — dc23 LC Record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049549 ISBN: 978-1-138-64391-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-64392-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-62915-5 (ebk) Typeset in News Gothic and Century by OPSYS Media Funding: Harvard Graduate School of Design, Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation, Netherlands Architecture Fund, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, University of Toronto Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape and Design, and Wageningen University.

pierre bĂŠlanger

landscape as infrastructure a base primer

foreword by rosalind williams

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Prepositions

A Landscape Manifesto

Systems of Systems

Redefining Infrastructure 116 Synthetic Surfaces 156 Ecologies of Disassembly 192 Landscape as Infrastructure 254 Foodshed 296 Metabolic Landscape 334 Regionalization 360 Infrastructural Ecologies 426

Imaging Infrastructure 480 Re-Reading Infrastructure 484 Urbanism, without Infrastructure? 496 Acknowledgments 498 Index 500

Infrastructure as Lived Experience.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to understand events that are momentous and unprecedented, we humans must devise new language. We invent new words, recast old ones, and arrange them into new constellations. New language enables new ideas and concepts, which continue to evolve along with the historical phenomena they purport to describe. This reflexive process is taking place as we confront a new phase of history, in which human and natural history are converging as never before. In this new phase, human beings are not just changing the face of the earth but are changing the fate of the earth and therefore the human fate. By the late nineteenth century, it was already evident that traditional terms such as industry and mechanics—even in souped-up versions like the industrial revolution or mechanical age—were inadequate to describe what was happening. In the 20th century the word technology outgrew its earlier, circumscribed meaning as the study of the practical arts, becoming redefined as the prime determinant of history: the agent of general, unspecified, irresistible change. More or less simultaneously, the word environment displaced nature as a collective term for the life of the planet. Of all the revolutions of the 20th century, none is more astounding than this one: the sudden collapse of history and nature as fundamental descriptors of human experience. History and nature bite the dust. History is reduced to technological change; nature, to the human surround. As technology and environment emerged as key terms, they were often clustered with two other young words, urbanization and infrastructure. The first refers to the built world of settlements, the latter to the built world of connections. This cluster of language becomes tight-knit and self-reinforcing. Urbanization and infrastructure converge as city life extends beyond city boundaries. Technology and environment converge into the technological environment. As the building of the world has accelerated, this linguistic knot has become tighter and tighter. Then Pierre Bélanger steps in, suggesting that we bring landscape into the discussion…This is the pivotal moment, when the artist, designer, or viewer picks up an image of the world, any image, and decides to look at it not from a portrait orientation (taller than it is wide) but from a landscape orientation (wider than it is high). The horizontal perspective changes everything. It is not just that the word landscape is centuries older than technology, environment, urbanization, and infrastructure, and therefore brings with it a much deeper well of human experience. It is not just that the word relates to both the art of landscaping and that of painting, and 6

therefore evokes far more complex and powerful ways of knowing the world than utilitarian problem-solving. It is above all that the landscape orientation looks at the world as a human being looks at it: an individual with a point of view, taking it all in at once, part of the life of the place and time, part of the landscape, not its imperial overlord. Landscape is also a verb. To landscape is to work with the planet; to improve, enhance, and adorn it; to liberate its potential, as opposed to imposing structures of conquest. Landscaping brings with it an acceptance of the passage of time as something to be appreciated rather than battled. The typical verbs associated with infrastructure are age and decay. The typical verb of landscape is cultivate: through longterm commitment of human labor and other resources, it is renewed and reworked. From the landscape orientation, maintenance is not a chore to be resisted but the core of what it means to create a human world. This reorientation is not just an abstract intellectual turn. It also implies a professional claim about whose turf this is, as it were. This book is, among much else, a manifesto for a wider range of professional engagements with cultivating our common world. It addresses especially engineers and landscape architects, but most of all it encourages collaborations of these and other professions and non-professions Does our world need to be built, purified, beautified, or maintained? The answer isâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all the above, and to accomplish this we need a mix of professions, just as we need a range of terminologies beyond the rhetorical monoculture of technology and environment. As professions are currently organized, landscaping infrastructure sounds like an oxymoron. BĂŠlanger often springs such surprises. He shuffles the card deck of language to deal out words in new ways. He sorts through picture cards as well as word ones, using graphics and images to illustrate evolving practices. Given the ceaseless reciprocity between words and deeds in human affairs, experiments in practice will lead to further refinement of language and thought. This book reenacts the recursive process by which we come to understand the momentous, unprecedented event of a new human condition. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Rosalind Williams

Rosalind Williams is Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology (STS) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her first three books (Dream Worlds, Notes from the Underground, Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change) address the question of what are the implications for human life, both individual and collective, when we live in a predominantly self-constructed world. Her latest book, titled The Triumph of Human Empire (The University of Chicago Press, 2013) surveys the overarching historical event of our time: the rise and triumph of human empire, defined by the dominance of human presence on the planet. Foreword

Live, ecological systems can be designed as infrastructures that shape contemporary urban economies. 8

As ecology becom mes the new engineering, the project of landscape in nfrastructureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a contemporary alignment of the disciplines of landscape architecture, civil engineering, and urban planningâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is proposed here. Predominant challenges facing urban regions today y are addressed, including shifting climates, material flows, and population mobilities. Responding to the e underperformance of master planning and overrexertion of technological systems at the end of the twentieth century, this collection of writings argues for the strategic design of infrastructural and territorial ecologies, a synthetic landscape of living g, biophysical, and sociopolitical systems that operate as urban infrastructures to shape the future of urban economies and cultures into the twenty-firsst century. Preface

Compiled over the past ten years, this book brings together a series of ten different texts, with ten different positions, that explores how the emergence of ecology and revival of geography at the turn of this century are radically reconfiguring the way we understand and shape environments. Written by a landscape urbanist, each text offers a position on the visible systems, invisible processes, and indivisible scales—the infrastructure—supporting contemporary urban life. Unlike specialized, professional, or deep, philosophical works, this book does not present itself as a treatise nor a textbook but rather a preliminary and elementary introduction to the cross-disciplinary nature of landscape infrastructure as a method of thinking, model of pedagogy, milieu of research, and mode of practice. In the cross-cultural sense that West Coast geographer Carl O. Sauer assigned to the morphology of landscape in 1925 as conflation of “land and life,”1 this book is an attempt to represent a field that is simultaneously emergent and convergent, sometimes fleeting or gone afield during the past century. As a compilation, the book is undisciplined in its affiliation to any one single professional practice or academic program. Yet, for the most part, it emerges precisely out of a demand for new practices of urbanism, landscape, and ecology that transcend historic, jurisdictional systems or territorial states. Although the book is unscientific in its lack of a rational methodology, it is nevertheless anchored by a model of thought that is abductive, which privileges selective sampling and rapid reconnaissance from different fields, often borrowing broad-based 10

knowledge across geography, history, economy, industry and anthropology, for immediate or long-term purposes. Neither inductive nor deductive, yet essential to everyday design practice, abduction draws from many fields and appropriates many levels of knowledge, extensively and intensively, to formulate ideas and strategies based on uncertain conditions, indeterminate circumstances, and sometimes incomplete information. If designers, in contrast to scientists, can easily formulate conclusions and develop solutions based on hunches, imperfect scenarios, and incomplete information, it is simply because they revel in abductive thinking.2 Through rapid research and expedited reconnaissance, they can process and synthesize large bodies of information very, very quickly. To the extent of these important possibilities and with the acknowledgement of their limits, the book is actionable. The writings are committed to actionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;through implementation, influence, intervention, and engagementâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;on, and from the ground. Written from a Western, industrial, and highly developed world optic, the book takes position vis-Ă -vis the space and performance of conventional urban infrastructure where, thanks to the omnipresence of state and corporate systems (including cities as incorporations), it has become a given, and to a certain extent, naturalized to the point of being practically invisible. In turn, the book is equally informed by non-Western environments of suburbanization and highly influenced by ideologies of underdevelopment. The failure, suppression, or oppression of conventionally planned or engineered infrastructure is not only informative, but extremely generative Preface

and inspiring in its subtractive, reductive, counterfactual value.3 With practitioners, policy makers, students, and educators in mind, the book provides precedents and proposes antecedents to this discourse that requalify how we think about infrastructure and proposes alternative directions for aspiring urbanists. From the fields of ecology, engineering, planning, and landscape architecture, the strategies and positions proposed here avoid the overemphasis and over-reliance on over-engineering and over-design that has historically been—and to a certain extent, remains—based on a skewed sense of security and stability. Out of the current crisis of professional design disciplines to address the predominant challenges of the urban age—from shifting climates, resource economies, and population movements—emerges a field, and a school of thought that, in the words of urbanist William Sherman, recognizes the agency of risk, doubt, and flux: “With the shift to a dynamic conception of form and a new engagement of time-based processes, design has repercussions at many scales. No work can be conceived independently of the human and natural processes that form its context. The infrastructure that made possible the last half millennium of urbanization was conceived as a one-way system providing a predictable flow of resources in lieu of nature’s volatile processes. It derived the stability required for economic and cultural progress. This modern infrastructure implies dependence, though, 12

on a fragile premise; stability breeds reliance on increasingly vulnerable centralized authorities. The freedom to invent new form was thus predicated on a false sense of security.â&#x20AC;?4 Whether by design or un-design, the different positions offered in this book are contingent on three ontological critiques of disciplinary, institutional, and professional knowledge associated with fields concerned with the environment, engineering, and infrastructure: 1. Systems within Systems, States within States. We inhabit systems of systems, where multiple levels of complexity exist, coexist, converge, and collide. Those systems are always incomplete and imperfect, influenced and induced, never completely open nor completely closed. They are always mediated by one form of infrastructure or another, usually under the influence of various states and scales of control.5 2. Ecology is Urbanization, Urbanization is Ecology. Both as lens and language, model and medium, the environment of history (code for landscape of urbanization) is as important as the history of the environment that is often recounted through histories of science and of technology. As analytical aberration, one that does not conform to any one formal categorical discipline, the characterization of landscape as process of urbanization, and the urbanization of landscape as a field, resists disciplinary or territorial definition, and as such, is material, spatial, biophysical, political, technological, and temporal simultaneously.6

Preface

3. Live Ecology as Lived Experience. The living, temporal subject of landscape is an epistemological critique of the reductionist and technological focus of engineering and environment that is historically rooted in its mechanical and hydraulic origins. As design media, life is thus a scalar and spatial medium expressed through a multitude of different temporalities ranging from speeds, seasons, cycles, zones, growths, movements, migrations, mobilities, displacements, destructions, and disasters.7, 8 As forward-looking prepositions, these ontologies are further reinforced throughout the book with a series of practical and irreducible positions—prepositions—that the following essays, maps, and diagrams are based on. Laid out as introductory theorems, these ideological preconditions are retroactively modeled on two lesserknown manifestos that bear significance for the field of landscape, namely William J.T. Mitchell's “Nine Theses on Landscape”9 (1994) and André Gorz's “Seven Theses on Ecology.”10 In his Écologie et Politique (1975), the philosophical journalist and writer Gorz formed his thinking during an era of social revolution in terms of capital, consumption, production, poverty, state, society, and life. To do this, Gorz proposed ecology, less as a scientific discipline, or state-driven area of study (terrestrial or conservation ecology) that requires constrainment, and more as a political and spatial strategy—a body ecologic—that could be deployed as expression of freedom, liberty, and multiplicity. Formulated as preconditions to the individual essays, the ten positions that are distributed 14

across the book thus aspire to a level of actionability and cultural relevance in the context of the current turbulent period of climate change, population dynamics, and resource flows. To this end, these positions may appear to the reader as sliding uncomfortably and paradoxically between intensive and extensive11 models of landscape thought and infrastructural inquiry at early stages. As an attempt, the emergent positions proposed here remain nevertheless operative for study and practice in the converging fields of urbanism, landscape, and ecology.

1. See Carl O. Sauer, “The Morphology of Landscape (1925)” in Land and Life: A Selection from the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer, ed. John Leighly (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1963): 315–349. 2. Abductive thinking is a model of thought and way of working that privileges a basis for drawing conclusions based on incomplete, imprecise, and sometimes absent information, drawing knowledge and methods from many schools of thought, sources, stories, and media through ideas, inferences, or hypotheses that often seem counterfactual, counterintuitive, and contradictory. Applicable to and assumed as part of the process of design, abduction is most often used in complex, parametric thinking, where linear relationships seldomly exist and where simple strategies are sought. In the field of logic, the process of abduction was formulated by American logician Charles S. Peirce, recognized “as one of the most profound and original philosophers that America has produced.” See John Wiener and Charles S. Peirce, Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance) (New York, NY: Dover, 1958/1966). See also Charles S. Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” Popular Science Monthly 12 (January 1878): 286–302. 3. Here, the confluence of the “landscape and infrastructure” parallels that of “environment and infrastructure,” as profiled in Emmanuel Kreike's Environmental Infrastructure in African History (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013), where the absence of technological systems and weaker (or less pronounced) legacies of civil engineering traditions expose a deep-founded legacy of environmental processes, plant practices, and living systems as societal infrastructures; leading to cultural growth and economic wealth beyond environmental dependencies and subsistence levels of living. 4. William Sherman, “Fields in Flux,” in Site Matters: Design Concepts Histories, and Strategies ed. Carol J. Burns and Andrea Kahn (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005): 311–314. 5. Ludwig von Bertalanffy, “The History and Status of General Systems Theory,” in Trends in General Systems Theory, ed. George J. Klir (New York, NY: Wiley Interscience Press, 1972): 21–41. 6. Peder Anker, “Environmental History versus History of Science,” Anthropology 31 (2002): 309–322. 7. Rosalind Williams, Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). 8. Russell King, “Theories and Typologies of Migration: An Overview and a Primer,” in Willy Brandt Series of Working Papers in International Migration and Ethnic Relations ed. Björn Fryklund and Erica Righard (Malmö, SWE: Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare, 2012). 9. See W.J.T. Mitchell, “Imperial Landscape” in Landscape and Power (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994): 5–34. 10. André Gorz, Écologie et Politique (Paris, FR: Éditions Galilée, 1975). 11. Models of intensive (intense, concentrated, deep) and extensive (large in extent, far-reaching range, wide) thought and characterization originate both from the philosophy of sciences (thermodynamic properties, for example) and from the science of philosophy. The comparison between these two critical terms is best understood in the French explanation of “intensité” (intense, intensity, intensities) and “étendue” (extended, extension, extents) in Chapters 4 and 5 of Gilles Deleuze's Difference and Repetition trans. Paul Patton (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994): 168-261. Preface

Prepositions.

Moving beyond the borrowed, aristocratic histories of the profession of landscape architecture from the Old World and its surrogate, intellectual affiliations with the discipline of architecture, the projective strategy of landscape infrastructure harnesses urbanization as the predominant process in contemporary spatial culture. It overcomes a century-old reliance on correcting, remediating, or fixing the centralized conditions of nineteenth century urban form, inherited by the industrial metropolis. Informed by the mother of all design disciplines and the ghost writer of urban infrastructure that is civil engineering, the disciplinary dissolution proposed here—across landscape architecture, urban planning, and civil engineering—borrows innovations from four foundational schools of thought: of ecology, engineering, mapping, and urbanism.1 Considered together—either from the east or west coasts of North America, in Central Europe or South Asia—these schools of thought represent important intellectual and disciplinary camps that still exist in widely divergent, oddly oppositional ideologies, most often perpetuated by the hegemony of architecture on the urban subject, of engineering on the technological subject, and of hard sciences on the scientific subject. Through a deeper understanding of the practical and ontological value of the concepts of process and flow over ideologies of form and function in the post–McHargian era, the review and rewriting of urban histories through open systems—within the Western industrial world and beyond—is paramount to the emergent and unfinished project of landscape in the twenty-first century. 18

Conceived in a near-reverse chronology, the writings compiled here are the result of several important influences and impulses. Born from a crisis and critique of disciplinary thinking, these texts present a counter-position to any single professional discipline and may, as a result, appear to be disorganized, or disorderly. Starting from a comparative North American perspective, the writings juxtapose conditions and dynamics in and out of the industrialized West where legacies of civil engineering are present to different extents. These comparisons outline a series of scales, strategies, and systems for understanding and shaping knowledge of urbanization through contemporary patterns, processes, and precedents. Precipitated by a near absence of ecologic knowledge and geographic thought in the North American design disciplines, the impulse to collect these writings stems from the need to span disciplinary divides through a series of spatially grounded and ontologically practical thoughts. To accomplish this, the writings operate longitudinally, across large bodies of knowledge, through a range of subjects and fields, often across long periods of time, through a series of prepositions, processes, and projections. Through the mixing of methodologies, disciplinary specialists and professional scholars will find the writings undisciplined and unscientific, yet interconnected through abductive thinking.

Prepositioning: Influences and Intentions Created across almost a decade, the texts were performed under the unknowing influence of several pedagogues and practitioners. Informed by early, dĂŠbut de siĂ¨cle work on the urbanization of the underground and other urban externalities,2 they were initiated under the direct mentorship of an engineer during early stages of incubation and later, toward its end, by proxy, under the indirect guidance of a geographer. Throughout different stages of development, the writings were also influenced by several important turn-ofthe-century ecologists and urbanists from different schools of thought and programs of design. During this period of gestation, the writings led to the organization of and were influenced by the outcomes of two key conferences that explored the infrastructural subject. Both conferences were experimental, searching for a review of infrastructure as multifaceted space, a critical interface with the contemporary challenges of shifting climates, population migrations, material resources, and biophysical systems. The first conference, held in 2009 at the University of Toronto Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, explored the strategic influence of a growing body of ecological knowledge to unearth a series of contemporary practices, paradigms, and technologies that are reshaping the contemporary urban landscape. This first conference was the unsolicited extension of an important discourse already initiated more than a decade earlier in a special issue of Places Journal in Prepositions

1996, edited by Gary L. Strang. Themed Infrastructure as Landscape; Landscape as Infrastructure, the issue was far ahead of its time, featuring essays by prominent thinkers such as Elizabeth Meyer, Robert Wright, Reed Kroloff, and Bill Morrish. To a certain extent, the 1996 issue required a period of intellectual incubation, if not the urgency of a cultural and government crisis (such as Hurricane Katrina or Sandy, or the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf, all occurred afterward) to bring the infrastructural subject into such clear, critical, and pressing focus as it is today. The second conference, held at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2012, reexamined the infrastructural subject as multidisciplinary design practice through the invitation of ecologists, engineers, historians, geographers, and architects. Through the polyvalent subject of infrastructure, these conferences brought together a wide range of knowledge from the natural sciences (biologists, ecologists, hydrologists, and geologists), applied sciences (civil and environmental engineers), the arts (historians, economists, and geographers), and designers (landscape architects, planners, and urban designers). Demonstrating the subliminal nature of infrastructure as media, these conferences elucidated the relevance of innumerable practitioners as part of urban discourse. Through the influence of these collaborations and conferences, the widening of the infrastructure subject exposed the following three critical imperatives: 1. Urbanize the histories and geographies of the landscape field. 2. Expose and upscale the biophysical complexities of urban processes. 3. Project and extend urban ecologies as performative infrastructures. As propositions, these imperatives underscore the role of landscape architects as directors of these multilateral efforts. As projects, these imperatives also move beyond the typical, singular authorship and authority of any exclusive discipline, yet are reliant on the initiative and urgency of prevailing attitudes cultivated in contemporary practices that lie at the intersection of urbanism, landscape, and ecology. As agents working on multiple levels of complexity and as interlocutors of overlapping or conflicting constituencies, landscape urbanists (including architects, ecologists, engineers, planners) are finding new positions to propose the formulation of design through strategy that is contingent (and sometimes counterintuitive), preemptive and responsive, economic and ecologic, as well as systemic and projective.

Processing: Media and Methods Like a geophotographic essay,3 the writings presented here are coupled with original drawings and diagrams from design competitions and field research, as well as with historic images from archival sources. These representational combinations suggest more than a mere background or backdrop to the writ20

ings; they operate as spatial evidence, surpassing the subsidiary or auxiliary function of illustrations in scientific journals. The graphic content intends to be geo-graphic, and to render the context of the field figural. As both operators and interpreters, these images play a part in establishing a spatial discourse that dissolves differences between the textual and the visual, the analytical and the descriptive, as well as the historic and the territorial. Avoiding scientific or artistic extremes with alternative latitudes, this dual representational ambition thus proposes the reading of the compilation as a series of long captions, expressing positions between design and research, between the inductive and the deductive, sliding across the synchronic and the diachronic, between the practical and pedagogical. Since theories are for the blind, and are naturally imperfect as modes of representationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;often carrying the burden of blind spots or knowledge holesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the language of this compilation is purposely kept practical and pragmatic, while maintaining a commitment to graphic, diagrammatic, and spatial tones throughout for ease of understanding and simple applicability. Organized nearly chronologically, the contents of the compilation can thus be read in two ways: as an appraisal, mapping a road through descriptive beginnings and prepositions as seen in the first set of texts, or as a proposal, referencing the final set of texts as projective formulations. In between these prepositions and projections are a series of processes that are investigated and explored to thread multiple lineages, provide multiple interpretations, and create several affiliations across distinct, design disciplines. The compilation also speaks to the influence of large-scale, macro-organizations and institutions to communicate their micro-effects on the ground. In turn, the content explores the potential for micro-strategies to carry macro-effects moving forward into the future. Through current and historic examples, as well as visual timelines and diagrams, the intentional dumbness of the graphic vocabulary of the compilation focuses on interconnections between previously disconnected ideas, disciplines, and practices. Distributed among the main body of writings, imaging of the contents also takes on a dual role. In order to bridge textual gaps, the images spatialize information, situating it geographically, ecologically, and historically. Here, maps work as graphic footnotes, images as illustrative evidence, and diagrams as spatial charts. As a result, the strategies are presented less as a definitive solution to a specific problĂŠmatique but rather as a concentration of ideas that dissolves the divisions raised by the professionalization of practice and its unintended feeder mechanism, the disciplinary industrialization of academia.

Prepositions

Projecting: Structure and Sequence Both proposal and appraisal, the context of the position locates itself at the turn of the new millennium, where disintegrating industrial structures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are collapsing under the weight of emerging urban economies of the twenty-first. Mapped out, this momentous shift is sponsoring unprecedented spatial diffusions and social concentrations, thanks to the rise of the space automobility and auto-communications weakening governance and eroding state power. Challenging the overexertion of engineering and elucidating the inertia of urban planning, the pace of decentralization is loosening the grip of centralized infrastructure and redrawing the contours and complexities of contemporary urban life. Reaching across disciplinary divides, the writings are organized to span across multiple horizons, between disconnected bodies of knowledge and different professional practices, rooted in their own constituencies. As illustrated in the book's prologue, nine different positions are taken to contest nine models of thought and processes of knowledge engineering: catastrophic environmentalism, Keynesian growth, Taylorist management, Euclidean zoning, state centralization, technological mechanization, modern utilitarianism, city-centrism, and Fordist accumulation. To this end, the first text, “A Landscape Manifesto,” spans an important gap in landscape history that has overlooked the role of engineers, large-scale technological structures, and the professional engineering disciplines as an outgrowth of military and mechanical engineering histories. Exposing and underscoring the central role of civil engineers in the conception of modern infrastructural systems that underlie and shape or conceive the built environment, this initial text raises the immediate question of the role of biophysical systems—from swamps to seas—in contemporary economies, themselves extricated or ablated by civil engineering and scientific management practices. Addressing the problematization of the urban condition by engineers and environmentalists alike, the second text spans a major gap in systems thinking which has affected perception of urban conditions, from the developed world to the developing world. “Systems of Systems” demystifies the critical, oppositional nature of closed-system dynamics versus open-systems ecologies, which has come to light near the end of the twentieth century, out of the Cold War, and surged in catastrophic environmentalism during the interwar period and several milestone environmental conferences in the 1970s. Together, this first set of texts span an important and preliminary gap in knowledge to characterize urbanization as landscape, and reciprocally, land22

scape as urbanization. By priming the urban subject, these ideological prepositions then make way for a series of three subsequent texts that chart different processes and patterns of infrastructure as landscape. The first begins with “Redefining Infrastructure,” a text that indexes patterns and processes of urban change which occurred in the United States, from crisis and conflict, in relation to the birth of urban infrastructure and unprecedented urban agglomerations. By first outlining the precepts and principles of infrastructure at the onslaught of the twentieth century, the spatial and technocratic transition that occurred in the industrial metropolis of North America is described counterintuitively from a series of conflicts and crises. The premise here is that the twentieth century was not designed nor planned; it was engineered. It was a period of heightened urban need where fresh water sources required separation from waste effluents; where energy resources were required and inventoried to achieve economies of scale, as well as to light up the extended work day; where highways had to be constructed to short circuit the distance between farm and market, with the rise of logistical cold chains, amidst increasing patterns of daily mobility. As preeminent planners, civil engineers were the chief architects in recognizing the basic utilities and practical services required by urban concentrations, from New York and Boston, Chicago to Los Angeles. Usurping ideologies of form, this preliminary groundwork establishes an understanding of urbanization through a series of basic, irreducible flows—waste and water, fuel and food, mobility and energy—with the attendant regions that would underlie modern urban life beyond the twentieth century. As this structural change took place, from the regulation of form to that of flow, so did land use patterns. Through Euclidean methods of planning that originated in northeastern America, premised on the legal separation of incompatible land uses and the use-value engineering of land resources, the techniques of civil engineering literally bulldozed the ground, partitioned and altered hydrologic regimes, making mud of preexisting conditions. From this tabula rasa follows “Synthetic Surfaces,” a text that provides a lens on the revolution in transportation systems and forms of mobility through the auspices of speed and safety as well as materialities of asphalt and concrete. As systems, these surfaces formed the overlooked backbone of urban spatial patterns. Roads and rails, airports and seaports not only generated distinctive vectors of movement but also contributed to unprecedented intermodal ecologies and networks of mobility. Yet, for its onward march toward progress and apparent seamlessness, the modern separation of land uses and the axial focus of roadways created new and not uncontested surface conditions. They cut across large swaths of preexisting grounds and indivisible systems, resulting in friction and fragmentation, both of which were generative and Prepositions

destructive. These infrastructures of mobility also required the integration and synthesis of logistical landscapes and process infrastructures: resource mines and resource extraction, product manufacturing and processing facilities, fuel supplies and distribution networks, storage zones and warehousing capabilities, intermodal ports and dredging operations. This contemporary ecology of flows aims to substantiate an underlying claim that “Landscape” operates “as Infrastructure,” in reference to the indivisible systems of biotic resources, agents, and services that support economies. By tracking the patterns of industrialization across the cities, ports, and waters of the Great Lakes during the past two centuries, hydrologic changes during past three centuries provide a registration of regional contexts of urbanization. Here, regions cut across other regions, to form new territories. All these urban and structural changes were serviced by inflows (energy resources, markets, materials, personnel, operators, workflows, and schedules), but they also produced unintended outflows (discharges, emissions, effluents, and inequities) and other occupational hazards by the nature of the industrial economies that made them possible. As externalities, these pollutants today are urbanism’s waste—commodities without markets, capitalism's excreta. From this waste of urbanization emerges a set of new exchanges based on processes of recuperation and reclamation of those pollutants, premised on backflows and reflows of waste. In lieu of linear, fixed, and closed systems of industrial systems, new circular economies and systemic interconnections generate and yield contemporary waste ecologies—the metaphorical linkages, practical interconnections, and spatial interdependencies between anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic systems of waste—exemplified through residual solid wastes, liquid effluents, and gaseous emissions. Through the recalibration of urban flows across this “Metabolic Landscape,” the reclamation of waste materials, waste fluids, and waste lands as urban resources can radically reorganize spatial patterns by short-circuiting the distance between ecological networks and economic systems through material flows. This contraction of the urban field yields a set of unprecedented ecological formations—protoecologies—that are best described and formulated with the infrastructural design of historic externalities of waste, water, and energy as part of the urban project. Thus, in this recursive environment, the assembly line that once made possible the economies of scale of industrial production extends and curves back onto itself to form new connections, circuitries, and spheres of productivity. At an urban scale, this vast ecology of circulation and subtraction rises from the current dismantling of the industrial metropolis and out of the exhaus24

tion of economies of scale, demonstrating that the economic positivism of production alone no longer holds as the exclusive driver of growth or power of regions. Speed and scale are now being supplanted by the double notions of synchronicity and synergy made possible through the sequencing of material flows, brownfields, services, and geographies, by design. “Ecologies of Disassembly” thus sets out to capture the limited lifespan of postwar infrastructures in the Rust Belt of the US, to draw important comparisons with systems of deindustrialization, disurbanization, and disassembly of urban morphologies in other ‘Rust Belts’ and other ‘Detroits’ across the world, in Asia (Kitakyushu), Europe (Kalundborg), and Africa (Lagos). Cutting across the European discourse on territory and territorialization, a plea against the cultures of containment, interiorization, and enclosure, regionalist planner Ian McHarg (UPenn School of Design, 1961–1985)4 and landscape ecologist Richard T. T. Forman (Harvard Graduate School of Design, 1984–2013)5 have both redefined urban territories with a hydrologic optic that has helped us move beyond the footprint of cities. Both have enlisted watershed regions as new units of development while avoiding classic forms of environmental determinism, hydrologic fetishism, or scientific positivism. This claim positions the practice of landscape infrastructure and landscape urbanism as fundamentally distinct from architecture and environmental design, not subsidiary, whose coming of age during the past century in North America is important to distinguish from European landscape architecture practice more generally focused on spaces of consumption and conservation—such as gardens, plazas, waterfronts, preservation areas—at the expense of the spaces of production and processing, of extraction and exchange, including the logistical infrastructures that interconnect them. Providing evidence of the significance of spaces of production and distribution, the concept of the “Foodshed” is further explored. As a profile of the spaces of production that support urban economies, this case study provides a basis for mapping the landscape of agricultural production, cultivation, and distribution as intrinsic zones of urbanization. Exploring the global infrastructure of the Ontario Food Terminal, territory and technology are brought together through a cross-section of the systems of market and trade, labor and legislation, food and fodder, transport and technique required to better understand how great cities are fed. This “Regionalization” of urban conditions provides an operative optic in one of the final texts, a methodological instrument for redrawing patterns of urbanization through the formation of multiple regions beyond the footprint of cities themselves, even as they jump across hydrologic and political boundaries as they most often do. They open a horizon to better perceive these ecoPrepositions

logical and economic confluences, as well as the forces and flows of urban externalities, as untapped material economies. Stemming from this synthetic outlook, a final proposition is made with the conflation of “Infrastructural Ecologies.” As a critique of technocratic, monocular thinking, this final text proposes a strategy for moving beyond engineering's static understanding of urbanism and catastrophic perception of the environment. It is a push beyond civil engineering and land use planning as drivers of urban form, via the design of “infrastructural ecologies” as denominators of new urban flows through contemporary crossovers of infrastructure with complex, dynamic ecological systems. By circumventing usevalue attributions to land that were perpetuated by transportation planning and efficient optimization by civil engineering, this push away from the form of cities to the flows of urban economies focuses attention on overlapping, competing ecological complexities, land economies, and social cultures. The interconnectivity and expansiveness of a landscape of living, biotic systems is no longer negligible nor avoidable. Requiring us to move beyond Fordist forms of engineering and Taylorist modes of planning and scientific management, the engagement of inherent ecological forces and flows through the design of spatial patterns and processes—the landscape infrastructures of urban economies—has now become a pressing imperative.

1. For example, a few of these schools could include (but are not limited to) the “School of Mapping” at the University of Pennsylvania (James Corner, Ann Whiston Spirn, Anuradha Mathur, Ian McHarg) or the University of California (Carl Sauer at University of California-Berkeley, and Denis Cosgrove at University of California-Los Angeles), the “School of Urbanism” at the University of Toronto (George Baird, Charles Waldheim), Columbia University (Kenneth Frampton, Keller Easterling), Rice University (Lars Lerup, Sanford Kwinter), or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Kevin Lynch, William Mitchell), the “School of Engineering” at Delft University of Technology (Cornelis Lely, Gerard Philips, and Dirk Sijmons), and the “School of Ecology” at the University of Wageningen (Adriaan Geuze, Jusuck Koh), or the University of Florida (Howard T. Odum). 2. See Pierre Bélanger, “Underground Landscape: Stratigraphy of Downtown Toronto’s Pedestrian Network,” Tunneling and Underground Space Technology Vol.22 No.3 (April 2007): 272–292; “Foodshed: the Global Infrastructure of the Ontario Food Terminal,” in Food, ed. John Knechtel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007): 208–239; “Airspace: The Economies & Ecologies of Landfilling in Michigan,” in Trash, ed. John Knechtel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006): 132–135. 3. The format of this book is heavily influenced by the work of Herbert Bayer's World Geo-Graphic Atlas: A Composite of Man’s Environment (Chicago, IL: Container Corporation of America, 1953). 4. See Ian McHarg, Design with Nature (New York, NY: The Natural History Press, 1969). 5. See Richard T.T. Forman and Michel Godron, Landscape Ecology (New York, NY: Wiley, 1986). 26

Prepositions

Preposition 1

The emergence of ecology and the resurgence of geography in late twentieth century North America is advancing the social and political agency of landscape architecture. 28

From a North American vantage, the re-representation of landscape—its histories, techniques, and ecologies—is reshaping urban discourse by moving beyond aesthetic inclinations and closer to strategic, operative objectives.* With the exhaustion of the environmental lobby, the field of landscape is growing and contributing to the emergence of ecology and revival of geography.

Marsh Mars h & Dozier, Dozier Dozi er 1981

*James Corner, “Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes,” in Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1981). Marsh and Dozier were former students of Carl O. Sauer at the UC Berkeley School of Geography, and Corner was highly influenced by Californian geographer Denis Cosgrove at UCLA. Prepositions

Preposition 2

The fundamental problem with urbanization is that we consider it a problem.

Beyond the problematization of contemporary urbanism inherited from Western sociological thought since the 1960s regarding the definition of growth and the urban question,* urbanization is best understood as a disaggregated system of systems, flows with multiple leaks. It is a telescopic (multiscalar) and stratified (multilayered) process of complex patterns that are simultaneously constructed, biophysically contingent, and cultural. As a spectrum, patterns of urbanization illustrate the dynamics of disaggregation and agglomeration through a range of spatial processes, from dis-urbanization to super-urbanization to sub-urbanization.

*Manuel Castells, La Question Urbaine–Textes à l'Appui (Paris, FR: François Maspero, 1972), and Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth (New York, NY: Universe Books, 1972). Prepositions

Preposition 3

Global, taylorist forms of engineering and euclidean planning practices cannot exclusively address pressing urban challenges of changing climates, resource economies, and population mobility. 32

Notwithstanding the scale of their influence, civil engineering and urban planning have respectively formed the functional architectures and regulatory frameworks that underlie the legislative governance and physical institution of cities today.* Yet, over time, the universal and metropolitan implementation of regulatory controls as well as standards of efficiency have gradually contributed to the rigid, inflexible, and detached nature of cities from greater urban ecologies, resource regions, climate dynamics, and noninstitutional cultures.

*Edwin Layton Jr., “Measuring the Unmeasurable: Scientific Management and Reform,” in The Revolt of Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986): 134–153, and Rosalind Williams, Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 31. Prepositions

Preposition 4

Decentralization is one of the greatest structural forces reshaping patterns of urbanization.

Moving beyond sector theory, the exchange of resources, materials, and information drives patterns and processes of urbanization through various patterns of exchange. As both accelerant and decelerant, urbanization modifies and programs urban surfaces to accommodate greater or lesser modes of mobility and formats of exchanges. Different speeds, cycles, systems, and codifications at one end, and infrastructures of mobility at the other, will contribute to these exchanges, all while shaping urban movements at different scales and territorial distributions.*

*Norman Furniss, “The Practical Significance of Decentralization,” The Journal of Politics 36 No.4 (November 1974): 958–982, H.G. Wells, “The Probable Diffusion of Great Cities,” in Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (London, UK: Chapman & Hall, 1902): 14–26, and Richard Peiser, “Density and Urban Sprawl,” in Land Economics 6 No.5 (1989): 193–204. Prepositions

Preposition 5

Reversibility of ecological externalities and the recirculation of wastes can reform industrial economies, diversify markets, and extend material cycles.

The coupling of different flows and calibration of different processes of production bears the potential for transforming linear, monofunctional structures into circular, polyfunctional infrastructures.* The temporal pace and spatial synchronization of material processes from inputs and outflows is therefore paramount. Thus, if hard industrial structures, including their effluents and emissions, can be understood as part of urban infrastructure, then the design of softer, leaner ecological systems can reform, protect, and drive contemporary spatial morphologies and generate new regional economies.

*David Harvey, “From Fordism to Flexible Accumulation,” in The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1989): 141–172, and Henry Ford, “Learning from Waste” in Today and Tomorrow (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1926): 89–98. Prepositions

Preposition 6

Landscape infrastructure is a live index and indeterminate interface of hard technological systems and soft biophysical processes by design.

When viewed as landscape—that is, as a horizontal field of systems and scales—infrastructure is both an index and interface* that involve constructed technological systems (hardware) and designed biophysical systems (software). Either institutionally-driven or individuallygenerated, these alternative infrastructures produce different processes and patterns that are either digital or physical, automated or mechanical, live or lived.

*Paul Edwards, “Infrastructure and Modernity: Force, Time and Social Organization in the History of Sociotechnical Systems,” in Modernity and Technology, ed. Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey, and Andrew Feenberg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 185–226, and Rosalind Williams, “Cultural Origins and Environmental Implications of Large Technological Systems,” Science in Context 6 (1993): 377–403. Prepositions

Preposition 7

Time is an unseen territory of design and vital zone of intervention where different processes and projections converge, coincide, and collide.

The delineation of time exposes a complex stratification of temporal processes that can be sequenced and synchronized to form new, and more complex ecologies. As organizational device, time carries power to not only shape patterns of growth and processes of movement, but it can redefine conventions of site and property by opening new scales and systems of intervention leaving room for emergence, growth, propagation, movement, indeterminacy, uncertainty and risk.*

*Claude Raffestin, “Space, Territory, and Territoriality,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30 (2012): 121–141, Stuart Kauffman and Philip Clayton, “On Emergence, Agency, and Organization,” Biology and Philosophy 21 (2006): 501–521 . Prepositions

Preposition 8

Urbanization is a synthetic ecology of different flows, materials, and processes, extensive and intensive, combining waste and water, fuel and food, mobility and power. 42

As an open and porous system of exogenous and endogenous processes, urbanization can be expressed through multiple ecologies and different flows,* materials, and vectors made of counterintuitive and often contradictory couplings of waste (residuals and detritus), water (fluids and hydrologies), energy (fuel and power), food (biota and habitats), and mobility (speed, transportation, communications). Shit, urbanization’s excreta, is its most potent example.

*Abel Wolman, “The Metabolism of Cities,” Scientific American 213 No.3 (1965): 178–193, and Henri Lefebvre, La Production de l'espace (Paris, FR: Éditions Anthropos, 1974/1984): 46. Prepositions

Preposition 9

The physical, material, fluid, and energetic extents of urbanization lie far beyond the footprint of cities.

When factoring resource regions, biodynamic flows, and geopolitical powers, the regional remapping of urban economies exposes the complexity of urban ecologies, infrastructural systems, dynamic processes, and social geographies.* This deterritorialized landscape opens the extents of urbanization beyond the footprints and gray zones of cities, across different regions and extents, reaching different altitudes and atmospheres.

*Howard W. Odum and Harry Estill Moore, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Rise and Incidence of American Regionalism,â&#x20AC;? in American Regionalism: A Cultural-Historical Approach to National Integration (New York, NY: Henry Holt & Company, 1938), and Benton MacKaye, The New Exploration: A Philosophy of Regional Planning (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1928). Prepositions

Preposition 10

Ecologies of scale are the new postindustrial economies for the weak world of future.

Overturning the industrial economies of scale that have characterized the past two centuries, the design of infrastructural ecologies will radically transform the historic approach to infrastructure engineering, land use planning, and regulatory zoning. Moving beyond the economic valuation of production and the utility of land use, the categorization of urban land (residential, commercial, industrial, and institutional) can be designed for greater flexibilities, overlaps, interconnections, synergies, zones of cultivation, and areas of exchanges that privilege ecological systems* as the new, primary economic services of the twenty-first century.

*David C. Schneider, “The Rise of the Concept of Scale in Ecology,” BioScience 51 No.7 (July 2001): 545–553, John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967): 90–91, Teresa Brennan, Exhausting Modernity: Grounds for a New Economy (London, UK: Routledge, 2000). Prepositions

“Engineering the landscape—like any act of engineering—is a process that both reflects and defines human values and relationships. What human values and relationships are represented in the cultural landscape of the late twentieth century, especially in the dominance of pathways over settlements? […] The concept of connective systems is primarily phenomenological rather than sociological. […] These constructions are tangible structures existing in geographical space, and their components are related primarily in physical rather than in social terms. When engineering involves the creation of such structures, it looks more like a ‘mirror twin’ of landscape architecture and urban planning than of science.” Rosalind Williams, “Cultural Origins and Environmental Implications of Large Technological Systems,” 1993.

A Landscape Manifesto.

As the invisible background and mud of modern life,1 infrastructure has often been perceived through the pervasiveness of roads and highways, the remoteness of power plants and landfills, phone lines overhead and sewers below ground. Yet, for all the monumentality of these projects and their positivistic undertones, this drive-by understanding gives us only a small glimpse of what it actually takes to support urban life. We spend very little time thinking about where our water comes from, or how our power is produced, where our food is grown, how far it travels, and how it gets there, or even where our shit goes. Infrastructure does not exist in a disciplinary vacuum nor does it remain separate from its surroundings. Infrastructure is not asocial nor is it apolitical. It divides as much as it connects. It is fragmented while remaining continuous. Nor is infrastructure neutral. It excludes as much as it integrates. It is open with outlets and exits, but simultaneously closed by caps and controls. It produces externalities, has unplanned effects, and is affected by forces beyond its boundaries. As subliminal media, infrastructure generates vectors of movements and produces axes of transmission, but can also produce zones of occupation. So large and so vast it may be that infrastructure may be imperceptible to the naked eye but its effects—from connection to segregation to apartheid—are usually prevalent and visible, intended or not. A twentiethcentury outcome of large-scale technological systems, infrastructure is therefore not divorced of social systems, nor independent of natural environments. More than just steel, cement, and asphalt, infrastructure therefore forms distinctively complex, urban ecologies, a vast and immense landscape of biophysical and geospatial systems, an expansive field of resources, services, and agents that together support the landscape of contemporary economies. From Engineering to Design Yet, the preeminence of civil engineers in city building during the past century—engineers as master planners—has largely gone unnoticed by the cult of architects and clique of urban designers alike. Often perceived as technocrats or tinkerers instead of as designers or business leaders, the ascent of civil engineers has remained peripheral to the urban design discourse of the West, from its early origins as the military planners of the nineteenth century to the master builders of the twentieth century. As the president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers captured this coming-of-age and unique, ideological tale of becoming, in 1911: “Engineering is the profession of the present, and will dominate the future.”2

In fact, not only are they more important, but they also vastly outnumber the design professions by more than 5 to 1.3 How these so-called ‘backyard scientists’ have attained such prominent status in the past century with very little notice or mention is perplexing. In fact, how engineers rule the world is both awesome and astonishing.4,5 Whereas other urban disciplines either recoiled from the complexity of large-scale urbanization or devolved it into legislative jurisprudence, civil engineering has reveled in it, to what historian Edwin Layton refers to as “the engineering epoch.”6,7 American president, and the only engineer (a mining engineer) to hold office in the White House, Herbert Hoover captured the dawn of the engineering era in 1923: “Through the nature of their training, and used to precise and efficient thought; through the nature of their calling, standing midway in the conflicts between capital and labor; and above all, being in their collective sense independent of any economic or political interest, they comprise a force in the community absolutely unique in the solution of many national problems.”8 The silent majority of engineers and construction managers today have not only embraced bigness and complexity, but have also innovated and multiplied the complexities and challenges of the geographic proportions that urbanization offers.9,10 Because the twentieth century simply could not be encapsulated by a single architecture or a single policy as was proposed during the megastructures movement of the 1960s or the environmental movement of the 1970s, civil engineering embraced this complexity by breaking it down into different ontologies and architectures: constituent parts and processes, with new measures and manuals, new tests and trials, with advanced standards and specs, inventing a multitude of sub-disciplines through hyperspecialization.11 Through audacious achievements, the unfettered ambition of civil engineers is best captured in the form of actions and verbs: the action of “building” for example, takes on the dimension of “process” instead of “object,” construction as an innovation instead of administration, without sacrificing nor fetishizing the end product.12 While urban designers were retreating from the failure of their foray into bigger ambitions in between the 1960s and 1980s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), for example—the largest, most emblematic agency of civil engineering in the world—was already hard at work for more than a century, not theorizing, but rather building their ambitions: harbors and canals at home, military bases, and highways abroad, as well as power corridors and power plants, road and sewer systems across naSystems of Systems

infrastructure—technology—engineering—strength—stability—security—precision—protection—

—permanence—public works—federalism—nationalism—state—economy—growth—development

Systems of Systems

tions, while remaining on standby to provide essential support services and reconstruction efforts at times of national disasters in the US.13 Edified by the “Annual Top Ten Public Works” by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and scholars alike,14 a timeline of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reveals an overwhelming success. As outgrowth from military origins,15 it has succeeded by virtue of a simple attitude: responding swiftly to spatial and environmental complexities with readily deployable techniques in the face of security threats, disasters, or catastrophes. Like the Boy Scouts or Brownies, engineers have secured a position in society that is not only based on common sense or on the foundations of technology as some believe, but that hinges on an entire chain of ideals, impulses, and inclinations. Together, they form an unbreakable bond of beliefs that transcend public consciousness across a wide societal spectrum: infrastructure—technology—engineering—strength— stability—security—precision—protection—permanence—public works—federalism—identity—nationalism—state— economy—growth—development The patriotic positivism quietly practiced by these technological brokers sharply contrasts the aesthetic affiliations and individualistic ideologies perpetuated and preached by architects. Rather than relying on any single theory or ideology, engineers simply rely on a motto:

Essayons! This historic refrain—simply translated as “Bring It On!” or “Let Us Try!”16— captures, much like its logo, both its capacities and ambitions: ready, able, global. But below the disguise of banality and the undertone of dumbness of infrastructure, the audacity of engineers reveals deep, spatial tendencies. With most of it buried underground or submerged underwater, their work lends an appearance of performance through virtual and assumed utility, in comparison to the more formal, megalomaniac attitude of architects and urban designers.17 As the invisible frames of anonymous architectures, the products of these so-called functionalists are analogous to facade-less buildings. Voids, without shells. Housings, without envelopes. Interiors, freed from their exteriors. Here, the context can be constructed, content can be anything, as engineers subliminally imply: Fuck form. Everything is fluid.18 For the engineers, it is as if the modern, hegemonic idea of space practically means nothing, but rather that speed and pace—through movements, velocities, rates, and fluidities—mean everything. In the banality of this fluid landscape lies 54

their anonymity and their dominance.19 Put simply, form does not just follow function; form follows flow.20 Under the trademark banner of the USACE, Building Strongâ&#x201E;˘, and the authoritative stature of the ASCE, civil engineers have garnered a level of notoriety where infrastructure investment has become the unquestioned path to economic recovery and growth.21 Together, through federal leadership, government investment, and best practices, civil engineers have mounted an unshakable case for new infrastructure across the United States, of an order of magnitude of 2.2 trillion dollars over the next five years.22 Who really can contest the simple corollary: infrastructure = economy?

This paradox of pervasive influence and invisible power is perplexing: the discipline of engineering has yet to ever produce a single manifesto. 23

So, do engineers operate in a world without theory?24 Their work, their language, and their education are all determined by standards, specifications, and systems, as well as by methods, models, and measures. They relish in the isolation of variables and exclusion of social dynamics to reduce complexities down to verifiable quantities, certainties, and solutions. Their work sits on a razorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s edge of precision and a thin hairline of probability in order to produce exactitudes from indeterminacies. As an outgrowth from this culture of optimization, it is assumed that, at its best, infrastructure is a public benefit and, at the very least, an economic necessity. After all, who could argue with the delivery of your tap water, the supply of your electricity, or the removal of your garbage from the curb? Counterintuitively, is it possible that one of the greatest strengths of civil engineering is that it has remained relatively mute in the face of urban sprawl? Their relative silence stands in stark contrast to the incessant of academic architects and unending indictment by the coalition of armchair lawyers and economists that have hijacked the planning profession.25 Instead, engineers simply march on, applying Fordist economies of scale from the industrial era, across cities, continents, even oceans. Although these tendencies and inclinations may seem less aesthetic, their motivations are definitely geographic. Sponsoring the onward march of urban decentralization, they have uncritically orchestrated large-scale and expansive infrastructures, aided and abetted by a 1960s culture of automobility and expeditionary logistics. Using highways and roads as horizontal elevators, they are the stationary

Systems of Systems

Networks as Closed Systems (Baran, 1962)

Form and Function to Flows and Fluidities

Historic comparison of models of spatial and ecological organization illustrate the difference between networks (closed systems) and ecologies (open systems). On the left, the diagrams draw from mid-century theories of spatial organization showing a range of typological network variations rooted and representative of central place theory developed by German geographer Walter Christaller (Central Place Theory, 1933â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1972) characterized here through the network diagrams of systems engineer Paul Baran (On Distributed Communication Networks, RAND, 1962). On the right, from the late century, ecological models of spatial organization through open systems theories, developed by the ecologist Howard T. Odum (Ecological and General

Ecologies as Open Systems (Odum, 1983)

Systems, 1966â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1983). The main difference between these models of spatial organization, between networks and systems, demonstrates how the modern concept of networks addresses form and physical space (operationalized through a closed system of points and lines), compared to how the postmodern concept of systems addresses fluidity and flows (animated through vectors, flows, fields, inputs, outputs, energies, exchanges, patterns, and processes). If network thinking characterizes the mid-century approach to urban design, then open systems thinking, that is the ecologic optic, is applicable to complex, indeterminate conditions, risks, and hazards that are typical of contemporary urban patterns.

Systems of Systems

attendants that have fueled and propelled patterns of spatial diffusion and decentralization: a process that continues to be the greatest, most important force in the world.26 Decentralization and Dispersal But if the singular continuity of centralized infrastructure has provided the path for Western urbanization, then the gloss of contemporary urban life— safe, stable, accessible—is maintained by the illusion of permanence that infrastructure outwardly projects. Beyond the seamless buff of technological and mechanical systems, very rarely do we see the physical extents of this vast, often underground infrastructural territory, let alone understand the longevity of this large, technological apparatus. After all, infrastructure only becomes visible at the precise moment that it fails. In the past decade, aerial images of blackouts, amateur videos of bridge collapses, and front-page news of plummeting pieces of concrete are previews of the imminent fragility that infrastructure falls under. But so far, this vast technological apparatus has been portrayed as an essential, permanent, and necessary fixture of contemporary society. The water always runs; the lights always come on; and the heat always fires up when temperatures drop. Is it then possible to assert that infrastructure works almost too well? Is it possible then that civil engineering is without reproach? If Roosevelt’s dams and Eisenhower’s highways represent the zenith of civil engineering through the might of American presidents and federal public works, then their wear-and-tear, their breakdown, should reflect the impermanence of that might and warning of that power. As indicators of the limits of single-purpose infrastructure, bridge breakdowns and dam cracks are now informing a new generation of practitioners—urbanists—who are putting into question industrial economies of scale upon which the growth of twentieth century contemporary society has been built on, asking important questions about the future.27 What infrastructure should be rebuilt? How should it be rebuilt? Should it be rebuilt at all?28 With greater frequency of incidents and accidents in the past two decades, the buildup and breakdown of infrastructure as well as their unintended environmental consequences have decisively put into question the necessity for total infrastructural reconstruction, including the imperative for infrastructure itself. Over time, the radiant permanence lent by the continuous, uninterrupted appearance of infrastructure’s magnitude begins to crumble under exposure to its imperfection, fragility, and incompleteness.

Today, the externalities of the industrial economies of scale that underlie civil engineering practice are stress tests of centralized infrastructures showing signs of irreparable wear, hazardous risks, fiscal failures, and environmental spillovers. As postwar infrastructures in North America near the end of their serviceable lifespan, we can now understand single-purpose infrastructure of the twentieth century (curbs, pipes, roads, and tunnels) and its offspring, single-purpose land use zoning (residential, commercial, institutional, and industrial),29 which sought to subdivide and segregate, can no longer keep separate systems and technologies from the resources and regions they require and convey. As a result, the cultures of containment and control born from early theories of city form must be put into question. In policy making decisions, spatial planning models that directly and indirectly promoted centralized infrastructureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;concentric (Burgess, 1920s), sector (Hoyt, 1930s), polynucleated (Harris & Ullman, 1940s)â&#x20AC;&#x201D;need to yield, and to a certain extent, weaken to more distributed patterns of organization. It can be achieved strategically through the processes of regionalization or territorialization, from which infrastructure can be redefined and redesigned. Clearly, infrastructure design is more than just the sum of civil engineering and transportation planning alone. Whether it involves freshwater lakes or coastal estuaries, resource deposits or continental shelves, agricultural soils or forest fuels, underground aquifers or aboveground airspace, micro-climate or macrobiotics, the coupling of technological and biophysical processes can serve as synthetic ecologies underlying urban populations. By redefining infrastructure, the re-questioning of the oversupply and overproduction of infrastructure illustrates the exclusive purview of civil engineering in its delivery. Made possible by scientific planning and industrial economies of scale, the oversupply and apparent seamlessness of infrastructure parallels other recent overabundances: the oversupply of single-family housing, single-purpose transport, and single-energy supply, all of which are being re-questioned today. And, at their foundation is an oversupply of credit, one that was promoted by the banking and lending industries, the principal cause and effect of the current economic crisis and countless environmental externalities.30 These overexertions mark the coincidence of the breakdown of single-purpose infrastructure and other centralized structures: nationalities, governments, agencies, religions, borders, technologies, and regulations. This process of spatial decentralization also parallels social decentralization through the dissolution and breakdown of social hierarchy, in favor of a sociogeographic sprawl and new cultural concentrations that are mixing and spreading Systems of Systems

5:1 2018 Projections

The Silent Majority Civil Engineers as the Master Planners of the Twentieth Century

Comparative chart of professional memberships (present and projected) from the major design disciplines, with data from The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2018, and professional licensing organizations. Diagram: OPSYS

Systems of Systems

across the planet.31 And while many may see the force of decentralization as destructive or wasteful,32 the persistence of decentralization demonstrates its resilience and intelligence. The diffusion of spatial structures is yielding contemporary geospatial patterns which are counteracting the imperial hegemonies and weakening industrial orders of the past: from the drawdown of welfare states and the destabilization of dictatorships, to the migration of populations and climate zones, to the distribution of nitrogen and carbon, or the daylighting of underground streams and recycling of waste effluents. Reformulated through readings of urban diffusion,33 the so-called “mindless juggernaut of subtopia” population patterns and spatial leapfrogging is yielding unprecedented formats of urbanization of new “regional significance,” as landscape architect and planner Christopher Tunnard foresaw in the middle of the twentieth century.34 Decentralization is opening territories of knowledge whose most critical effect is the changing concept of urban space from settlement to exchange, away from the unilateral pole of the industrial settlement (the city as industrial metropolis), and instead toward a landscape of exchange.35 Convergences and Crossovers If the overexertion of engineering and inertia of urban planning are the fallout of the last quarter of the twentieth century, then it is no coincidence that the revival of geography and emergence of ecology are the blooms of the twentyfirst century. Today the linear, fixed, and closed structures of the industrial economies of supply are violently being supplanted by more complex, flexible, and circular systems of urban economies of demand. It is around these emerging urban economies that new urban ecologies are growing. In one of the most critical texts in the history of engineering, “Cultural Origins and Environmental Implications of Large Technological Systems,” Rosalind Williams observes: “the outstanding feature of modern cultural landscapes is the dominance of pathways over settlements […] the pathways of modern life are also corridors of power, with power being understood in both its technological and political senses. By channeling the circulation of people, goods, and messages, they have transformed spatial relations by establishing lines of force that are privileged over the places and people left outside those lines.”36 From the wake of the exhaustion of the environmental lobby37 and the proliferation of these new market economies, pours out an array of unprecedented knowledge. The result of this ripple effect across this new landscape is recom62

bined areas of knowledge in the fields of ecology, energy, and economics,38 as well as design, planning, and engineering. As the operative notion of ecology39 is radically expanding, the early work of systems ecology in the 1970s is finding new relevance. Innovating a pluralistic interpretation of ecology through complex configurations of open systems and circular flows, the work of systems ecologists such as Howard T. Odum, for example, have come to expose the skewed, scientific positivism of linear, closed systems that, thanks to industrial systems engineers, perpetuated one of the most dangerous misconceptions of the twentieth century: urbanization as problem.40 Through flawed notions of carrying capacity, growth limits, and resource scarcities, visions of world apocalypse and environmental destruction perpetuated by systems engineers have now dissipated through the representations of urbanization as fluid, circular, and strategic, thanks to the work of open systems ecologists. The fantastic, planetary visions of technological fixes41 pushed by systems engineers to “solve” the urban problématique is now beginning to fade under the more calibrated knowledge of systems ecologists, while also avoiding classic Newtonian positivism. Furthermore, when viewed as both an urbanist and a geographer, Odum reveals the flawed, centripetal view of urbanization that has predominated Western social thought in the last two centuries.42 Rather than exclude the black sites and brown fields of urban economies, Odum’s ecological lens integrates them. Through this open systems optic, Odum proposes a requalification of urbanization through patterns, processes, exchanges, and interactions. Waste ecologies are its best example through an infinite multitude of backflows, overflows, reflows, residues, leakages, residues, impurities, spillovers, discards, disassemblies, and sheds. Whereas urban form may have historically been expressed through the design of streets, blocks, and buildings thanks to the nineteenth century architects of the Beaux Arts or the twentieth century transportation planners, Odum’s synthetic view of ecologies opens the potential for the design of urban flows, where fluidity in and of itself, the structure of urban economies, generates a multitude of forms. As a consequence, the pluralization of ecological knowledge contributes toward a renewal of interest in the basic, indivisible flows of urbanization: waste, water, energy, food, and transport. Ultimately, this reformulated understanding of urbanization breaks open the centrality and singularity of infrastructure, toward new social forces, geospatial formations, and soft technologies which operate as infrastructural ecologies, the lifeblood of circular, urban economies. In this expanded, geographic understanding, urbanization then becomes a field of shared, polyvalent practices as opposed to a specialized or exclusive discipline such as architecture or urban design. In this expanded field, the designation, delineation, and direction of these ecological processes takes Systems of Systems

Adopted in 1839, the form off the official communication mark k of the U.S. Army Corps of Engi-neers is derived from the tradi-tional symbol of a castle, refer-encing the Castle of Verdun, an old fortress in southern France.. The castle was originally recom-mended as official insignia by y General Joseph G. Totten, Chieff of Engineers. Corps archivistss and historians suggest that “the e

Tour de Force

The legacy between the engineers from the U.S. Corps and those from France dates back over two centuries. In U.S. Army Engineer: History & Traditions, compiled by the 150th Combat Engineer Battalion of World War II, the historic relation between American and French engineers/combatants was both technical and cultural: “During Europe’s Middle Ages, the French coined the term ‘génie,’ to represent the Engineers. Over the years, ‘génie’ evolved into the old English word 'enginator' meaning one who operates the engines of war, such as siege towers, battering rams, catapults and the

The crest and shield consists of the mark of a bald eagle, the national emblem of the United States, mounted on a white and scarlet tower, upholding the banner of the Corps’ motto “Essayons” and looking over the world as a shield. The General Orders of 1840 explain the mythology of gold-color saturation: “An eagle holding in its beak a scroll with the word ‘Essayons;’ a bastion with embrasures in the distance, surrounded by water, with a rising sun—the figures to be of dead gold upon a bright field.”

Signs and Symbols, Myths and Motifs

Borrowed from the French, loosely interpreted and translated as: “Let Us Try,” “Forward,” “Bring It On”

“ESSAYONS”

Structures Struct St t iin th the St Stream:

Water, S Science & the Rise of the U.S. Arm Army Corps of Engineers by Tod Todd Shallat (Austin, TX: Univers University of Texas Press, 1994)

like. With the support of professional French Military Engineers, our young Army Corps of Engineers was created during America’s War for Independence, 1775–1783” (150th Combat Engineer Battalion of WWII, www.150th. com/history/). But, as Corps historians Frank E. Snyder and Brian H. Guss elaborate in The District: A History of the Philadelphia District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1866-1971 (Philadelphia, PA: USACE District Philadelphia, 1974), the influence of the French on American ingenuity had limits: “At first practical and eclectic, partaking of selected practices and theories of the Europeans, American engineering began in the 1830s to assert a native character through construction of the transportation systems and development of the techniques which would become the tools of the Industrial Revolution. The American method stands out uniquely by the colossal scale of its works and by its pursuit of techniques to improve the general lifestyle proliferated through mass production.” (Footnote 1, p.234).

Drawing from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) collection of symbols, insignias, and crests is a brief, graphic analysis and semiotic interpretation of its motivations. Source information for this “Corps Anatomy” includes The USACE Graphic Standards Manual EP 310-1-6 9 (revised 9/94), the official document for the graphic design of USACE manuals, circulars, pamphlets, and special publications, as well as the digital archive of the 150th Combat Engineer Battalion's U.S. Army Engineer: History & Traditions, and Todd Shallat’s Structures in the Stream: Water, Science and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Austin, TX: University of Texas, 1994).

MOTTO AS MOTIVATION

Systems of Systems

“Corps Anatomy”

Combining clear legibility and engineered neered precision, the historic timeliness of Swiss typography, Helvetica ica Medium and Helvetica Regular are the official type styles used in all Corps signatures. “This versatile family of typography is extremely useful in publication design as well as in the more permanent identification applications shown in the manual” (USACE Graphic Standards Manual, Section 3-4). Both elements, including the USACE and Building Strong motto, are always “placed flush to the left. This signature is to be used as the graphic identifier on those items common to the entire Corps of Engineers” (USACE Graphic Standards Manual, Section 1-3). Although the 1994 Graphic Standards Manual provides strict standards for typeface and typography—including layout and design in combination with other logos and symbols—its more widespread American cousin, the Arial typeface, is often used as an easy, yet subtle substitute, being the official font of its parent organization, the U.S. Army.

Typography: Bold Precision, n, Subtle Substitution

Source: Frank E. Snyder and Bri-an H. Guss, The District: A Historyy of the Philadelphia District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1866–– 1971 (Philadelphia, PA: USACE E District Philadelphia, 1974).

heraldic significance of the castle e and armorial symbol may be de-rived directly and logically from the original function of the Corps: the design and construction off fortifications.” Stemming from heraldry, the traditional medieval castle and architectural symbol-ogy, saturated in a striking, emer-gency-red hue, is inseparably y connected with notions of might,, force, and expediency, and once e employed as the coat-of-arms forr those who built castles or those e who successfully assaulted them.. The traditional castle symbol iss the key graphic element in the e Corps’ uniform graphic identifi-cation system. The symbol of the e castle has been applied to the e strongest of the USACE’s early y fortifications, including the entire e system of permanent defenses off the United States, at home, and d around the world.

(US ARMY Typeface: Arial Bold)

BUILDING STRONG®

US Army Corps of Engineers

(USACE Typeface: Helvetica Bold)

BUILDING STRONG

US A Army C Corps off E Engineers i

Refer to Section 2-4 of the USACE GSM (16)

The symbol featured in the center is the offical “Essayons” Unit Crestt worn by USACE military personnel.

Wrapped around the world, at the base of the tower, tucked in below tthe eagle, is a protective wreat wreath. Like a bird’s nest, the world is an egg, supported by signs o of fortitude, captured by the oa oak branch on the left, and susta sustained by the peaceful nature of the Corps’ mission, sym symbolized by the olive branch o on the right. Like an inverted victory crown, the olive wreath wre is often interpreted th through the laurel, a representation of accomplishrepresent ment and achievement. While the “bran “branches symbolize the agency’s concern for the environment,” (USACE Graphic vironmen Standards Manual, Section 2-4) the gridded globe unmistakably delineates the total, transnational reach of the Corps’ central ideals around the planet.

Power a and Peace, Planetary-Style Planeta

(Prologue, Shallat, 1994) (P

“The Cor Corps has been called America’s preeminent America’ engineering organization. engineer A nation builder. A bureaucratic superstar. Also reaucrati a public enemy, a diligent destroyer of wetlands, a a lobby military aristocracy, a can’t be licked.” that can’

new priority, relevance, and precedence as practice. Counteracting the paradigms of control and containment of engineering-based planning practices, the active deployment of living, dynamic processes becomes synonymous with the design of relationships, associations, synergies, reciprocities, and contingencies expressed in the configuration of the ground, the programming of horizontal surface materials, the construction of vertical equipment, the cultivation of outgrowths, and territorial inscriptions. As the vertical, hierarchical differences between engineering (as technological discipline) and ecology (as a scientific subject) break down, a new design agency spills out. Combined, the effects of the fin-de-siècle recuperation of the geographic subject from the den of military hibernation and the emergence of ecology out of the exhaustion of the environmental lobby, are exponential and earth-moving. In this strategic “accouplement” of disciplines, Rosalind Williams' tectonic observations are instructive: “the concept of connective systems is primarily phenomenological rather than sociological. These constructions are tangible structures existing in geographical space, and their components are related primarily in physical rather than in social terms. When engineering involves the creation of such structures, it looks more like a ‘mirror twin’ of landscape architecture or of urban planning than of science.”43 Ecologies of Scale It is from these proliferating conjunctions and crossovers, across a spectrum of urban disciplines—between ecology and engineering, geography and planning, policy and power44—that this position has emerged. Located in the zones between intellectual jurisdictions, this book brings together a series of texts that present the landscape of urbanization, including its geographies and ecologies, as a conflation of complex processes, natural and constructed, across several scales simultaneously.45 Through the synthesis of ecology and infrastructure together, this position proposes strategies that engage urban culture beyond the dogma of industrial production, as an inversion of the industrial economies of scale which have regulated the shape of urbanization during the past century. Both telescopic46 and stratified,47 this strategic position proposes disciplinary contraventions by sliding across scales and trespassing professional territories across planning and policy, engineering and ecology, architecture and urban design. In “Infrastructure and Modernity: Force, Time and Social Organization in the History of Sociotechnical Systems” (2003), the catalytic work of historian and communications theorist Paul N. Edwards expresses this methodology as an intellectual imperative: 66

“Multiscalar analysis requires an enormous depth of knowledge— more than can be expected of most individuals. Social and historical scholarship has few precedents for genuine team-based approaches which requires a complex process of coordination, agreement on methods and division of intellectual labor. It may be too much to hope that our disciplines will evolve in this direction, particularly given the present reward structures of most academic institutions. But if I am right that multiscalar analysis holds the key to an understanding of technology and modernity, we must at least make the attempt.”48 The disciplinary slippages and sliding scales underlying this position represent that attempt. By profiling methods, models, and measures, different levels of intervention are engaged and proposed. Casting a wide net across different flows, forces, and formations of urbanization, the position crossreferences semiotic interpretations (hermeneutic, syntactic, signified) with strategic propositions (relational, spatial, territorial). This position thus proposes a basic redefinition and representation of infrastructure as the gel of urbanization, with the potential for rebuilding and rewiring its most basic, irreducible systems: from waste and water, food and fuel, flora and biota, mobility and power. The focus of this position is twofold. From one level, the writings are intended to recast the role of twentieth-century urban designers vis-à-vis the emerging ecological knowledge of our time, where urban economies consist in more than just the sum of streets, blocks, and buildings. From another level, the focus targets scientists and technocrats whose daily work is dictated exclusively by quantitative information and often divorced from social, ecological, and biophysical complexities. With an aim toward bringing several seemingly disparate disciplines together—engineering and ecology, landscape and infrastructure, zoning and geography, planning and cultural history—specialists of these individual areas of knowledge, disciplines, and practices will no doubt find holes and cleavages in the historic information provided. The undisguised adolescence of this position purposely acknowledges the imperfections, impurities, and imbalances of urbanization to bridge several gaps and less-chartered areas. Through precise approximations and operative generalizations, the strategic incompleteness of this position is intended as an invitation for so-called non-urbanists—the social groups, the logistics companies, the conservation organizations, the labor forces—to engage and participate in the discourse of urbanization by design, or by demand. From these dual ends, the position is also both an appraisal of current conditions and a proposal for the future. As an anticipatory and projective Systems of Systems

Diagram: OPSYS / Kimberly Garza

Do engineers operate in a world without theory, while architects overdose on it?

endeavor, this compilation of writings goes beyond observations and interpretations in order to propose and advance a series of strategies and synergies. Purposely kept dumb, the operative observations are extracted from readymade formats of construction and processes of urbanization that are easily interchangeable, modifiable, and scalable. They propose standards that can be re-standardized or de-standardized. Together, they foreground a field of intervention where landscape figures as both strata and spectrum of urbanization—from super-urbanization to disurbanization—rather than from a pure ideology of production, form, or concept. The content extends across a range of sites, networks, and geographies shaped by patterns and processes in continuous formations and deformations, in various modes of assemblies and disassemblies. Starting from the essential utilities that make up urban economies, the main thesis of the book transposes major dimensions of urban infrastructure in all their different permutations and interfaces—the surfaces, subsurfaces, operations, processes, atmospheres, and altitudes—of the urban world that we live and breathe in. The transposition of landscape and infrastructure therefore outlines how the field of landscape—once architecture's surrogate—can break free and exploit its affiliation to ecology, engineering, and geography by reengaging largescale planning and reimagining small-scale surfaces and materials through a reform of existing urban infrastructures and a projection of new ones. But, to go beyond engineering and propose new strategies of landscape infrastructure intervention, requires not only a leap beyond disciplinary cadres, but also in response to the more intangible, the more complex, the more contingent, the more indeterminate, and sometimes unknown challenges that lie ahead. Whether it calls for the design of that future or its un-design, the cultural theorist Sanford Kwinter anticipates: “Despite the customary, fashionable genuflection toward infrastructural questions and concerns today, little attention is being paid to the more radical, more disturbing reality: that infrastructural demands are not only becoming exponentially more importunate today but that these infrastructural demands are breeding and mutating in kind and not only in degree. We have no choice today but to deal with the new 'soft' infrastructures: knowledge infrastructure, program infrastructure, cultural infrastructure, virtual infrastructure. The demand for design—and de-design—in our over-engineered, over-mediated world is both enormous and pervasive, yet the majority of architects still respond to it with the medieval language of the stoic, autonomous building. Today’s design world is stratified, with an emerging class structure, its associated embedded conflicts, and an emerging 70

new proletariat increasingly separated from the principle means of production.â&#x20AC;?49 This double entendre of landscape infrastructure entails both the design and un-design of urbanization through new faculties and facilities, through new forces and flows, through new formations and deformations, through different formats of exchange and diversified markets, new interplays and interactions, alternative codes and protocols. Rather than propose a universal theory or new ideology here, these reciprocal possibilities provide simple and sometimes subversive practices that support new attitudes and appetites for crossovers, by design, by improvisation, by coincidence, and by accident. This twin interpretation also posits a new and expanded understanding of what infrastructure is, and what it is becoming. It positions the field of landscape as infrastructure, an instrumental strategy across a range of jurisdictions, interests, and stakeholders, inviting new investors, users, and agents. No longer can it remain the exclusive purview of the engineer or the technocrat. No longer are we just talking about roads, sewers, or power plants anymore. We are referring to the systemic field of biophysical resources, sociotechnological services, and exchange spaces, held together by a mesh of hardware and software that calibrates and conditions urban economies. As we move further and further away from the monofunctionality of infrastructure, the cultures of design, engineering, and policy move closer and bring new positions, alignments, and orientations across a vast landscape of protoinfrastructures and proto-ecologies. From the silent majority of engineers to the exuberant minority of architects, this unauthorized, unsolicited biography may well find itself in the outnumbered hands of designers and planners who can hopefully and equally gain from a closer appreciation of the perceived banality of infrastructure, shedding light on the synthetic, social, and subversive ecologies that precondition it. As offspring of the recovery of geography and the blossoming of ecology, the disposition and potential of this book therefore serves as an anonymous manifesto for next-generation engineers, a preliminary primer for planners, and a conceptual guide for the emerging urbanist.

Systems of Systems

1. Preeminent systems theorist Paul Edwards suggests the notion of infrastructure as media and interface: “Mature technological systems—cars, roads, municipal water supplies, sewers, telephones, railroads, weather forecasting, buildings, even computers in the majority of their uses—reside in a naturalized background, as ordinary and unremarkable to us as trees, daylight, and dirt. Our civilizations fundamentally depend on them, yet we notice them mainly when they fail, which they rarely do. They are the connective tissues and the circulatory systems of modernity. In short, these systems have become infrastructures.” See “Infrastructure and Modernity: Force, Time & Social Organization in the History of Sociotechnical Systems,” in Modernity and Technology, edited by Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey, and Andrew Feenberg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 185. 2. E.D. Meier, “The Engineer and the Future (1911 Presidential Address),” ASME Transactions XXXIII (New York, NY: ASME, 1912): 495. 3. Civil and environmental engineers currently outnumber the small contingent of designers (architects, landscape architects, and urban planners) by a factor of more than 5 to 1. According to the 2011 The Bureau of Labor Statistics in the US and professional associations across North America, there are more than 500,000 civil engineers (including professional associations of civil engineers, together with mechanical and environmental engineers), in addition to the more than 500,000 construction managers (the so-called “failed architects”) who build the urban world. 4. This expression is borrowed from a common adage which has historically been repeated over and over by engineers at the University of Toronto. Like many other universities in North America, the common refrain “Engineers Rule The World” is rehearsed over and over again during freshman initiation week, ritualized by aspiring engineers clothed in blue coveralls, with their faces and hands dipped in purple dye. In keeping with this tradition, the associated acronym E.R.T.W. is pervasively scribbled on wall surfaces and bathroom stalls. However juvenile or medieval this practice may seem, the dogmatic initiation and graffiti reveal a disciplinary arrogance and superiority instilled from a very early stage of professional education that takes the form of a modern-day rite of passage. The University of Toronto Department of Engineering and Applied Sciences is ranked thirteenth worldwide and is the largest school in Canada, with an enrollment of about 6,500 students. Comparatively, in 2011, the University of Toronto Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, and Design counts approximately 500–750 students. 5. This observation also echoes the few self-critical texts in the discipline of civil engineering. See the observations of Neil S. Grigg in his declaration on the profession of engineering, Civil Engineering Practice in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: ASCE Press, 2001), and A. Emin Aktan in “The Civil Engineer in the New Millenium,” paper invited for the Ersoy Symposium (Ankara,TR: Middle East Technical University, May 16, 1999). 6. In an 1895 presidential address to the American Society of Civil Engineers, bridge-builder George S. Morison boldly pronounced: “We are the priests of 72

material development, of the work which enables other men to enjoy the fruits of the great sources of power in Nature, and of the power of mind over matter. We are priests of the new epoch, without superstitions.” As quoted in Edwin Layton Jr.’s The Revolt of Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession (Cleveland, IL: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1971): 58–59, and in Carl Mitcham, “Responsibility and Technology: The Expanding Relationship” in Technology and Responsibility, ed. Paul T. Durbin (Dordrecht, NL: Springer Science & Business Me-dia, 1987): 16. See also George S. Morison, “The New Epoch and the Currency,” The North American Review Vol.164, No.483 (February 1897): 139-150. For a more recent discussion of the era of engineering and large scale infrastructure, see “Bigness, or the Problem of Large” in S, M, L, XL by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 1998). Koolhaas’s text appears in the early 1990s at the precise moment that architecture and urban design retreated from extra-large scales. From a distance, the “Bigness” text appears less as a manifesto on scale, but rather a plea for recapitulating architecture’s long-standing lineage with its parent discipline capital ‘E’ Engineering. Important to reconsider is the historic interrelationship between design and engineering that existed as far back as the work of Leonardo da Vinci, for example, (as architectengineer), prior to the specialization of disciplines, and how the discipline of architecture has retreated from large-scale, geographic urbanization. Now isolated as an elitist practice of singular buildings and prestige projects, its urban proxy —that of urban planning—has been taken hostage by lawyers and economists who devolved spatial planning practices into dispensing of policy and procedure at the expense of spatial, physical design of large territories, and of urban ecologies. Comparing the experience of difference between European and American practices, Mauro F. Guillén's elucidates the importance of complementary and sometimes conflicting relationships between architecture and engineering at the turn of the twentieth century during the rise of “Scientific Management” and “Taylorism” (for which modernism is a trope) in his unique and exhaustive “Scientific Management's Lost Aesthetic: Architecture, Organization, and the Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical,” Administrative Science Quarterly 42 No.4 (December 1997): 682–715. The association between the sciences of management and modes of engineering practice in the mid-twentieth century are closely associated with and similar to the rise of Taylorism at the beginning of the twentieth century, from which systems thinking and operations research emerged. See Agatha C. Hughes and Thomas P. Hughes, Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000). 7. The significance of the split between engineering and architecture was discussed by urban historian Sigfried Giedion more than a half century ago, in his Norton Lectures delivered between 1938 and 1939 at Harvard University: “But as long as scientific and technological advances were used in architecture without being absorbed by it, the engineer remained subordinate to and detached from the architect. The architect, on the other hand, was left isolated from the most important

movements going on in the world about him. Until he succeeded in coming to terms with the changed environment, until he recognized the architectonic possibilities in modern constructional methods, no new tradition relevant to the age could develop. It was out of those technical innovations which appear only behind the scenes in nineteenth-century architecture that the architecture of the future had to grow. Construction was, as it were, the subconsciousness of architecture; there lay dormant in it impulses that only much later found explicit theoretical statement. […] Hence the interest in these apparently trivial developments, these timid introductions of new materials and new methods, have for the historian. Tendencies, still living and active in our day, the constituent facts of contemporary architecture, trace back to just such unpretentious beginnings. The advent of the structural engineer with speedier, industrialized form-giving components broke up the artistic bombast and shattered the privileged position of the architect and provided the basis for present-day developments. The nineteenth century engineer unconsciously assumed the role of the guardian of the new elements he was continually delivering to the architects. He was developing forms that were both anonymous and universal,” in Space, Time & Architecture: the Growth of a New Tradition–5th edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941): 183. 8. Herbert Hoover to Richard L. Humphrey, February 1, 1923, file “Federated American Engineering Societies, 1992-1924,” box 1-I/128, Herbert Hooover Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, Iowa, in Edwin Layton Jr.’s The Revolt of Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986): 189–190. 9. In addition to the fracking of disciplines and professionalization of practice, the mid-twentieth century period simultaneously witnessed the involuntary exodus of geography from academia toward the military as the partial fallout of the split between architecture, engineering, and planning between the 1930s and '50s. This era equally marks turbulent periods of geography and engineering legacy at Harvard University. See Neil Smith, “Academic War over the Field of Geography: The Elimination of Geography at Harvard, 1947–1951,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77 No.2 (June 1987): 155–172. 10. Pedagogically, the disciplinary rift between engineering and architecture dealt a dramatic blow to the future of design (keeping in mind that they were practically one of the same less than a century before, for more than two thousand years). For better or worse, the Graduate School of Design and Harvard University have arguably been in the shadows of MIT, the engineering giant, especially after the world wars and the rise of military research during the Cold War. Furthermore, the research focus of both universities reveals their intentions and agendas: MIT’s School of Civil & Environmental Engineering alone invests between 8 and 10 times more on research than Harvard University, for example. See the Center for Measuring University Performance, The Top American Research Universities: 2010 Annual Report (Phoenix, AZ: Arizona State University, 2010). 11. See the work of well-known civil engineer, Henry Petroski, Success through Failure: the Paradox of

Design (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). In deference to other forms of design where individuals are single-project authors, the engineering of infrastructure has evolved into subdisciplines of engineering that relate the complexity of a bridge or power plant to that of an airplane, where no single discipline can claim total design, but rather because of its size, entails a level of complexity necessitating a level of cross-collaboration and interdisciplinarity which naturally grows in unprecedented ways. 12. See AnnaLisa Meyboom, “Infrastructure as Practice,” Journal for Architectural Education 62 No.4 (May 2009): 72–81. 13. See USACE Office of History, The History of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2003). 14. For example, see the work of Daniel L. Schodek from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Landmarks in Civil Engineering (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). In a chapter dedicated to urban planning, Schodeck asserts the pervasiveness of civil engineering's influence: “the forms our cities have taken also owe much to the work of engineers who developed systems for water supply and control, urban transportation, and power. The planning of these systems not only responded to the city fabrics already present but influenced future developments as well, in either anticipated or unanticipated ways. Examples of public works that have stimulated urban growth may be found wherever one looks” (289–290). See also Willy Ley, Engineers' Dreams (New York, NY: Viking Press, 1954). 15. Civil engineering is an outgrowth of military engineering during a prolonged period of peace at the end of the nineteenth century, and during a period of significant urban change at the dawn of the twentieth century. Its origins are also rooted in the lesser-known, yet equally important legacy of topographic engineers. See Henry P. Beers, “A History of US Topographical Engineers, 1818–1863,” The Military Engineer 34 (June 1942): 287–291 and (July 1942): 348–352. 16. For the unofficial translation, see “The 150th Combat Engineer Battalion, History & Traditions,” www.150th.com/history/essayons.htm. In a symposium titled “Landscape Infrastructure: Systems & Strategies for Contemporary Urbanization” in 2012 at Harvard University, engineering historian Todd Shallat from Boise State University claimed in a more casual but more convincing way that the slogan “Essayons” could boldly be translated to the more assertive, can-do attitude of the Corps' “Bring it On.” And, for the Corps, “it,” according to Shallat, means “anything.” 17. The disciplines of architecture and urban design have further marginalized themselves by theorizing the world through the singularity of bigger and bigger buildings; a phenomenon eulogized in Reyner Banham’s Megastructures: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1976), the exiled British urban planner to the US. Concurrently, the discipline of urban planning balked at the seemingly uncontrollable spread of suburbanization by promoting greater compactness and smaller footprints through regulatory controls. By postponing the emphasis of form as driver of urban economies, landscape urbanist Charles Waldheim proposes that “a focus on infrastructure” Systems of Systems

may provide “a riposte to civil engineering’s impervious attitude toward the subject” while avoiding “the clichéd naiveté of much that stands for an infrastructural approach to urbanism today.” See Charles Waldheim’s “Urbanism after Form,” in Pamphlet Architecture 30– Coupling: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism by Infranet Lab/Lateral Office (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011): 4. Acclaimed urbanist AbdouMaliq Simone takes this view radically further in “Urbanism beyond Architecture: African Cities as Infrastructure– Conversation with Filip de Boeck and Vyjayanthi Rao,” in African Cities Reader, ed. Ntone Edjabe and Edgar Pieterse (Vlaeberg, South Africa: African Centre for Cities & Chimurenga, 2010): 23–40. 18. This statement inflects two earlier declarations. The first statement is by Rem Koolhaas: “Bigness is no longer apart of any urban tissue. It exists; at most, it coexists. Its subtext is fuck context.” See “Bigness or the Problem of Large,” in S, M, L, XL (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 1995): 502. The second statement is by Michael Rock, founder of 2x4, in “Fuck Content,” questioning the self-doubt and self-inflicted anxiety of designers: “The problem is one of content. The misconception is that without deep content, design is reduced to pure style, a bag of dubious tricks. In graphic-design circles, form-follows-function is reconfigured as formfollows-content. If content is the source of form, always preceding it and imbuing it with meaning, form without content (as if that were even possible) is some kind of empty shell.” Published in Multiple Signatures: On Designers, Authors, Readers and Users (New York, NY: Rizzoli, 2013): 45–56, and in an earlier version, “The Designer as Author: What does it really mean to call for a graphic designer to be an author?” in Eye Magazine 20 No.5 (1996). 19. Civil engineers are typically less interested in the boutique cities that designers speak of and sponsor through their work, often ignoring or yawning at the visions of yuppie urbanism promoted by contemporary architects and urban designers, often displayed in exceptional, three-dimensional renderings and photoshopped utopias of metropolitan life. 20. This proposition challenges the turn of the century struggle with ornament that led to the cultural cliché and industrial adage, form follows function, popularized by modern architects (such as Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, for example), and other industrial designers in the automotive industry during the early twentieth century. See Louis H. Sullivan, “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” Lippincott’s Magazine (March 1896): 408-409, and Aldolf Loos, “Ornament and Crime,” first published in French as “Ornement et Crime” (trans. Marcel Ray), Les Cahiers d’Aujourd’hui 5 (June 1913): 247-56. 21. See the "5 Key Solutions” proposed by the American Society of Civil Engineers that respectively rely on federal leadership, sustainability and resilience, planning, maintenance, and investment, in The 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, www.infrastructurereportcard.org/solutions. 22. Ibid. 23. The manifest relationship between urbanization and engineering has a small but growing membership which has produced a few important texts in the past 74

decade. In an edition of the journal The Bridge in 1999, preeminent systems engineer and innovator of industrial ecology Robert A. Frosch establishes the premise and promise of urban conditions facing civil engineering. Yet its technological positivism is reflective of the distance that the discipline maintains from the spatial, ecological, and social complexities in urban environments. In Frosch’s words, vis-à-vis these complexities: “But be of good cheer: There is engineering work to do!” See “Facing Urbanization: The Engineering Challenges,” The Bridge 29 No.4 (Winter 1999): 3. 24. Edwin Layton Jr.’s early manifesto in 1971, The Revolt of Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession (Cleveland, IL: Press of the Case Western Reserve University, 1986), is a rappel à l’ordre for the discipline of engineering as it faces contemporary challenges to the social vacuum and technological frame in which it operates. Beyond disciplinary confines, three of the most important thinkers in the past century to address the collective anonymity of engineers and a lack of critical discourse, include Sigfried Giedion (1888–1968), Rosalind Williams (1944–), and Antoine Picon (1957–). Working in separate historic periods and contexts, they have all established critical correlations and differentiations between histories, thought processes, technological influences, technical inferences, and disciplinary cadres of engineering. See Sigfried Giedion, Time, Space and Architecture: the Growth of a New Tradition (Harvard University Press, 1941), Rosalind Williams, Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), and Antoine Picon, “Engineers and Engineering History: Problems & Perspectives,” History and Technology 20 No.4 (December 2004): 436. To different extents, their work aptly captures the paradoxical nature of engineering, how the practice shapes spatial patterns and transforms natural processes, obliquely proposing historiographic reviews of engineering practice as the discipline enjoys greater and greater influence on urbanism for the foreseeable future. 25. Rosalind Williams proposes that the social vacuum and technological frame in which engineers operate has lead to “the expansive disintegration of engineering,” outlined in the second chapter of her Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002): 29–89. 26. There is an important legacy in the field that demonstrates the intellectual grappling with the phenomenon of decentralization. While the architectural historian Sigfried Giedion wrote the book Space, Time & Architecture during his Norton Lectures at Harvard University in 1938–1939, landscape architect Christopher Tunnard from western Canada, who was also at the Graduate School of Design by invitation from Walter Gropius between 1938–1943, completed his book ManMade America: Chaos or Control while at Yale University’s School of Planning afterwards. Albeit published more than a decade apart, the comparison of the two books by Giedion and Tunnard is compelling as their research was incubated almost simultaneously. Both bear striking resemblance in terms of their affinities for geographic scale and complexities engendered by the magnitude of urban change during the mid-twentieth century. This intellectual coincidence is not accidental

nor is it insignificant. It was a response to the coupling of historic lineages between design and engineering, history and urbanism, and landscape and infrastructure, from a very early beginning at the Graduate School of Design, where all fields of design could be active and involved, seemingly crossing over each other. Arguably, that coupling was severed between the 1930s and 1960s with the disappearance of geography from Harvard and other American universities, as well as the creation of the first urban design program in the world in 1960 by Catalan architect and city planner Josep Lluís Sert, then dean of the Graduate School of Design. 27. In Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), landscape historian Jo Guldi elevates the discourse on the invention of infrastructure by excavating the geopolitical context and sociospatial effects of building infrastructure as a nation-building project. Her views emerge at a time when the discourse on infrastructure has shifted across technical, ideological, and economic polarities. But Guldi reminds us of the great forces of centralization and decentralization at work across formal and informal entities such as people, cities, nations, and continents. For Guldi, infrastructure is not merely an artifact of the past, but it is also a progenitor, a builder of the future. 28. In “Infrastructural Ecologies: Principles for PostIndustrial Public Works,” Places (October 2010), Hilary Brown outlines the potential for multipurpose infrastructure by proposing how the design of urban ecologies is central to the new project of urban renewal to overcome “governmental shortcomings and obsolete bureaucracies,” http://places.designobserver.com/ feature/infrastructural-ecologies-principles-for-postindustrial-public-works/15568/ 29. See Michael Allan Wolf, The Zoning of America: Euclid v. Ambler (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007). 30. See Waltraud Schelkle, “A Crisis of What? Mortgage Credit Markets and the Social Policy of Promoting Homeownership in the United States and in Europe,” Politics & Society 40 No.1 (March 2012): 59–80. 31. See Henri Lefebvre, La Révolution Urbaine (The Urban Revolution) (Paris, FR: Galimard, 1970). 32. Decentralization is often exclusively and erroneously associated with the phenomenon of sprawl. 33. See H.G. Wells, “The Probable Diffusion of Great Cities,” in Anticipations, of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (London: Chapman & Hall, 1902): 14–26. 34. See Christopher Tunnard and Boris Pushkarev, Man-Made America: Chaos or Control? An Inquiry into Selected Problems of Design in the Urbanized Landscape (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963): 5. 35. Originally formulated by the landscape geographer Carl Sauer from the Berkeley school, then later reiterated by his friend and collaborator, Lewis Mumford, Sauerian students William Marsh and Jeff Dozier developed the expanded notion of landscape as geographic subject in Landscape: An Introduction to Physical Geography (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1981), where landscape in and of itself became a lens by which to understand contemporary geography, in terms of its pre-existing processes and anthropogenic changes.

36. See Rosalind Williams, “Cultural Origins and Environmental Implications of Large Technological Systems,” Science in Context 6 (1993): 381, 395. 37. See Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, “The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World,” Meeting of the Environmental Grantmakers Association (October 2004). 38. Howard T. Odum, Ecological & General Systems Theory: An Introduction to Systems Ecology (Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press, 1983). 39. As a modern subject, ecology can also be understood as a characterization of the resistance to the ‘virtual’ and the ‘aspatial’ through the inclusion of several dimensions of the spatial and dynamic: fluid, ephemeral, intransigent, incremental, and atmopsheric. The ecological subject further opens a horizon on the externalities of the virtual by extolling the effects of virtual entities, that are often considered aspatial: corporations, credit, jurisdictions, borders,...which together divide and partition systems that are most often indivisible. The challenge and opportunity of urban ecologies is to make possible a level of fragmentation that is systematically linked to complex, urban conditions, while maintaining a level of fluidity and continuity. 40. See the Club of Rome’s 1970 proposal drafted Hasan Özbekhan, “The Predicament of Mankind: A Proposal” (Geneva, CH: Club of Rome, 1970), which preceded the MIT Report Limits to Growth (New York, NY: Universe Books, 1972) by the System Dynamics Group at MIT. Both focused primarily on the problematization of the urban condition based on the assumption that population increase would outstrip food resources near the beginning of the twenty-first century. Outlined in “Predicament of Mankind,” yet absent from The Limits to Growth, is the important outline of “Continuous Critical Problems” (14–16) at the root of this problematization of the urban. The outline broke down the “world problématique” into an illustrative, itemized list of forty-nine specific problems, from explosive population growth to resource extraction. 41. Funded in part by Battelle (an American-based, research laboratory and innovation institute) and Volkswagen Foundation, the Club of Rome affected an entire generation’s view on the characterization of the urban as a problem to be solved technologically. This portrayal was based on a neo-Malthusian vision of the future where resource depletion would outpace population growth, leading to famine, war, and pollution. The work of MIT computer scientist and management engineer Jay W. Forrester is important to consider since his theories of closed, industrial systems were applied to the modeling of world dynamics, then extrapolated by the Club of Rome with the work of other MIT scientists, including Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, in Limits to Growth (New York, NY: Universe Books, 1972). 42. Fueled in part by the overemphasis on the industrial metropolis as site and subject, the central focus on the city as the locus of urban development is attributable in part to several spatial theories including that of German geographer Walter Christaller in his development of central place theory.” See K.H. Hottes, R. Hottes, and P. Schoeller, “Walter Christaller 1893-

Systems of Systems

1969,” Geographers Bibliographical Studies 7, ed. T.W. Freeman (London, UK: Mansell, 1983): 11–16. 43. See Rosalind Williams, “Cultural Origins and Environmental Implications of Large Technological Systems,” Science in Context 6 (1993): 377–403. 44. In the reclamation of the discourse on infrastructure, geography, and ecology, it is also important to note that this project has a legacy that dates back to the well-known inception of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard in 1900, but also in the short-lived but influential legacy of the Program of Landscape Architecture at MIT, from 1900 to 1909 under the leadership of Guy Lowell. Both programs are important, as they emerged during a time of technological specialization and professionalization during the urban bomb and the infrastructure boom at the start of the twentieth century. Although it remained in the shadows of MIT’s giant engineering world, landscape architecture at MIT maintained a commitment to the recruitment of women in the landscape architecture program, forty years before Harvard. From those few MIT landscape architecture graduates, several of them distinctively referred to themselves as “landscape engineers” as opposed to surrogate appellations from other disciplines. See Eran Ben-Joseph, Holly D. Ben Joseph, and Anne C. Dodge, “Against all Odds: MIT’s Pioneering Women of Landscape Architecture” (Cambridge, MA: MIT School of Architecture & Planning, City Design & Development Group, 2006). 45. See David C. Schneider, “The Rise of the Concept of Scale in Ecology,” BioScience 51 No.7 (July 2001): 545–553. 46. “Telescopic” refers to an operative lens that opens on different physicals extents and temporal scales. 47. “Stratified” refers to a layering process that reveals different levels, depths, dimensions, and altitudes. 48. See Paul N. Edwards, “Infrastructure and Modernity: Force, Time and Social Organization in the History of Sociotechnical Systems,” in Modernity and Technology, ed. Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey, and Andrew Feenberg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 226. 49. Sanford Kwinter, “Mach 1 (and Other Mystic Visitations),” in Far from Equilibrium: Essays on Technology & Design Culture (Barcelona: ACTAR, 2008): 39, originally published as “How the Critic Sees,” ANY 21 (December 1997),

> Landscape of Infrastructural Systems Map of Australia's infrastructural networks, coastal zones, regulatory regions, and concentration of settlements. Map: OPSYS Systems of Systems

“As long as civilization leads in innovations, it has an edge in marshalling and controlling energy flows and thus can provide energies as needed to build and maintain ever larger and more complex structure and world order.” Howard T. Odum, Environment, Power, and Society, 1971

“As long-predicted energy shortages appear, as questions about the interaction of energy and environment are raised in legislatures and parliaments, and as energyrelated inflation dominates public concern, many are beginning to see that there is a unity of the single system of energy, ecology, and economics. The world’s leadership, however, is mainly advised by specialists who study only a part of the system at a time.” Howard T. Odum, Energy, Ecology, Economics, 1974

Systems of Systems.

Island to Archipelago to Estuary: Often touted as a model for sustainable cities, Hong Kongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vertical density relies heavily on an extensive and horizontal hydrologic infrastructure consisting of freshwater reservoirs, country parks, water supply from the Dongjiang River in the neighboring Guangdong province, and the use of seawater for toilet systems. Diagram: OPSYS/Alexandra Gauzza 82

Currently, global densities are in decline, as world populations are on the increase. With automobility on the rise, the net effect is a gradual reduction in the spatial density of urban areas and an increase in the size and diffusion of their footprints. Today, cities are outgrowing legislative boundaries, taking on new configurations, and forming new zones, regions, and territories. Urban populations are naturally sprawling. As a process of re-territorialization, these ground conditions contradict the common assumption that compactness, verticality, and high density provide pathways toward sustainable urban form. Instead, when seen from continental or coastal scales, the current reduction in urban densities proposes a new lens on urbanization as a set of processes that are necessarily unfinished, uneven, and incomplete. Patterns of horizontal and geographic urbanization are distinctively yielding new urban geographies and landscape infrastructures at unprecedented scales, beyond the borders of political states, which have been inherited in past centuries from colonial control, imperial planning, military warfare, industrial development, and land use engineering. Stemming from the early work of urbanists such as Benton MacKaye (The New Exploration, 1928) and Jean Gottmann (Megalopolis, 1957), the distinctive horizontal patterns that characterize the world today are simultaneously force-effect-and-process, and have produced a new generation of geospatial and geographic urbanists. This late-century emergence is seen quantitatively in the work of Shlomo Angel (“Making Room for a Planet of Cities,” Lincoln Institute of Land Policy), qualitatively by Joel Kotkin (“Urban Legends: Why suburbs, not cities, are the answer,” Foreign Affairs), technologically by Jack Dangermond (“Geodesign,” ESRI), and geographically by Neil Brenner (“Planetary Urbanization,” Urban Constellations). Together, with a rising group of next-generation urbanists—suburbanists, super-urbanists and disurbanists—the contemporary horizon of urbanization is moving beyond the notion of cities as the focal point and central place of urban development. This horizon is rising over historic views advocated by macro-economists such as Ed Glaeser or Richard Florida, a view framed by Old World urban design ideology through the holy trinity of streets, blocks, and buildings. Instead, what is emerging are geographic infrastructures, urban ecologies, and landscape economies that transcend regulatory systems and state borders where processes of un-planning and de-territorialization often take shape. This contemporary, geographic optic on the landscape of decentralization is further fueled by a range of terrestrial and biophysical configurations that together are generating unprecedented synergies and flexibilities in response to the dynamics, dimensions, hazards, risks, and indeterminacies of contemporary urbanization: global mobility, water systems, waste ecologies, resource cycling, food cultivation, material markets, and migratory cultures for the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. Landscape as Infrastructure

How can we think beyond limits, footprints or boundaries? How can we change our notions of carrying capacities? Can we move beyond the notion of spatial compactness and control through planning? Alternatively, could we explore urban patterns through distributed structures, diffuse densities, fluid formats, or flexible morphologies that work with the processes of decentralization rather than fight it? Revisiting the key concept of the world problématique proposed by the Club of Rome, and of the world model by the System Dynamics Group at MIT that authored The Limits to Growth in 1972, the following notes present a preliminary review of the fundamental and often extreme differences in systems views which have, so far, led to a skewed understanding of the urban condition through its problematization. Referencing Lewis Mumford's 1956 The Natural History of Urbanization, this review is a case study of contemporary urbanization that specifically proposes to contextualize and compare the original research on systems by Jay Forrester (MIT engineer, World Dynamics, 1971) that underlies the Club of Rome's world view, with Howard T. Odum (ecologist, Systems Ecology, 1973) and Abel Wolman (engineer, “Metabolism of Cities,” 1965). Moving beyond the Club of Rome's original formulation of the world problématique and its “List of 50 Continuous Critical Problems” originally published as part of The Predicament of Mankind (1970), this review proposes that the notion of urbanization can be understood through an ecologic optic, which opens a more complex, more fluid, and more nuanced characterization of urbanization as strategy (not symptom, nor source) for responding to the predominant processes of population migration, changing climates, and resource economies today. From this platform, urbanization is no longer a “problem,” a condition to be minimized, controlled, or arrested, but rather it is a strategy of ecological and economic consequence that needs to be discovered, designed, directed, and deployed. Here, horizontal spread and terrestrial sprawl in their largest sense—either through the sustainability of slums or the urbanization of the oceans—can be understood as intelligent and flexible processes in the history and future of urban civilization.

The fundamental problem with urbanization is that we consider it a scientific problem.1 At the core of the discourse on compactness and the restriction of urban development is the characterization of urbanization as a problem that should be regulated. Through the underlying notions of footprints, boundaries, and 84

densities, the growth of planning—urban, rural, regional, or otherwise—as a scientific, social discipline in the past half-century has been one of the most important instruments used to control and legislate compact growth. Synonymous with centralization, the perceived benefit of compactness has persistently received support by proponents of environmental protection and sustainable development.2 Yet, for the most part, some of the underlying precepts of compact growth—its origins, assumptions, and undertones—are seldomly reviewed.3 While considerable efforts could be made to date the idea of compactness as a historic subject, the purpose here is to look at the threads and thoughts underlying compactness as a premier canon of environmental discourse in the late twentieth century. In the context of current concerns over the environment, the singular reliance on the affiliated concept of footprint reduction as a spatial factor in the discourse on sustainability remains unchallenged. As a counter-position, the aim is to question its value and establish cause for alternative practice. By looking at the process of decentralization, we can expand our repertoire of under-recognized strategies for contemporary urbanization. Demographics, Density, Dispersal Whether it was perpetuated through design disciplines from the school of urban design in the 1960s (growth of cities through the triad of streets, blocks, and buildings), through preservation paradigms from the school of resource conservation in the 1950s (conservative consumption and resourcefulness), through administrative bureaucracies from the school of planning in the 1940s (municipal incorporations and land use zoning), or through organizational theories from the school of military planning prior to the twentieth century (spatial concentrations, centricities, and fortifications), the principal assumption of density and compact growth implies five self-reinforcing and paradoxical conditions: 1. Density relies on twin measures of footprint calculations and population assessments,4 despite the fact that urban densities are largely in decline, while populations continue to increase and migrate across borders. 2. Density is controlled by instruments of legislative policies, political boundaries, and power structures, with zoning remaining one of the most powerful instruments of development despite its inability to adjust to the shifting conditions of rapidly growing urban agglomerations or slowly declining industrial economies.5

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3. Density depends on centralized configurations, infrastructures, and hierarchical subdivisions6 which challenges the very existence of non-formal, extra-legal developments across the urban world that exist without, or in spite of formal planning mechanisms. 4. Density perpetuates the broad and generic land use oppositions of what is urban versus what is non-urban while the rural, regional, peri-urban, suburban, pastoral, and industrial are better qualified across an urban gradient.7 5. Density produces invisible externalities8 that, when revealed, demonstrate the intrinsic processes of production, distribution, and consumption, such as foodsheds, energy structures, waste streams, and material flows, that are inherent to patterns of urbanization.9 In the past two decades, environmental agendas have uncritically equated the notion of compactness as synonymous with sustainable development. In turn, the environmental logic behind compact urban growth—smaller spatial footprints, centralized configurations—has been naturally associated with lower carbon footprints, lower resource consumption rates, and reduced population growth rates.10 In combination with outlooks on resources and demographics,11 the environmental premise of density and compactness has relied on the twin concepts of containment12 and carrying capacity,13 which, through the object of the city, reinforce an anthropocentric perspective of urbanization. Sustainability, then, is a factor of compact “human” growth over all other forms of development. By this measure, the New York City borough of Manhattan became the symbol of sustainability in the mid-1980s when it was labeled “the greenest [city] in the world.”14 By setting the density of a 250-year city on a small island bearing the highest land values in the world as the barometer for the remaining 300 million people living on the mainland, the explicit deployment of density as a denominator was unknowingly sealed as the comparative basis for urban development. Manhattan soon became the universal measure and metaphor of compact growth: “everywhere should be more like New York.”15 Furthermore, by placing human development at the center of the concerns of sustainable urban development, the flawed and skewed notion of the environment (an anthropocentric cul-de-sac)16 established a hierarchical sense of human entitlement, above and beyond all other forms of life and resources, while fostering a linear sense of material fatalism and catastrophic dogmatism that was, for the most part, portrayed as irreversible.17

Emblems of Environmental Institutionalization: The United Nations (1945), Club of Rome (1969), United Nations Environment Programme (1972). Source: The United Nations, The Club of Rome International Centre, UNEP Logo ©1972 UNEP. Reprinted with the permission of UNEP

Cold War Environment These unquestioned understandings originate from several lineages of environmental thought, expressed most recently through the Rio Declaration on Environment & Development that was produced from the 1992 Earth Summit held in Brazil. In the declaration, an “Agenda 21" was proposed. It was a plan that placed “human beings at the centre of concern for sustainable development” into the twenty-first century.18 Later touted as “The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet,” the Rio Declaration appeared novel in its universality. After all, it was a political milestone. It demonstrated the transcendental nature of the environmental subject, sponsoring solidarity across nations during the Cold War era through shared, transnational, transboundary issues of pollution and poverty. Although Rio was a high point, it was not an end, nor was it a beginning. It was part of a long line of environmental conferences underway for more than two decades. Rio reaffirmed what its two predecessors had already adopted during the two previous decades: in Geneva, 1987, with The Report of the Brundtland Commission titled “Our Common Future,” and in Stockholm, 1972, with The Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human EnLandscape as Infrastructure

vironment.19,20 Lauded as the world’s first gathering of nations on the topic of the environment, a major contribution of the 1972 conference was its focus on the effects of urban development: emissions and effluents, poverty and pollution. With the Environmental Issues Project already underway since the mid-1970s, a strong bias was being formed by twin conceptions of equilibrium and carrying capacity.21 At its core, the 1972 UN Conference on the Environment was influenced and shaped by a report published for the 1972 UN conference in Stockholm by a team of scientists at MIT, The Limits to Growth. The Limits of Limits The System Dynamics Group at MIT examined “the five basic factors that determine, and therefore, ultimately limit, growth on this planet—population, agricultural production, natural resources, industrial production, and pollution.”22 The book itself was actually a report that formalized a proposal written for two interrelated purposes. First, it was launched to establish the ideological platform of “an informal, non-political, multi-national group of scientists, intellectuals, educators, and business leaders,”23 the umbrella organization of the Club of Rome. Second, it proposed a series of scenarios related to perceived global problems, a “world problématique,” that would require the development of new world policies. Presented in book format, and later translated into thirty-two languages worldwide, with over twelve million copies sold today, the primary audience for the report was policy makers and heads of state. Addressing the so-called problems of unplanned and unchecked growth, imminent resource scarcity, and growing social imbalance, Limits was an alarm bell in a more fragmented world, more than two decades after Alfred Sauvy, the French demographer, coined the term Tiers-Monde (”Third World”).24 Global inequalities were being depicted by the Cold War split of industrialized nations, and Limits placed itself in the middle of a major social, technological, and economic divide whose progress threatened mankind through overproduction and overpopulation, with the potential of overshooting and outpacing available resources in the long run. Alarmist and projective, the predicted scenarios of overproduction and overpopulation modeled cataclysmic levels of pollution and plummeting food availability, ultimately resulting in mass starvation and death over a period of 150 years. Limits was published in the year 1972 during the transformation of a generation from a national, analog era into a global, digital era. The world had just seen its first microprocessor in 1971; the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970; Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969; and photos of the Blue Marble were brought back to Earth a year earlier from Apollo 8, in 1968. In addition to the visibility it received during the 1972 UN conference, the oil 88

crisis followed in 1973, greatly contributing to the cause of Limits.25 From then on, Limits became the background and ideological frame that supported future arguments for the protection of the environment, resource conservation, and sustainable development. Originally written by a group of American and European researchers—an environmental scientist (Donella H. Meadows), a political scientist (Dennis L. Meadows), a climate scientist (Jørgen Randers), and a son of an oceanographer and naval officer (William W. Behrens III)—the group's intention was to explore logical, systemic models through a combined set of world trends. The world system was modeled on resource consumption, population growth, and capital investment through industrial development, projected forward to the year 2150. In short, the book was the proposal for a model, a way of seeing and perceiving complex conditions and developing alternative development pathways, assuming that current conditions were untenable and/or unsustainable. A System of Systems In their application of system dynamics, the pioneering group of MIT scientists exhaustively developed a series of scenarios at which certain thresholds would be reached. Despite the projected thresholds, resource depletion, social disorder, and over-population were inevitable outcomes. Implying irreversibility and potential catastrophe, the predictions and modeling procedures provided considerable insight into the complex correlation between the process of industrialization, use and overuse of resources, population growth, agricultural development, and the effects of pollution. In short, Limits was entirely based on the notion of future irreversibility:26 “In the making of such an effort, the factor of time has acquired the utmost importance, for rapid change which as a crucial aspect of our technological momentum is accompanied by a parallel phenomenon; the similarly rapid and massive crystallization of any corrective action we devise and apply to the situation. If our initial surmise that such partial curses are either insufficient or irrelevant is correct, it follows that such action exacerbates the problématique as a whole and adds certain irreversible features to it. This, then, must lead us to conclude that time is not only of the essence but an absolute imperative that must condition any undertaking which seeks a new approach to the dilemma of our age.”27 Limits received considerable attention and was characterized paradoxically as “intellectual bombshell” and a “model of doom.” It was critiqued and sup-

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Projections & Biases: Apollo 8 images As08-14-2384 and As08-16-2593 by Bill Anders, released in 1969 for media distribution. Sources: Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (AS08-12-2044 to 18-2908; Apollo 8 Stamp ©1969 United States Postal Service; TIME LIFE ‘68: The Incredible Year (Special Issue, January 10, 1969); All Rights Reserved, used with permission; Barbara Ward Jackson and René Dubos, Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet (Norton, 1983)

ported from both sides of the environmental protection/human development debate for the next forty years.28 As part of its assessment, the events surrounding the publication of Limits are just as important as the ones leading up to it. During its time, several other publications, including reports and proposals, represent important antecedents. The subtitle of Limits reveals its purposeful lineage: A Report of the CLUB OF ROME’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind29 While Limits is recognized as a milestone in environmental literature, emerging from a decade of environmental alarmist discourse,30,31,32 its relative success (in terms of exposure and recognition) was actually born from the trials of an earlier proposal submitted to but rejected by the Club of Rome by a 90

different group. Authored two years earlier in 1970 by Hasan Özbekhan33 and Alexander N. Christakis,34 the rejected proposal was titled The Predicament of Mankind: Quest for Structured Response to Growing World-Wide Complexities and Uncertainties.35 As a prospectus, the $900,000 proposal was coauthored with Aurelio Peccei, an active Italian industrialist and main promoter of the Club of Rome's focus on world problems. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, its primary funding came from several corporate sources, but the original proposal was specifically written for Battelle Columbus Laboratories,36 a technological think tank headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, with affiliations in Geneva.37 With aspirations toward policy making and scientific planning, the formulation of problems and the identification of root causes were at the core of the Club of Rome's objective,38 and they represented means to an end.39,40 When reduced to a problem of logic, a simple solution (or set of solutions) could be found to almost any type of complex condition.41 The Problem with Problems With the recent awareness of “our place in the universe” broadly proclaimed by Life Magazine in “The Incredible Year 1968,” the core of the catastrophic assumptions held by the Club of Rome toward the future of the Earth was a two-level Malthusian Dilemma:42 that the resources of the world were limited and reaching peak levels,43 and that any solution to the problem of scarcity and pollution should be universal.44 Both of these premises hinged on the principle of carrying capacity, together with a fear of nuclear annihilation at the height of the Cold War and views of the Blue Marble from outerspace, a global view through which the world emerged as a closed system, on the edge of potential collapse. The problematization of urban conditions started precisely with the Club of Rome's formulation called the “world problématique” itself. The problématique represented and embodied the universal problematization of resources, population, and pollution through the central underlying notion of the “urban” condition. Better known as the “macro-problem” or “meta-problem,” the conception of the problématique was specifically formulated by the Club of Rome in preparation for the 1972 UN Stockholm conference on “The Human Environment,” which coincided with the release of Limits by the MIT System Dynamics Group. Not only was it foundational to Limits, the notion and nomenclature associated with the world problématique was inherited if not assumed by future UN conferences. In 1987, UN Secretary-General and head of the World Commission on Environment & Development Gro Brundtland delivered a report to the General Assembly on “Our Common Future” (1987), which was accompanied by a note positioning it as a “report on environment and the global problématique to the year 2000 and beyond, including proposed strategies for sustainable development.”45 Landscape as Infrastructure

Predicament to Problématique: Hasan Özbekhan, Toward a General Theory of Planning (Management & Behavioral Science Center, University of Pennsylvania, 1969); The Chasm Ahead by Aurelio Peccei reprinted with the permission of Scribner Publishing Group, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. ©1969 by Aurelio Peccei. All rights reserved; The Predicament of Mankind (1970); The Limits to Growth (1972) by Meadows, Meadows, Randers, and Behrens III

Through The Predicament of Mankind, it was Aurelio Peccei who provided the original formulation by which the world problématique would later be understood: “It is the aim of this particular project of the Club of Rome to turn the above assumption into a positive statement, trying to recognize and investigate the all-pervasive problématique which is built into our situation, through some new leap of inventiveness.”46 Not only was the problématique outlined in its pages in a broad sweeping message, it was itemized and illustrated in a forty-nine bullet-point list, titled “Continuous Critical Problems.”47 The problems ranged from “explosive population growth” (No. 1) and “widespread poverty” (No. 2) to “uncontrolled urban spread” (No. 4), “irrational agricultural practices” (No. 35), and “growing technological gaps between developed and developing areas” (No. 39).

Reflective of systematic itemization of the time, the list of “problems” was a conflation of problems enumerated in two previous publications from where the concept and notion of the problématique actually originated: Hasan Özbekhan's Toward A General Theory of Planning written between 1967 and 1968,48 which outlined twenty-eight “Continuous Critical Problems,”49 and Aurelio Peccei's The Chasm Ahead. Both texts outlined and described in great detail the problems of infrastructural inadequacies, social inequities, and material imbalances as part of a future-scenario, planning practice through the lens of a one-world system.50 Whole with Holes The interrelated notions of universality of effects from national policies, disequilibrium of environmental conditions, finitude of resources, and reliance on the world as a singular whole and closed system were central to Özbekhan and Peccei's combined formulation of the notion of the world problématique. Furthermore, in Predicament, the world problématique was graphically generalized and visually isolated to demonstrate its logic. Borrowing from the visual Venn method which shows possible logical relations between a finite collection of sets, Predicament illustrated the Club's proposal by showing the growth of isolated problems that, upon reaching a certain scale, begin to overlap and form cores of new problems. Once aggregated, these problems within problems could be addressed with larger macro-solutions. It was anticipated that the positivistic outlay of problems in Predicament would lead toward the formulation of solutions, and a crystallization of policy-based approaches. The linear approach of Predicament reinforced binary oppositions between good and bad solutions, and would substantiate the socialscientific basis of planning which was already in formation.51 For planners, it was prophetic. Influenced by its own technological positivism, Limits inherited and absorbed Özbekhan and Peccei's thinking (without their direct influence), equating solutions through technologies and policies. The structure of their work invisibly reinforced the structure of political economies which remains contested today.52 As it was seen, one set of solutions could be devised to address “the whole” of the problématique. Considered all at once, the approach would ideally lead toward the eventual rebalancing of subsystems through recalibrations.53 From this utopic, holistic equilibrium, several holes can be exposed. Across two major axes of thought, the associations and representations of the MIT project team unknowingly carried out two underlying assumptions:

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Jay W. Forrester: Engineer as Industrialist, Urbanist, and Globalist. Industrial Dynamics (MIT Press, 1961), Urban Dynamics (MIT Press, 1968), and World Dynamics (Wright-Allen Press, 1971)

Problems need Solutions.54 With an exclusive focus on policies and technologies as solutions to carefully delineated problems, a specific focus targeted political economies, thus defining nations as the unique and privileged entities through which action could be conveyed. Planet as World System.55,56 By modeling the planet through a continuous system of inputs and outputs as its primary mode of representation,57 the notion of balance led to recommendations that placed conservation (through resourcefulness and compactness) at the center of the future equilibrium. The Future of the Future Together, these assumptions point toward other holes that reveal a fundamental flaw in the original premise. In part, they are the natural flaws and imperfections that arise when attempting to understand a set of problems all at once.58 Largely developed by engineers and scientists, with roots in elec94

Closed System: Diagram of World Model, interrelating five level variables: population, natural resources, capital investment, capital-investment-in-agricultural fraction, and pollution. As a network, parts are interdependent but internal. There are no inflows nor outflows. Source: World Dynamics by Jay W. Forrester (Wright-Allen Press, 1971)

trical engineering and social sciences, their systemic approach to the urban problem required isolation or aggregation of variables. Yet, in reality, spatial models resisted pure, rational, or quantitative simplification, let alone comparison to problems associated with electrical networks. After all, the models of the MIT System Dynamics Group were largely based on the work of their professor-mentor, electrical engineer Jay W. Forrester. With his graduate students, it was Forrester who developed and operationalized theories of system dynamics. With applications across a range of scales, his simulation software, including DYNAMO and World3, provided the computational models to work with complex parameters and subsystems through non-linear relationships and feedback-loop structures. Although the computational power of Forrester's simulation work is significant, what is most astonishing is the magnification of his ideas and the scalability of system dynamics. Within the space of a decade, Forrester was working at three scales: the industrial, the urban, and the world.

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World Weather: the first global image of meteorological patterns by Tirox VI (1965), from The Future of the Future, ©1969 John McHale, reprinted with permission of The Permissions Company Inc. on behalf of George Braziller Inc.

In 1957, Forrester initiated research funded by the Ford Foundation to develop methods of Industrial Dynamics (1961) “as a way to understand and to design corporate policy.” Forrester worked for almost a decade with the U.S. Navy on the development of SAGE, the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, a radar detection system for intercontinental ballistic missiles, research as significant as the Manhattan Project. Originally based at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, SAGE researchers, including Forrester, moved to the newly formed MITRE Corporation, where systems engineering and advanced technologies led to the invention of ARPANET, and continues today to be developed for critical national problems and a range of surveillance, control, and air-defense systems. Engineering to Planning Later in 1967, in collaboration with Mayor-of-Boston-turned-consulting-professor-at-MIT John F. Collins, Forrester extended his approach with the application of system dynamics at the urban scale. Following the publication of these results in Urban Dynamics (1968), another door opened for the testing of system dynamics at the global scale. After an invitation from MIT colleague Carroll Wilson, Forrester joined a symposium held by the Club of Rome in Bern, Switzerland, in the summer of 1970. Cautiously capitalizing on the 96

shortcomings of The Predicament of Mankind proposal which was submitted by Özbekhan and Christakis but rejected, Forrester impressed the Club's executive board with an alternative model. He proposed the use of system dynamics to respond to the world problématique and reformulate the problems outlined in The Predicament to Mankind which were originally developed by the club's founders. In less than twelve hours, on the returning Swissair flight between Zurich and Boston, Forrester had already drawn up a sketch for the structure of world dynamics. By the time Forrester touched down in Boston, a working model was ready within thirty-six hours for incoming European executives on the club's board. After three weeks of presentations on the theory and applications of system dynamics, the project was funded for $300,000 by The Volkswagen Foundation. Two publications followed: the self-published World Dynamics by Forrester less than eight months later, which explained the prototypical world model, and The Limits to Growth published by his students, the MIT System Dynamics Group in the summer of 1972. The progression of scales in Forrester's work is useful to consider. The relationship between the corporate and the urban scale seemed natural as cities underwent legal incorporation from the 1920s onward.59 On paper, cities somewhat emulated corporations in structure: hierarchical, multidivisional, and bureaucratic. But spatially and socially, cities were undergoing considerable change. Large cities, or human settlements as the United Nations called them, were exploding (Bangkok, Lagos, Mumbai) with research on megalopolises and conurbations, while other cities, industrial metropolises, were imploding with labor disputes and industrial abandonment (Detroit, Milwaukee, Toledo). The model of urban planning fell visibly short due to an outgrowth of regulatory boundaries, an inflexibility to adapt to rapid change, and an incapacity to maintain existing infrastructures.60 The real crisis was a misalignment between perception (model) and reality (ground) which greatly influenced the structure of models and their outcomes. Urban planning simply could not adjust to the pace of real-time changes. And since large multinational corporations—from Volkswagen in Germany to Battelle in the US—were underwriting the research of the Club of Rome, the relevance and applicability of the research seemed unquestioned, if not perfectly natural. After all, the club's view of the world was an industrialized optic that emerged during the Cold War and hinged on the characterization of problems of its nonindustrialized other, the Third World.61 Cities = Circuits? Forrester gained tremendous respect during the Cold War for his foundational work on ground radar systems,62 and for his invention of the random-access magnetic-core memory (RAM), still relied upon in modern computing.63 His Landscape as Infrastructure

Circuitry: Jay W. Forrester's Magnetic Core Memory Plane & Array Detail (1954), Project Whirlwind (1952). Source: Courtesy MIT Museum

pioneering research on theories of system dynamics were widely read but, unfortunately, it was much more difficult to implement. Despite his wideranging experience on the ground, on the farm, and at sea, “the exercise” as Forrester called his books on system dynamics,64 “were easy to compute in the lab, easy to develop at the university but much more difficult to apply in the field.” For corporate policy makers and city organizations, system dynamics were complicated, hard to understand and to incorporate as part of established practices. Outmoded thinking was Forrester's obstacle. At urban scales, the application of his modeling methods and systems theories resulted in no actual, physical projects. The future of system dynamics was more pedagogical, realizable only through educational programs.65 Cities, and much less the whole of the world, did not function like circuit boards.66,67,68,69 Nor could they be built in the same way. The intelligence of system dynamics—found in its strategies of accumulation and modeling of storage mechanisms and feedback loops, inherited from Forrester's work on memory chips and computing power—were the main contributions of his work. However, the brilliance of digital innovations at the core of Forrester's research also resulted in a technocratic optic of urban society, and inherently 98

had its own limits. After all, style, design, perception, opinion, media, gender, and religion—albeit seemingly unquantifiable and subjective, whether they were biased or not—mattered. During a period of considerable social transformation and economic shift in industries like automotive manufacturing and cities like Detroit, Newark, and Philadelphia in the late 1960s, the basis for system dynamics and for future scenario planning, it seemed, was problematic and encountered considerable complications in its actual implementation. Both praised and controversial, Forrester's world was essentially like his system theory: closed. From Problématique to Process The closed world, however, had a context. Nearly simultaneously, in 1969, John McHale's book The Future of the Future endeavored to record and document emerging trends, where technique and technology were products of human ingenuity and material design a resource in and of itself, action-based through design. Citing the work of Buckminster Fuller, Bell Labs, and NASA, McHale was eyeing the tremendous transformation brought upon by automation. Visually, textually, and graphically, McHale acknowledged the latent contradictions of military innovation and civilian technical uses, forging a path toward the design of a planetary society70 that did not require a holistic, catastrophic, or harmonious perspective of the planet, nor did it resort to problem-solving or utopic equilibria. Instead, The Future of the Future proposed a lens on trials and errors, on innovations and accidents, on visual and spatial complexities, on live species and inert materials, seen through advances such as weather forecasting, climate visualization, remote sensing techniques, and satellite systems. For McHale, this advancement was produced by the conflation of human and environmental forces, and urbanism as part of globally complex ecosystems.71 The regionalization72 of urban conditions also offered a path to move beyond their problematization. Jay Forrester acknowledged that nonlinear systems thinking required first and foremost that “one should not attempt straightaway to solve a problem,” especially in laboratory models.73 In support of deproblematization of the urban condition, in favor of more in-depth study of agglomerations or disaggregations, it was regional urbanist Howard W. Odum who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was closely observing the critical diffusion of cities74 and their transformative patterns. With an eye from the American South, Odum wrote about overlapping ecological, economic, or social regions through the characterization of flows and processes: “The significance of regionalism as a technique of decentralization and redistribution is reflected in an equally wide range of examples. Some of these are basic to the decentralization and redistribution of populaLandscape as Infrastructure

Ecology as Urbanism, Urbanism as Ecology: Historic model of spatial organization and interaction by Howard T. Odum illustrating the economy and ecology of the US in 1980, illustrating the scalability of urban ecologies as open and permeable systems through energy and currency flows. Source: Howard T. Odum, Ecological and General Systems, 23–7, University Press of Colorado; Rev Sub edition (May 15, 1994)

tion, of industry, of wealth and capital of culture, of social pathology, and of bigness, complexity, and technology in general.”75 Often poorly understood, the global phenomenon of urbanization was, and still is, one of decentralization and deruralization.76 It represents a shift from the industrial economies of supply of the early twentieth century toward the economies of demand of the twenty-first century. This “flattening of the density gradient” is an expression of the leveling of socioeconomic structures in the twentieth century. Largely responsible for outward movements of cities, and reduction of urban densities, it is a process occurring across “a more dispersed landscape [that] has afforded many people greater levels of mobility, privacy, choice.” The increase in individual purchasing power, personal mobility, and personal communication made possible by network technology systems have thus contributed to a horizontal pattern77 of urbanization that functions largely as an alternative to the “densely settled cities that were the norm at the end of the nineteenth century.”78

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Seen geographically, the scales of urbanization present unseen movements of capital, new markets and economies, porosities, and the dissolution of political borders. It presents a different spatial model, a map upon which territories, geographies, or systems are porous instead of being closed; models so large and so complex that, in fact, they take on the proportions and processes that emulate the behaviors of open systems. Systems Ecologies The concurrent work of systems ecologist Howard T. Odum and hydrological engineer Abel Wolman provides important milestones in the extensive and intensive characterization of the scales of urbanization. Odum derived a series of models for transformed natural systems through flows and exchanges, with specific orientation toward energy. His work was later applied to constructed urban conditions, never differentiating human beings from other species, nor their environments, which contrasted the conventional, anthropocentric models of the time. Odum also understood complex systems as inclusive of both capital and pre-capital processes of transformation. His work was initiated during the atomic age for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) at the Nuclear Center at El Verde in Puerto Rico (PRNC). Between 1963 and 1970, the project was included in research on the effects of radiation and gamma rays on plant life specifically, and forest systems broadly, an ecological stress-test on a tropical rain forest where pine trees served as bio-indicators given their sensitivity to atmospheric radiation, “mineral cycles, metabolism, and operations of the complex living systems structure, by concentrating new and old techniques.”79 Moving beyond the metaphors of systems circuitries from the field of electrical engineering, the PRNC project provided a foundation for introducing notions of ecology, emergence, and indeterminacy. As precursor to his work on systems, Odum demonstrated how linkages, loops, and associations worked, in tremendous detail, spatially and graphically. Maps, diagrams, aerial photos, and charts would provide the multimedia through which systems learning could be compiled and communicated. Odum’s visualization offered open-ended expressions of systems. As a pioneer of ecological engineering, Odum's methods were both scalable and easily applicable: “control mechanisms in the complex forest may serve as innovative models in planning the future of man and energy on earth, a problem in the topology and transients of energy-network design.”80 His methods of modeling energy flows provided pathways for better understanding external forces and externalities. Odum's method helped to understand how complex systems worked, how they changed, and how they could be modified. Beyond scalability, he Landscape as Infrastructure

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understood how systems needed to structurally change over time, through forms of substitution and emergence: “systems in nature are known to shift from fast growth to steady state gradually with programmatic substitution, but other instances are known in which the shift is marked by total crash and destruction of the growth system before the emergence of the succeeding steady-state regime.”81 From this open-ended, ecological optic, Odum was more interested in the study of urban processes than their problems. Odum later revised his Ecological and General Systems: An Introduction to Systems Ecology in 1994, adding a section on urban regions, and widening a lens on the complexities of urban economies as ecologies. Metabolization Hydrological engineer Abel Wolman was another early observer of the openness of urban systems. In the 1950s, well before the Club of Rome, Wolman advocated for a more fluid, material, and chemical understanding of urban processes. With specific attention to flows, especially effluents and emissions, he proposed the systemic design of water management. In his 1965 Scientific American article “The Metabolism of Cities,” he outlined: “the metabolic requirements of a city can be defined as all the materials and commodities needed to sustain the city's inhabitants at home, at work and at play. Over a period of time these requirements include even the construction materials needed to build and rebuild the city itself. The metabolic cycle is not completed until the wastes and residues of daily life have been removed and disposed of with a minimum of nuisance and hazard.”82 Wolman focused on three urban flows: water supply, sewage disposal, and air pollution. Beyond a mere theory, this metabolic landscape was an operative lens to understand urban processes through their materialities, fluidities, and chemistries, as well as through networks of inputs and outputs through a series of flows, reflows, and backflows. This fluid optic provided a means through which infrastructure, as a spatial, fluidic medium, could go beyond the techniques of problem solving, and actually begin to help build cities through their expansion and continual re-design. Like Odum, Wolman correlated the relationships between sources of materials and sinks, between resource mines and wastes, and between energies and synergies. Systems to Landscape Together, the systems ecology of Odum and the urban metabolism of Wolman point toward the reconceptualization of the “urban” as “urbanization” through 102

processes. They move beyond the mere assertion of solutions, and beyond the limits to growth,83 instead establishing strategies, expressed through morphologies, relationships, gradations, and synergies. Waste ecologies are one of the greatest examples through which can be found and re-designed an infinite amount of backflows, overflows, reflows, leakages, impurities, spillovers, discards, disassemblies, material residuals, and secondary energies. Whereas urban form may have historically been expressed through the design of cities or neighborhood blocks, Odum's synthetic view of ecologies open the potential for the design of urban flows, where fluidity and fixity of urban infrastructure across regions generates form. As a consequence, the pluralization of ecological knowledge contributes toward a renewal of interest in the basic, indivisible flows of urbanization: waste and water, food and fuel, flora and biota, mobility and energy. The ripple effects across these urban ecologies are recombined areas of knowledge such as in the fields of ecology, energy, and economics, as well as design, planning, and engineering. As the operative notion of ecology expands today, the early work of systems ecology in the 1970s is finding new relevance. Innovating a pluralistic interpretation of ecology, the systemic work of Odum and metabolic thinking of Wolman, for example, have come to expose the skewed, scientific positivism of linear, closed systems that, thanks to systems engineers, have contributed to the prevailing misconception of the twentieth century: a perception of urbanization as problem. Flawed notions of carrying capacity, growth limits, and resource scarcities, and visions of world apocalypse and environmental destruction perpetuated in the late twentieth century are dissipating with the representations of urbanization as fluid, circular, and strategic, thanks to a more nuanced, multidimensional understanding. The fantastic, planetary visions of technological fixes pushed by systems engineers to “solve” the urban problématique, aided and abetted by classic, logical (Newtonian) positivism, is beginning to fade under the more calibrated knowledge of systems ecologists.84 In this expanded ecologic understanding, urbanization then becomes a field of shared, polyvalent practices as opposed to a specialized or exclusive discipline such as engineering, architecture, or urban design. As the vertical, hierarchical differences between engineering as technological discipline and ecology as a scientific subject break down, a new design agency emerges. Combined, the effects of the fin-de-siècle recuperation of the geographic subject from the den of military hibernation and the emergence of ecology out of the exhaustion of the environmental lobby are exponential and earth-moving. Cutting across the disciplinary divides between ecology and engineering, we can understand the structural potential of ranges and types of systems, or Landscape as Infrastructure

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Altitudes of Urbanization: Submarine cable systems, lower and outer satellite orbits, space junk (2013). Diagram: OPSYS/Sara Jacobs and Alexander Arroyo

subsystems, between closed and open systems, including their flows, their materialities, and their economies. Thus, the world problématique and the problem of the urban becomes a question: “how do we support urban life?” Consequently, it presents a line of greater, more-projective questioning about the ecologies of urbanization, geographies of real-time information, and flexible infrastructures: Moving beyond the footprints of cities, how can we find new ways to map patterns of decentralization through the recognition of new infrastructures, ecologies, and geographies? Responding to patterns of consumptions, accumulations, and exchanges, can we enable corresponding forms of design-ondemand, live feedback, and real-time decision-making? In an effort to engage emerging planetary risks, can we design new spatial flexibilities and landscape infrastructures?

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Material Economies: Shipbreaking yard, Alang, India. Source: ÂŠ2011 Carrie Teicher

Moving beyond notions of compactness and density, by which we currently define and measure cities, several emerging geographies and synthetic processesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;both extensive and intensiveâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;can be observed through three systemic characterizations: Latitudinalization and Altitudinalization In contrast to the planning of temperate urban areas through the medieval orthodoxy of plans, patterns of urbanization can be best projected in section, revealing new dimensions and extents, from the bottom of the oceans to the outer reaches of the atmosphere. With population increasing but growth rates slowing, we will not only have to plan for its spread, but also for its expansion and its contraction. From processes of sub-urbanization to superurbanization, from the underground to the orbital, we will have to design infrastructural distributions and dispersions, to design and support the world we live in, at new altitudes, and across alternative latitudes.

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Flexible Urbanization: Makoko fishing village and Okobaba sawmill, near Third Mainland Bridge, in Lagos, Nigeria. Source: © Yann-Arthus Bertrand F001215028

Liquidation through Recirculation As material scarcities—both inert and living—go hand-inhand with material ecologies and economies, so will material substitutions and cycles increase, leading to dynamic markets of material substitutions, constantly in motion and circulation. The task of urbanists should therefore be to ensure the design of these material flows and pathways, through their vectors and volumes, logistics and landscape, extending material longevity in addition to the technological substitutions already underway. In the urban world, then, materials become part of a metabolic system, producing new materials and requiring new energies, with certain resource endpoints, that are enabled by infinities of use and limitless programmatic substitutions.85 Littoralization through De-Territorialization With nearly half of the planet's population living on, or moving toward coasts and shores, redrawing the contours of cities across pre-existing hydrological formats—deltas, estuaries, lagoons, river mouths, gulfs—helps visualize these urban landscapes as the 106

Risk Landscape: Distribution of Storm Shelters & Evacuation Systems, Coast of the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh, in the South Indian Tropical Storm Basin. Source: OPSYS/Alexandra Gauzza

building block of oceans, and the breeding grounds of marine life, providing a littoral vantage from which to see the city for the sea, the land for the water, the surface for the submerged, and the ground for the atmosphere. Facing changing climates and the tropicalization of the planet, the shifting economies of dry land that have formed the basis of trade and exchange in the twentieth century give room to wet, fluid ecologies that provide concurrent and simultaneous spin-offs: safety and security, ecology and economy, health and wealth. It is from these different characterizations, conjunctions, and crossovers, across a spectrum of multiple urban disciplines, that the ecologic optic emerges. Located between the intellectual jurisdictions of ecology and engineering, as well as geography and planning, this optic brings together a series of strategies that present the landscape of urbanization as a conflation of complex processes, risks, and hazards, simultaneously across several scales. Through the synthesis of ecology and infrastructure, this position proposes ways to engage urban culture beyond the dogma of growth, industrial production, Landscape as Infrastructure

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and scientific logic alone, beyond the world problématique, transcending the economies of scale that have regulated the shape of urbanization during the past century. Together, these characterizations provide pathways to reformulate original problems identified from urbanization, including the strategies of spatial decentralization, power distribution, and disciplinary reconfigurations seen in new spatial distributions, zones of cultivations, technological diffusions, social equities, and cross-border mobilities. We may then begin to see that sprawl, decongestion, evacuation, and abandonment as supreme manifestations of decentralization and as some of the world’s most important if not inevitable spatial strategies,86 across different dimensions of urban life, from planetary infrastructure to personal action.87, 88

1. “If urbanization is considered a complex condition or situation, then the formulation of a wicked problem is the problem.” See Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences 4 No.2 (June 1973): 155–169. 2. In “The Practical Significance of Decentralization” The Journal of Politics 36 No.4 (November 1974): 958–982, Norman Furniss proposes that “this question gains relevance in the context of current concern over the environment, the depletion of resources, and the dysfunctions of endless growth. In general one can posit that the more decentralized the power, the less attention to environment or resource control.” Given this cultural predisposition, Furniss lays out an eight-point argument for reconsidering decentralization as an extremely viable and multi-dimensional strategy. Furniss also cites the work of Lennart Lundqvist, “Crisis, Change, and Public Policy: Considerations for a Comparative Analysis of Environmental Policies,” European Journal of Political Research 1 No.2 (June 1973): 133–162. 3. See Ugo Bardi, “The Story of The Limits to Growth” in The Limits to Growth, Revisited (New York, NY: Springer, 2011): 5–14. 4. The confused association between density, sustainability, footprint, and compact growth has been perpetuated by the misunderstanding of the complexity of urban economics addressed in the often-cited 1974 study “The

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Co$ts of Sprawl” prepared by the Real Estate Research Corporation (RERC) for the Council on Environmental Quality, the Office of Policy Development and Research, Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Planning and Management, and the Environmental Protection Agency. In the report's conclusion, results showed a surprising consistency: “planning to some extent, but higher densities to a much greater extent, result in lower economic costs, environmental costs, natural resource consumption, and some personal costs for a given number of dwelling units. These results do not necessarily hold for the development of a given land parcel.” The RERC cautioned that “the results are not directly applicable to any specific development, either existing or proposed. The features of a particular site or community substantially affect the magnitude of any of the costs. Nor should the results be interpreted as recommending one type of development over another. There are too many costs and benefits which have not been included, particularly those associated with questions of personal preferences and the revenues generated by different development types. But the analyses should provide local officials with a better information base about the impacts of different development patterns, allowing them to make better informed decisions about the future form of their communities” (6). Critiques of this often-quoted report and the dangers of misinterpretation and oversimplification of sprawl include Duane Windsor's “A Critique of the

Costs of Sprawl,” JAPA 45 No.3 (1979): 279–292, and elaborates: “By the most significant measures, New York Richard Peiser's “Density & Urban Sprawl,” Land Eco- is the greenest community in the United States, and one of the greenest cities in the world […] The key to New nomics 65 No.3 (August 1989): 193–204. 5. See Sydney Wilhem, Urban Zoning & Land Use Theory York’s relative environmental benignity is its extreme compactness. Manhattan’s population density is more (New York, NY: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962). than 800 times that of the nation as a whole. Placing one 6. See Walter Christaller, Central Place Theory (New York, and a half million people on a twenty-three-square-mile NY: Prentice Hall, 1966) translated from the original 1933 island sharply reduces their opportunities to be wasteversion. For a more recent evaluation of spatial models of ful.” urban organization and the limits of streets and blocks as organizing elements, landscape architects Eran Ben- 15. Owen, “Green Manhattan,” 111–123. Joseph and David Gordon caution: “What happened to 16. Exposing the paradoxical nature of our use and hexagonal planning illustrates the futility of street and understanding of environment, Jesse Ausubel proposes block planning as the sole concept behind city planning. that we are liberating ourselves from the environment While it might be commendable for its symmetry on pa- and that the environment will in turn liberate itself from per, that same virtue might be a fault in practical applica- us. See “Liberation of the Environment,” Daedalus 125 tion.” See “Hexagonal Planning in Theory and Practice,” No.3 (summer 1996): 1–17. Journal of Urban Design 5 No.3 (2000): 237–265. 17. In “A Brief Hermeneutic of the Co-Constitution of Na7. See Henri Lefebvre, La Révolution Urbaine (Paris, FR: ture and Culture in the West including Some Contemporary Consequences” History of European Ideas 20 No.1-3 Gallimard, 1970). 8. See Alan Berger, Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban (1995): 649–659, Eric M. Kramer explains the classic oriAmerica (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, gins and linear causality of crisis thinking in lieu of differentiated understanding of models and ranges of out2006). comes: “Obviously, to speak of 'growth', 'limits', 'chasm', 9. See Pierre Bélanger, “Landscape as Infrastructure,” 'turning-points', 'historic time', and things 'ahead' presupLandscape Journal 28 No.1 (January 2009): 79–95. poses a spatial metaphysic manifested as causal linear10. The more recent premises of ‘compact growth’ origi- ity: materialistic fatalism. The crisis mentality that sells nated in the 1990s from London, with its North Ameri- so well is a consequence of the post-Renaissance Western perspectival attitude that panics each time the world can equivalent of ‘smart growth’ in San Francisco. cannot be rationally controlled, which is all the time. The 11. See Neil Brenner, “Eight Theses on the Urbanization modern idea of progress has become senseless because Questions: Introducing the Urban Theory Lab,” in Instiit has become a permanent fixture in the Western world. gations Engaging Architecture, Landscape, and the City, For the same reason, which is traceable to the modern Mohsen Mostafavi and Peter Christensen (Basel: Lars spatial metaphysics that is presupposed by the current Muller Publisher, 2013): 346–364. discourse, crisis has become a permanent condition. The 12. Elizabeth Burton, Mike Jenks, and Katie Williams, ed., modern is obsessed with control as exemplified by the The Compact City: A Sustainable Urban Form? (London: rise of the 'cult of efficiency', technology valuation, and Spon Press, 2004). According to Ambrose A. Adebayo, 'scientific management', as well as the dominant philoso“it is in this context that compact city form has been phy of will expressed by Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedpunted as the main way of promoting sustainable hu- rich Nietzsche. The flip side of an obsession with control man settlements in both the developed and the develop- is expressed by a fear of fear—the terror of hysteria. This ing world. The concept is, to a certain extent, premised side of modernity is best expressed by Sigmund Freud's on urban containment, to provide a concentration of obsession with this 'illness'. Since the Renaissance, the socially sustainable mixed uses that will concentrate de- perspectival mentality of the West has been intensely velopment and reduce the need to travel, thus reducing preoccupied with the conquest of space. This has also vehicle emissions. As such the compact city concept is included the attempt to spatialize, and to control time” premised on environmental sustainability (reducing the (649). “It is important to recognize that the Christian escarbon footprint) and socioeconomic sustainability (pro- chatology spawned a sense of linear time that leads to a viding of social and economic facilities in close proxim- dead end. Since this mentality emerged, each generation ity).” See “A Tale of Two African Cities: Hyper Growth, has believed that it is in a 'crisis'. This belief in impending Sprawl and Compact City Development” (working paper doom has been combated both on a spiritual and physifor 48th ISOCARP Congress 2012), www.isocarp.net/ cal level. Physical science has been the favored tactic for Data/case_studies/2172.pdf. control since the rebirth of Aristotle's thought (Renais13. See Nathan F. Sayre, “The Genesis, History, and sance) in the West” (650). Limits of Carrying Capacity,” Annals of the Association of 18. United Nations General Assembly, “Annex 1 - Rio American Geographers 98 No.1 (2008): 120–134. Declaration on Environment and Development” (Rio de 14. In a broad and generic perspective, New Urbanist Pe- Janeiro, June 3-14, 1992), www.un.org/documents/ga/ ter Calthorpe claimed in 1985 that “the city is the most conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.htm environmentally benign form of human settlement. Each 19. UN, “Rio Declaration on Environment and Developcity dweller consumes less land, less energy, less wa- ment” (1992): 1. ter, and produces less pollution than his counterpart in settlements of lower densities.” See “Redefining Cities,” in Whole Earth Review (March 1985): 1. In an October 18, 2004, article of the New Yorker, “Green Manhattan: Everywhere should be more like New York,” David Owen

20. The year 1972 was a moment of ideological convergence and environmental apotheosis. The UN Conference in Stockholm was largely the child of several other conferences that were formulated in Europe by the United Nations and in the United States by the Aspen Landscape as Infrastructure

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Institute. For example, the 1961 Aspen Institute Conference (premised on “The Climates of the 11th and 16th centuries A.D.” by Hubert H. Lamb) was arguably one of the most important conferences on the modern notion of the environment in the United States. It would later shape important thinkers, and be referenced in other, future venues: the Aspen Technology Conference (1961), UN/WMO Conference in Rome (1961), and Les Changements de Climat (1965). See Judy McLemore, “Total Quality Management General Systems Theory And Marxist Theory-Praxis,” Vol.1-4 (Herndon, KS: Institution for Authority Research, 2002). Nevertheless, Stockholm was built on the foundation of an important document co-written in 1972 by British economist Margaret Ward (”Spaceship Earth,” 1966) and French-American microbiologist René Dubos (”Think Globally, Act Locally,” 1980) titled Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet. Precursor to the Earth Charter, the unofficial report by Ward and Dubos was commissioned by Maurice Strong, then Secretary-General of the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. Regarded as the architect of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, Strong was the Canadian power broker who is regularly credited as the founding father of the modern environmental movement. The multi-millionaire was the founding head of the UN Environmental Program (precursors to the IPCC), board member of the Chicago Climate Exchange (the greenhouse gas emissions registry reduction system), director of the Aspen Institute, senior advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, senior advisor to World Bank President James Wolfensohn, chair of the Earth Council, chair of the World Resources Institute, Co-Chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum, and Member of Toyota’s International Advisory Board. For more information on Strong, see “Al Gore set to become first carbon billionaire” (The New York Times, 2009).

Press, 2004). 26. Swami Muktananda, “From the Infinite to the Finite: Review of Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III: The Limits to Growth” (New York, NY: Universe Books, 1972), The Review of Politics 36 No.1 (1974). 27. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth, 7. 28. A few of the examples include: Cole, Marie Jahoda, K.L.R. Pavitt, and Christopher Freeman's Models of Doom: A Critique of the Limits to Growth (New York, NY: Universe Books, 1972), and William D. Nordhaus, “World Dynamics: Measurement without Data” The Economic Journal 83 No.332 (December 1973): 1156–1183, as well as a countercritique by Jay W. Forrester himself, “Response to a Paper on World Dynamics by Nordhaus,” mimeo D-1736-3 (February 26, 1973). A more-personal reassessment of the limits of Limits comes from Paul Krugman, who worked for Nordhaus as a research assistant at Yale University; see “Limits to Growth and Related Stuff,” The New York Times (April 22, 2008). The original authors of Limits published their own review in The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. One of the original authors, William Behrens III, was not part of the thirtyyear update, since, according to Forrester, Behrens abandoned the ideas of Limits to become a potato farmer and seller of non-electric household appliances. 29. The authors of Limits published the book with the following dedication: “To Dr. Aurelio Peccei, whose profound concern for humanity has inspired us and many others to think about the world's long term problems.” 30. Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1968). The book was also written with his spouse, Anne Ehrlich, who was not originally credited.

31. Practically in unison with Ehrlich's Population Bomb, Garrett Hardin's “The Tragedy of the Commons,” pro21. For a deeper explanation of the implications of the claimed in 1968 that “the population problem has no concept of carrying capacity, see Virginia Deane Aber- technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in nethy, “Carrying Capacity: the Tradition and Policy Impli- morality,” Science 162 (1968): 1243–1248. cations of Limits,” in Ethics in Science and Environmental 32. Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring (New York, NY: HoughStudies (2001): 9–18. ton Mifflin, 1962) was fundamentally different than other, 22. Dennis Meadows, Donella Meadows, Jørgen Randers, broader, alarmist, environmental manifestos. Although it and William Behrens III, The Limits to Growth (New York, received its own share of criticism and share of opposition, Silent Spring focused specifically on “point sources” NY: Universe Books, 1982): 11–12. of pollution, and intrinsically targeted the use of hazard23. Hasan Özbekhan, Alexander Christakis, and Aurelio ous pesticides such as DDT that, like other chemical synPeccei, The Predicament of Mankind (Geneva, CH: Club of thetics, are persistent, difficult to break down biologically, Rome, 1970): 9. and can accumulate across the biological food chain. 24. Alfred Sauvy, “Trois Mondes, Une Planète,” 33. Hasan Özbekhan was a Turkish-American planner L'Observateur No.118 (August 14, 1952): 14. who worked for the System Development Corporation, 25. The 1973 oil crisis had nothing to do with resource one of the world's first software companies, a spin-off scarcity. It was not an oil crisis inasmuch as it was a from RAND, the military research think tank in Santa crisis in political control of resource flow between the Monica, California. West and the Middle East that led to an “oil embargo” 34. Alexander Christakis was a physicist-turned-social placed on the US by Arab members of OPEC. However, scientist involved in technological forecasting research, the embargo did expose the fragility of several Western and interactive management, developing strong ties to economies that exclusively relied on petroleum for major systems engineer John N. Warfield from the Battelleeconomic sectors and industries, such as transportation, Columbus Laboratories. energy, defense, electronics, and manufacturing. For a more in-depth understanding of oil as both geologic re- 35. Limits can also be seen as the incarnation of Auresource and political commodity, see Giacomo Luciani's lio Peccei's “Project 1969,” which he explained in great “Oil and political economy in the international relations detail in the last chapter of his book, The Chasm Ahead of the Middle East” in International Relations of the Middle (Toronto: Collier-Macmillan, 1969): “to explore how exEast, ed. Louise Fawcett (London, UK: Oxford University isting or new forecasting and planning techniques can 110

be employed to describe present situations and trends, calculate projections, draw alternative paths and solutions to reach these goals. and generally foster a greater rationality and objectivity in the decision-making process.” (219–220). Peccei's “Project 1969" later evolved the Club of Rome's “Project on the Predicament of Mankind.” 36. Battelle-Columbus Laboratories, or BCL, is now Battelle headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. 37. In the 1970s, Battelle initiated several projects on urban problems. With the arrival of systems scientists and interactive management expert John Warfield, Battelle undertook the Large City Design Project with Alexander Christakis, former member of the Club of Rome. According to a self-published chronology, Warfield “initiates The Large City Design Project at Battelle to: (a) study behavior in a group of experts who are striving to collaborate on a very problematic situation, full of complexity and (b) to see whether the experts can develop a plan to design a city for a million people as a way to establish a benchmark against which troubled cities can be compared” in John N. Warfield, “Chronology related to a science of complexity, generic design science and interactive management covering the period 1956–1998" (Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Archives, accessed June 1, 2014). http://ebot.gmu.edu/ bitstream/handle/1920/3465/Warfield_90_15_A1b. pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

very educational experience. We shut the country down because of monetary reasons. We had manpower and abundant raw materials. Yet we shut the country down. We’re doing the same kind of thing now but with a different material outlook. We are not in the position we were in 1929–30 with regard to the future. Then the physical system was ready to roll. This time it’s not. We are in a crisis in the evolution of human society. It’s unique to both human and geologic history. It has never happened before and it can’t possibly happen again. You can only use oil once. You can only use metals once. Soon all the oil is going to be burned and all the metals mined and scattered.” See Testimony before Subcommittee on the Environment of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-Third Congress, Serial no. 93-55 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, June 4, 1974). 44. Charles Hitch, On the Choice of Objectives in Systems Studies (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1955). 45. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Development and International Economic Co-Operation: Environment - Note by the Secretary General - A/43/427 (Geneva: UN General Assembly, 1987): 1. 46. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth, 7. 47. Club of Rome, The Predicament of Mankind, 14–16.

48. Hasan Özbekhan, Toward A General Theory of Planning (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Man38. John Warfield, a colleague of Alexander Christakis, agement and Behavioral Science Center, 1969). further developed the idea of problématique as both con- 49. Özbekhan, “Toward A General Theory of Planning,” cept and tool. Stemming from systems thinking, and his 85. work on interactive management, Warfield developed 50. See the chaper on “The Emergence of ‘One World’” computational and graphical methods for illustrating in Aurelio Peccei's The Chasm Ahead (Toronto: Macmil“root causes” and identifying “the problem itself.” See lan, 1969): 135–157. “The Problématique: Evolution of an Idea,” Systems Re51. Özbekhan, “Toward A General Theory of Planning,” search and Behavioral Science 16 (1999): 221–226. 21. 39. For a retrospective outlook, see Alexander Christakis's account of the interrelationship research with the 52. See F. Gregory Hayden, “The Inadequacy of Forrester Club of Rome and funding from the Battelle's Academy System Dynamics Computer Programs for Institutional for Advanced Problems in How People Harness Their Col- Principles of Hierarchy, Feedback, and Openness,” CBA lective Wisdom And Power: To Construct The Future in Co- Faculty Publications Paper 14 (2006). Laboratories of Democracy (Charlotte, NC: Information 53. Özbekhan, “Toward A General Theory of Planning,” Age Publishing, 2006). 23. 40. Constantinos Doxiadis was arguably the most suc- 54. For a pre-assessment of the challenges of populacessful practitioner to promote the “urban” as problé- tion and resources, see Harrison Brown, The Challenge of matique. He capitalized greatly on the notion of urban- Man's Future (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), pubization as uncontrollable phenomenon and a process in lished in shorter form much earlier, in Engineering & Scicrisis. See Horace Ludson, “Planners: Oracles at Delos,” ence 17 No.6 (1954): 22–32. TIME Magazine (August 8, 1969): 58–59. 55. See William D. Nordhaus, “World Dynamics: Mea41. One of the most important critiques of the world surement without Data,” in The Economic Journal, 83 no. systems model employed by the Club of Rome was Wil- 332 (1973): 1156–83. liam Nordhaus, who, a year later in 1973, published a concise and pointed article, “The Allocation of Energy 56. The notion that planning represents a general, uniResources,” in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 3 fied, and collective practice is flawed. For a longer discussion and critique of Hasan Özbekhan's “Toward a Gen(1973): 529–570. eral Theory of Planning,” see Seymour J. Mandelbaum, 42. See Thomas Malthus, “An Essay on the Principle of “A Complete General Theory of Planning Is Impossible” Population: Or a View of Its Past and Present Effects on Policy Sciences 11 No.1 (1979): 59–71. Human Happiness; with an Inquiry Into Our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils 57. Although it is portrayed as “a simplification of reality,” the complexity of the World3 computer model and which It Occasions” (London, UK: John Murray, 1798). the feedback loops and nonlinear relationships it out43. In 1974, geoscientist Marion Hubbert King testified lines, “does not distinguish among different geographic before Congress: “I was in New York in the 30’s. I had parts of the world, nor does it represent separately the a box seat at the depression. I can assure you it was a Landscape as Infrastructure

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rich and the poor.” Several other limitations of the modeling system are outlined in Limits to Growth, the 30-Year Update: A Synopsis by the Original Authors of Limits (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2004): 7. 58. In “Dilemmas in General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences Vol.4 No.2 (June 1973): 155-169, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber write that “the formulation of a wicked problem is the problem! The process of formulating the problem and of conceiving a solution (or re-solution) are identical, since every specification of the problem is a specification of the direction in which a treatment is considered” (161). They further go on to attack the linear method of operations research: “systems-approach of the military and the space programs is based on the assumption that a planning project can be organized into distinct phases. Every textbook of systems engineering starts with an enumeration of these phases: 'understand the problems or the mission,' 'gather information,' 'analyze information,' 'synthesize information and wait for the creative leap,' 'work out solution,' or the like. For wicked problems, however, this type of scheme does not work. One cannot understand the problem without knowing about its context; one cannot meaningfully search for information without the orientation of a solution concept; one cannot first understand, then solve. The systemsapproach 'of the first generation' is inadequate for dealing with wicked-problems. Approaches of the 'second generation' should be based on a model of planning as an argumentative process in the course of which an image of the problem and of the solution emerges gradually among the participants, as a product of incessant judgment, subjected to critical argument. The methods of Operations Research play a prominent role in the systems-approach of the first generation; they become operational, however, only after the most important decisions have already been made, i.e. after the problem has already been tamed” (162). 59. After the 1920s, cities in the US began to incorporate, forming into self-governing legal entities, primarily for census demographics and later for tax purposes. For a discussion of the contradictory comparison between corporations and states (including cities and nations), see Paul Krugman, “A Country Is Not a Company,” in Harvard Business Review (January/February 1996): 40.

be imposed for each child after a fixed number of children, considering that the tax system has not solved the population migration problem?” (78). 62. See Thomas Hughes, Rescuing Prometheus: Four Monumental Projects that Changed the Modern World (New York, NY: Pantheon, 1998). 63. Forrester received immediate tenure at the age of 38 at MIT, where he was invited to become consulting professor at the Sloan School of Management, formerly called the School of Industrial Management. 64. Conversation with Jay W. Forrester, February 14, 2010, Concord, Massachusetts. 65. See Jay W. Forrester, “System Dynamics and LearnerCentered-Learning in Kindergarten through 12th Grade Education” (Publication D-4337, 1993). 66. David Simmonds, Paul Waddell, and Michael Wegener, “Equilibrium v. Dynamics in Urban Modelling,” paper presented at the Symposium on Applied Urban Modelling, “Innovation in Urban Modelling” (University of Cambridge, May 23-24, 2011). 67. See Paul N. Edwards, “The World in a Machine: Origins and Impacts of Early Computerized Global Systems Models,” in Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After, ed. Thomas P. Hughes and Agatha C. Hughes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000): 221–254. 68. It is not insignificant that MIT did not have a department of geography, nor did Harvard University. Forrester was unaware of the work of urban planner Kevin Lynch at MIT, nor that of systems ecologist Howard T. Odum, nor hydrological engineer Abel Wolman, who were all extremely active with spatial urban complexities. Forrester had very little patience for social systems theorists, urban planners, and systems thinkers who did operationalize or apply their work from, and in the field. 69. S. I. Schwartz and T. C. Foin, “A Critical Review of the Social Systems Models of Jay Forrester,” Human Ecology 1 No.2 (September 1972): 161–173. 70. See Chapter VI, “Toward a Planetary Society,” in John McHale's The Future of the Future (New York, NY: Braziller, 1969): 267–300.

71. McHale, The Future of the Future, 5. In the dedication page, McHale explains the premise of the book to avoid misperception of his futurist views and confusion with a form of intellectual elitism: “The future of the past is in the future, the future of the present is in the past, the 61. Ironically, it was the concept of population explosion future of the future is in the present.” in the “Third World” that later became synonymous with 72. Regionalization designates the process of identifying the world problématique in the 1980s, as the Brundtland overlapping regions of landscape change through netCommission states in “Our Common Future” (UN report, works, fields, and processes of urbanization. See Pierre 1987), with the observation that “demographic phenomBélanger, “Regionalization,” JoLA Journal of Landscape ena constitute the heart of the African Development proArchitecture (Fall 2010): 6–23. blématique. This is the data that lead most analysts to project a continuing and deepening crisis in Africa. There 73. See Jay W. Forrester, “Systems Analysis as a Tool for is no doubt of the imperative and urgent need for a far Urban Planning,” IEEE Transactions on Systems Science reaching population policy to be adopted and vigorously and Cybernetics 6 No.4 (October 1970): 260. implemented by African governments. One issue of rel- 74. See H.G. Wells, “The Probable Diffusion of Great Citevance that requires further research is the use of the ies,” in Anticipations, of the Reaction of Mechanical and tax system as a means for controlling population growth Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (Lonand discouraging rural-urban migration. To slow down don: Chapman & Hall, 1902): 14–26. population growth, should families without children be given a tax incentive or tax break? Should a tax penalty 75. Howard W. Odum and Harry Estill Moore, American

60. On the crisis of American planning, see Thomas Galloway and Riad G. Mahayni, “Planning Theory in Retrospect: The Process of Paradigm Change,” JAPA 43 No.1 (1977): 387–398.

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Regionalism: A Cultural-Historical Approach to National Integration (New York, NY: Henry Holt, 1938), 5. Sociologist and regionalist Howard W. Odum was the father of the frequently-cited Odum brothers, ecologist Howard T. and biologist Eugene P. Odum. Important to note that the regionalism advocated by Howard W. Odum in the first half of the century was more akin to notions of dispersed and diffused patterns of urbanization that Benton MacKaye qualified as super-urbanization and Jean Gottmann argued for through the lens of an “irregular, urban landscape,” and that did not intrinsically rely on notions of the city (refer to Chapter “Landscape as Infrastructure” in this volume for more information). The views of these early- to mid-century urbanists are fundamentally different and largely in opposition to the more centric, virtuous, moralistic concepts of regionalism and pedestrianism proposed by canons of smart growth and New Urbanism pushed by Peter Calthorpe, Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and a generation of followers.

ogy of Commerce (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1993) and Christien Meindertsma, Pig 05049 (Rotterdam, NL: Flocks, 2007). 86. In Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), Robert Bruegmann discusses at great length the inevitability of sprawl and how efforts to thwart it may be doomed. 87. We can recapitulate that the goal of ecology—as the greatest, overlooked concept of modernity—offers a path toward perpetual growth. Thus, infinity becomes a more-apt substitute for the concept of sustainability; a spatial, systemic, and material paradigm by which universality, transparency, and interconnectivity can be both expressed, implied, and translated. 88. This text borrows the format of a lecture by R. Buckminster Fuller in 1969, titled “Planetary Planning” given in New Delhi, India, for the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund.

76. In Emerging Issues in the 21st Century World-System - Vol II: New Theoretical Directions (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003), Wilma A. Dunaway discusses how the “deruralization of the world” is part of a series of developments “undermining the basic structures of the capitalist world-economy […] Two hundred years ago, 80 percent or more of the world's population was rural. By now, the rural population is less than 30 percent […] the deruralization of the world has virtually eliminated the traditional compensatory mechanism of opening up new primary production zones, and therefore, the worldwide cost of labor will rise to the detriment of capital accumulation.” (5-6) 77. In a lesser-known text on the “Pattern of the Metropolis” Daedalus Vol.90 No.1 (1961): 79–98, Kevin Lynch outlines how problematic the notion of form is and instead proposes the need for more research and understanding of urban spatial patterns and their morphologies. 78. Robert Bruegmann, Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006): 220. 79. See Howard T. Odum, Robert F. Pigeon, and U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, A Tropical Rain Forest: A Study of Irradiation and Ecology at El Verde, Puerto Rico (Springfield, VA: Division of Technical Information, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1970). 80. Howard T. Odum et al., A Tropical Rain Forest, 1–277. 81. Howard T. Odum, “Net Energy, Ecology and Economics,” (Statement for a 1973 News Conference) Mother Earth News (May/June 1974): 1. 82. Abel Wolman, “The Metabolism of Cities” in Scientific American (1965): 179. 83. See Jason Lemoine Churchill, “The Limits to Influence: the Club of Rome in Canada, 1968 to 1988" (thesis, University of Waterloo, 2006). 84. See an outline of open systems in Toward a General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (New York, NY: George Braziller, 1968) by Ludwig Von Bertallanfy. 85. The material dimension of urbanization has yielded important developments that are found in three emerging fields of study: industrial ecology, material ecologies, and resource ecologies. See Paul Hawken, The Ecol-

> Systems Breakdown & Infrastructure Lifespans. This visual chart compiles data and reports from the following organizations: American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, American Institute of Physics, American Iron and Steel Institute, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Society of Civil Engineers’ Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, American Water Works Association, Asphalt Institute, Association of American Railroads, Bio-Cycle, Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, Center for an Urban Future, Clean Air Council, Earth Engineering Center of Columbia University, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration, Gotham Gazette, I-Corp International, Inc., New Jersey Transit, New York City Department of Transportation, New York Times, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Passenger Rail Working Group, Railway Tie Association, Rand Infrastructure, Safety and Environment Center, Transportation for America, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Transportation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Landscape as Infrastructure

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1850

1900

1950

2000

1967 The most popular commercial jet, Boeing’s 737, has its first flight

COMMERCIA

1930 Sir Frank Wittle patents the turbojet engine

TAXI

1891 German inventor, Wilhelm Bruhn invented the taxi meter 1895 The first use of internal combustion engine buses 1863 The first section of the London Underground opens, making it the oldest subway system in the world 1897 The first underground trainline in the US opens in Boston 1913 The first highway paved with concrete is built near Pine Bluff, Arkansas 1870 Belgian chemist, Edmund J. DeSmedt laid the first true asphalt pavement in the US in front of City Hall in Newark, New Jersey r 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act is signed 2002 All but 5.6 miles of the 42,793 mile interstate system are complete and open to traffic late 1930’s Canadian Engineer publishes a paper, “Luminous Marking for Highways,” that claimed the use of glass spheres in road markings adventageous

BUSE SU

PCC CONCRETE

HOT MIX ASPHALT

early 1940’s Durring World War II, reflective beaded lines were used on highways to expedite traffic during blackouts

TRAFFIC SIGNAGE Overhead

SIGNAGE Roadside

CURVED TRACK 1980 Stragglers Act deregulates the American railroad industry 1930s The electrical system of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor is installed

STRAIGHT TRACK TREATED WOOD TIES

Mobility

1966 First major use of concrete ties

CONCRETE TIES

mid 1950s Dieselization of Class 1 Railroads

Ton-miles of rail freight have doubled since 1980, a Rail-car capacity has grown by more than 5% in th

LOCOMOTIVES LOCKS

1938 Ridge Avenue bridge in Philadelphia is coated using zinc metalizing 1936 Kaw River bridge in Kansas City is the first bridge protected by zinc metalizing

More costly than painting, zinc

ZINC METALIZING

Today, paint on the Golden Ga Replacing the original paint w 1 out of 3 bridges in New York is 140,000 vehicles travel across th , vehicles travel every y day y 150,000

BRIDGE PAINT 1880s Steel replaces wrought iron

MAJOR STEEL BRIDGE

1912 McLaughlin bridge is longest steel bridge constructed in the US 1964 Verrazano Narrows Bridge constructed as longest suspension bridge in the world

late 1970s Cable-stayed construction raised the bar for concrete bridges

SHORT-SPAN STEEL BRID

1951 Walnut Lane Memorial Bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as first prestressed concrete bridge in North America 1910 Steel has replaced wrought iron as the preferred material and many states developed standard plan truss bridges for ease of construction and standardization

DECK STEEL TRUSS BRIDGE

1855 The Gasconade Bridge in Missouri collapses during the inaugural run of the Pacific Railroad

COVERED WOOD TRUSS BRIDGE 1820–1850 Because wood is so abundant in the US, early truss bridges are constructed mainly from fitted timber members

WOOD TRUSS BRIDGE TYPICAL BRIDGE

1991–2001 Cargo traffic has increased by 26% at JFK, dropping from 1 to 5 as nation’s busiest cargo airport, due to outdated facilities and surrounding highways

RUN

1991–2001 Cargo traffic has increased by 79% at Newark International, 68% at Miami International, and 49% at Chicago O’Hare

RUN 2004 New Jersey starts the first Solar Renewable Energy Certificate Program

SOL

Energy

2008 Department of Energy issues report 20% Wind Energy by 2030 1966 The median year generating stations in the coal fleet were built

COAL POWER PLANTS

1979 Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown

NUCLEAR POWER PLA

1888 Nikola Tesla delivered a lecture entitled A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers where he presented his new inventions to the public for the first time 1992 Deregulation of power generation and transmission through the Energy Policy Act

TRANSFORMERS

late 1910s The interconnection of small scale power networks was greatly spurred by the electricity requirements during World War I; larger generating plants were needed to provide power for munition factories

TRANSMISSION LINES WOODEN UTILITY POLE

latte 1800s The first combined interceptor was authorized and constructed in Boston, MA la

Interceptors PUMPING STATIONS

Climate change related infrastructure costs a

Mechanical + Electrical

1972 EPA passes the Clean Water Act

PUMPING STATIONS -

1972 Major upgrades to urban sewage treatment plants removed up to 95% of pollutants re-entering the water supply

Concrete Structures

Publicly owned wastewater treatm

TREATMENT PLANTS Mechanical + Electrical

TREATMENT PLANTS 1850 Chicago plans to build a system of combined sewers, making it the first comprehensive sewerage system in the US

PIPES (POST-WWII)

1920 Expansion of urban water systems

CAST IRON PIPES (POST 1920S)

1880 Development of urban water systems 1801 801 01 Philadelphia develops the first centralized water distribution system in the US 1880s s: Physicians link disease outbreak to contaminated water supplies

Water

CONCRETE STRUCTURES

COLLECTION 1950s Expansion of water systems into suburbs

15% of the 67 New York City A significant p

CAST IRON PIPES (LATE 1800S) PUMPING STATIONS -

Mechanical + Electrical

1801 Philadelphia developed a steam engine pump to extract water from the Schuylkill River to an elevated reservoir for future distribution

PUMPING STATIONS -

1974 Safe Drinking Water Act established to ensure close monitoring of contaminants in public water supply

TREATMENT PLANTS Mechanical + Electrical

TREATMENT PLANTS 2005 New Orleans levee failures during Hurricane Katrina 1927: The Great Mississippi Flood levee breach 1968 The National Flood Insurance Act establishes the 100-year flood as a special flood hazard area 1920 The creation of the Federal Power Commission increased development of hydro-electric power plants

Concrete Str

The U.S. loses 6 City Tunnels 1 a New York City be Boston, New York City, San Franc

TRUNK MAINS

1900–1910: Philadelphia takes on citywide water filtration, building 5 new plants, making the project the largest filtration works in the world

Concrete Stru

1988: Congress passes the Ocean Dumping Ban Act, forbidding g ocean disposal p of sewage g sludge g by y 1992

LEVEES

HYDRO-ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS

1933 The government created the Tennessee Valley Authority as it became apparent that large dams could also be used for flood control, navigation, and irrigation 1930s Hoover Dam is one of world’s largest structures and producers of hydro-electric power

LARGE DAMS SMALL / MEDIUM SCALE DAMS EX SITU

1986 CERCLA is amended to address short and long term removal and remedial actions of contaminated sites - Superfund

IN SITU Bioremediation

post-1945 The prospect of nuclear energy as a reliable power source is researched by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission 1999 The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant opens after 20 years of planning; it is the world's first underground repository for transuranic waste 1982 Congress passes the Nuclear Waste Policy Act which created a timetable and procedure for establishing a permanent, underground repository for high-level radioactive waste 2009 The Obama Administration rejects use of Yucca Mountain site by eliminating all funding 1987 Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to designate Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the only site to be characterized as a permanent repository for all of the nation's nuclear waste

1988 The Medical Waste Tracking Act established a cradle-to-grave tracking system utilizing a generator initiated tracking form

Waste

1987 30 mile garbage slick composed primarily of medical waste washes up on multiple East Coast beaches 1980 Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act requires each state to provide disposal capacity for waste generated within its borders

1980 Subtitle C of the Resourse Conservation and Recovery Act addresses the disposal of hazardous waste 1978 Love Canal Chemical Dump leakage, New York State 1994 With the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the US begins to import hazardous waste from Mexico

LOW LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE (LLRW) ACTIVE LAN

HAZARDOUS WASTE (HW) ACTIVE LANDFILL

1980 Government passes the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) to address hazardous waste dumping and post-closure contamination

1976 Government regulates MSW dumping with passage of Resource Conservation and Recovery Act 2001 Closure of Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, NY, the largest landfill in the world

MSW ACTIVE LANDFILLS

1991 EU landfill directive ensures financial security and aftercare measures for a period of at least 30 years 1967 Two people killed and a further two injured when a methane gas explosion tore apart a single story home in Atlanta, Georgia

MSW LANDFILL 1975 The first commercial landfill gas-to-energy project at Rolling Hills Estates in California opened 1980s The practice of leachate recycling started being encouraged by some municipalities as it increases the rate of landfill settlement

Systems Breakdown & Infrastructure Lifespans

Visualizing the buildup and breakdown of urban infrastructure, this chart displays the longevity of equipment and facilities associated with centralized systems of waste, water, energy and mobility that are planned by engineers with range of technical specialists, often supported by significant funding from government bodies. As a result of the planned or unplanned obsolescence built into this urban equipment, the chart critically delineates the prolonged effects of deferred maintenance beyond the jurisdiction of project boundaries. While a clear forecast of the future can be mapped out, there is a basic, and important conclusion that can be gleaned from this evidence. The construction of monofunctional infrastructures and large-scale technological systems are inseparable from the dynamic environments and economies they are built in, and the populations they are built for. As we approach and pass the end of 114

2050

2100

2150

AL AIRPLANES

Only 18 cents of every transporation dollar supports public transportation

There has been a 38% increase use of public transportation since 1995

Taxis have a lifespan of 3–7 years depending on model and make of the vehicle Taxis are retired after 300,000 and 350,000 miles per vehicle In February 2011, New York City had around 4,300 hybrid taxis, almost 33% of New York's 13,237 taxis in service, the most in any city in North America

NJ Transit is the nation's largest statewide public transportation system providing nearly 857,000 weekday trips on 240 bus routes

During their lifetime, subway cars go through 48 wheels, 24 motors and 24 axles By 2008, 666 retired NYC subway cars have been used to create an artificial reef off the coast of Delaware By 2035 B 2035, hi highway h usage (and shipping by truck) is expected to double, leaving Americans to spend an average of 160 hours a year in traffic In 2005, traffic congestion wasted 2.9 billion gallons of fuel and 4.2 billion hours of highway users’ time The National Highway System makes up 4% of total mileage, yet it carries 44.6% of total travel in the United States. Urban Interstate highways make up 0.4% of total mileage but carry 16.3% of total vehicle miles traveled From 1997–2005, travel occuring under congested conditions in urbanized areas increased from 24.9% to 28.7% The National Forest Service decommissions an average of 2038 miles of road annually Directional dividing lines on major routes are painted annually Lane edge lines and dividing lines on lower volume routes are painted every two years Approximately 30,000 lane-miles are painted every year

UBWAY TRAIN CARS

1980–2005: Total VMT grew by 96% while lane miles of road increased by only 5.7%

25% of the interstate miles are at more than 95% capacity

Poorly maintained roadways, including faded road signs account for 16.3% of accidents according to NHTSA data

The total amount of track in the US has been reduced from 250,000 miles in 1915 to 147,000 miles by 1998 Amtrak owns/operates 3.1% of its track network, only preserving their statutory rights for access on the rest of 21,095 mile network Amtrak’s ridership and revenue has increased by 20% over the past 5 years 93% off all ll rail il ti ties are treated wood in North America Primary rail corridors consist of 52,340 miles of track, roughly 50% of all Class 1 operated miles in the US—1/3 of the entire U.S. freight network 42% of all intercity freight in the US travels via rail including 70% of domestically manufactured automobiles and 70% of coal delivered to power plants There are 257 locks in use in the US—30 were built in the 1800s and 92 are more than 60 years old The average rehabilitation cost per lock is $50 million—the USACE can fully fund 2-3 projects per year 25% of locks are less than 600 feet long and cannot accommodate an average size tow of 12 barges plus a towboat A modern, fully-laden container ships need a depth more than 45 feet and bulk vessels need more than 60 feet 2020: volumes of international trade expected to double and containerized cargo is expected to triple

and density of train traffic has tripled he past 10 years

Demand for freight transportation is projected to nearly double by 2035—from 19.3 billion tons to 37.2 billion tons

The average age of all federally owned locks is 60 years

c metalizing protects steel 5 times longer than paint

By 2020, 8 out of 10 locks in service will be outdated

ate Bridge is touched up continuously ith an inorganic zinc primer and an acrylic emulsion top coat on the Golden Gate Bridge took 30 years to complete classified deficient e Brooklyn Bridge daily; it is 1 of 4 bridges in New York City rated in ‘poor’ condition y across the Queensboro Bridge, g , originally g y designed g to carry y 110,000 ,

MAJOR CONCRETE BRIDGE GE

24.5% of all bridges in the US are classified deficient

2002: San Francisco-Oakland East Bay Bridge Skyway as single largest contract in CalTran’s 1980: Sunshine Skyway Bridge cable-stay collapse

Short span bridges make up over 2/3 of North America’s over 650000 inventoried bridges

69223 are structurally deficient

2007: I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis, MN collapse

77410 are functionally obsolete

The Raritan River Smith St. Bridge in New Jersey is the most deficient, yet most heavily trafficked bridge in the US Pennsylvania has the largest number of deteriorating bridges – 5,906 out of a total of 22,271 in need of repair The average age of US bridges is 42 years A handwoven grass bridge spanning 120 ft is rebuilt annually by about 1000 farmers in the Andean communities of Huinchiri, Quehue, Choccayhua, Ccolana and Chaupibanda; the practice is believed to be over 1,000 years old In 2007, 79% of runways were rated good, 18% were rated fair, and only 3% were rated poor There were 370 runway incursions in 2007—up from 330 in 2006 90% of runways are asphalt, 10% concrete, but in terms of square footage, it is 80% asphalt In 2007, airlines reported an on-time arrival record of 73.3%, the second worst in history; the worst record—72.6%—was recorded in 2000 23% of all delays are caused by excessive volume and the FAA predicts an annual system increase total of 3%

WAY REPAIR WAY SURFACE

From 2005 to 2015, costs attributed to airline delays related to congestion and outdated air traffic control systems are expected to triple to $30 billion annually

LAR PANELS WIND TURBINE

2000: Martin County Sludge Spill, Martin County, KY

50% increased capacity for wind power in 2007–2008

2008: TVA Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant coal fly ash slurry spill, Roane County, TN

90% of the 104 nuclear power plants in the US are already more than 20 years old and half have been operating for more than 30 years 62 nuclear power plants have been granted 20 year extensions beyond their original 40 year lifespan 20 more requests for extension are pending

ANTS

Only about 11% of US power is now generated by sources other than coal, natural gas, and nuclear

The US grid results in rolling blackouts and losses of $80 billion a year

El t i l capacity in the United States increased by 50% in 2008 Electrical 28.8% is the average growth rate of power capacity worldwide 300000 kilometers of lines make up the United States power transmission grid operated by 500 companies 157000 miles of high-voltage electric lines are in operation in the US 91000 miles of underground electric cables makes New York’s distribution system the largest in the world There are 150 million wood poles in service throughout the US Six million additional poles are added annually 3% of treated wood poles are retired from service each year Though perservatives are known to leach into the soil, most retired wood poles are discarded in landfills, as most treated wood preservatives are not considered hazardous waste at the federal level

Electricity demand has increased by about 25% since 1990 while construction of transmission facilities decreased by about 30%

are estimated to be between $500 billion and $1 trillion by 2050

ment plants serve 189.7 million people and treat 32.1billion gallons per day

10% of sewer pipe in the US is classified as “poor,” “very poor,” or “life elapsed” If the existing system is extended to serve all new growth without renewal or replacement 44% will be classified as such

98% of wastewater treatment facilities are publicly owned 2003: 30 million gallons of raw sewage entered the East River when backup generators failed to work during the region-wide blackout

Sewers spill an estimated 1.26 trillion gallons of untreated sewage every year according to the EPA

The US has 600,000 miles of public owned pipe ASCE estimates 21ft of sewer pipe per capita 772 cities containing more than 40 million people in the US have combined sewer systems 00 miles of pipe installed more than 100 years ago in New York City y manages to replace 60 miles of pipe per year; it would take over 100 years to modernize the system portion of Philadelphia’s pipes are 150-200 years old 90% of public water systems in the U.S. citizents obtain water from groundwater supplies uctures 34% of Americans are supplied with treated groundwater, while 66% are supplied with surface water billion gallons of water per day due to over 240,000 water main breaks annually nd 2 deliver water to New York City; built in 1917 and 1936 the tunnels have never been shut down for inspection or repair egan constructing City Tunnel 3 in 1970; it will cost $6 billion and should be completed in 2020, 50 years after the began cisco and Portland, Oregon do not need to treat their surface water sources beyond disinfection

The US has 10 times more drinking water facilities than wastewater treatment facililities

California’s water system was designed to serve 18 million people, but it currently supplies 38 million, more than double

uctures

Dewatering reduces the liquid volume of sludge by 90%, sludge is initially only 3–5% solids Biosolids must be dewatered to be recycled as fertilizer or fill at reclaimed mine sites 43% of the population lives in a county protected by levees 26% is the chance of experiencing a 100 year flood event during the life of a 30-year mortgage 10 states keep records of levees within their borders 23 states have agencies responsible for levee safety

There is no definitive record of how many levees there are in the US, nor is there an assessment of the current condition and performance of those levees The Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state is the largest producer of hydro-electric power in the United States More than 1/3 of all dam failures or near-failures since 1874 have happened in just the last decade 1800 high hazard dams need repairs but only 80 have been repaired 30 different dams in New Jersey’s Burlington County failed or were damaged after a period of particularly heavy rainfall in 2004

17.6% of dams in the United States are rated “potentially high hazard”

1988–1993: Slurry-phase bioremediation at the French Limited Superfund Site, Crosby, TX

HIGH LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE (HLRW) HLRW Containers In 1987, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to designate Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the only site to be characterized as a permanent repository for all of the nation's nuclear waste Radioactive waste has a p predicted lifespan ranging from 12,000–100,000 years, but the Nuclear Waste Policy Act only required a permanent deep-geologic disposal of HLRW containment of waste within waste packages for only 300 years

DEEP GEOLOGICAL REPOSITORY

Practical studies only consider up to 100 years as far as effective planning and cost evaluations are concerned At the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant disposal operations are expected to continue until 2070 with active monitoring for a further hundred years. 90% of medical waste is incinerated at roughly 2,400 medical waste incinerators in the United States

HLRW ACTIVE MOLITORING WASTE INCINERATOR

November 2008: 1,255 sites were listed on the National Priorities List, down from 1,273 sites in 2004 9,957 sites are awating evaluation for a possible listing on the NPL 2008: 24,896 brownfield sites awaiting redevelopment in 188 U.S. cities LLRW subsidence occurs over longer periods of time due to the slow deterioration rate of high-integrity containers

NDFILL LLRW SUBSIDENCE

HW Subsidence

Contemporary landfills with persistant hazardous wastes are LLRW INSTITUTIONAL CONTROL thought to need effective lifespans approaching 1000 years I d Industrialized i li d countries i generate more than h 90% off the h world's ld' annuall totall off some 32 325–375 3 million illi tons off toxic i and d hazardous h d waste, mostly l ffrom the h chemical h i l and d petrochemical h i l industries i d Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Michigan and Illinois account for 70% of all hazardous waste generated in the US There are 21 commercial hazardous waste landfills in the US 2010: Apex Regional landfill in Las Vegas, Nevada is the largest landfill in the country

The US produces over 214 million tons of hazardous waste regulated by RCRA per year

2010: Roosevelt Regional Landfill, Washington, is the largest daily receiver of MSW

HW POST CLOSURE CARE

The EPA claims that yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 23 percent of the US waste stream 56.9% of yard trimmings were recovered for composting or grasscycled in 2000, an increase from the 12% recovery rate in 1990 The composting industry that has grown from less than 1,000 facilities in 1988 to nearly 3,800 in 2000 There are 726 landfill facilities in the South, the most of any region in the US There are only 134 landfills in the entirety of Northeast region of the United States, yet there are 300 landfills in Alaska alone Pennsylvania y is the largest g waste importer p in the US,, New York is the largest g waste exporter p

HDPE GEOMEMBRANES The garbage business in America generates $52 billion per year

MSW ACTIVE AFTERCARE

2010: Roosevelt Regional Landfill, Washington, is the largest daily receiver of MSW

EPA estimates 75% gas collection efficiency in U.S. landfills 2006 IPCC report estimated 20% landfill gas recovery efficiency

GAS COLLECTION MSW LANDFILL GAS PRODUCTION

INFILTRATION BARRIER (CAP) LEACHATE TREATMENT / MONITORING

2008 survey revealed 82% of landfill cells had leaks 41% of landfills had leaks larger than 1 square foot

389.5 million tons MSW were generated in 2010, 270 million tons were sent to landfills

the lifespan of many urban infrastructures built across North America after World War II, this chart asks an important set of questions. In response to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ desperate call for infrastructure renewal, what and how should we rebuild? How does reconstruction and reengineering affect the urbanization of a region? Should we design for permanence or for failure? Should we build stronger or weaker structures? Can natural systems be coupled with technological facilities to form the ground future infrastructural ecologies? How do we build in the face of dynamic climates and coastal hazards? In the face of the impermanence and decentralization of urban infrastructure, the inquiries unilaterally prompt critical, cross-disciplinary action by ecologists, urbanists, historians, geographers and engineers, as we construct the next generation public works projects for an era of unprecedented change and uncertain risk in the twenty-first century. Diagram: OPSYS/Alexandra Gauzza 115

Mature technological systems—cars, roads, municipal water supplies, sewers, telephones, railroads, weather forecasting, buildings, even computers in the majority of their uses—reside in a naturalized background, as ordinary and unremarkable to us as trees, daylight, and dirt. Our civilizations fundamentally depend on them, yet we notice them mainly when they fail, which they rarely do. They are the connective tissues and the circulatory systems of modernity. In short, these systems have become infrastructures. Paul N. Edwards, “Infrastructure and Modernity,” 2003

Redefining Infrastructure.

Minnesota DOT, 2007

Political Catastrophe, Natural Disaster, or Engineered Neglect? I-35 Mississippi River Bridge (Minnesota), collapsed on August 1, 2007; replaced within a year, opening on Thursday, September 18, 2008.

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Cities are sustained by infrastructure. Highways, airports, power plants, and landfills largely figure as the dominant effigies of contemporary urbanism. The sheer size of these elements renders their understanding as a single system practically impossible, yet their smooth functioning depend precisely on their continuity to support urban and industrial economies. Often found underground or on the periphery of cities, the presence of infrastructure remains largely invisible until the precise moment at which it breaks down or fails. Floods, blackouts, and shortages serve as a few reminders of the fragility of this invisible background that less than a century ago barely even existed. Rarely, do we stop to interrogate the functioning of this superstructure, but recent events—such as the rise and fall of water levels or the spike in energy and food prices—are instigating a critical review of the basic foundation upon which North American cities depend. Emerging from current economic exigencies and ecological imperatives, the following essay addresses this current techno-cultural shift. By re-examining the precepts of infrastructure—the basic system of essential services that support a city, a region, or a nation—and by reviewing current patterns of urbanization from which it emerged, new and emerging pressures are requiring a thorough rethinking and reinvestment into this vast field of practice by proposing alternative, infrastructural ontologies. Redefining Infrastructure

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Crisis and Confliict C nd Co ndit ittio iona ona nall to the rred edef efin in nit itio ion n of iinf nfra rast stru ruct ctur ure e is tthe he ret etro roac active ti tiv ve und derrst s an andi ding di n o ng off it itss an ante tece cede dent nts. s H s. His isstori to orica cally y de defi f ne ned d ass the th e “c col o le lect cti tive ive ne netw twor ork k of ro road ads, s, b bri ridg dg ges es, ra es, rail lin ines es and sim milar publ blic ic w wor orks ks ttha hatt ar are e re requ quir ired ed ffor or a an n in indu dust stri rial al econo co onomy my 1 to o fun nctio ctio ct ion, n,”” inf n, n ra rast stru ruct ctur ure e in N Nor orth th A Ame m ri me rica ca e eme merg rged ged iin n th the e earl ea r y tw twen enti en tiet eth h ce cent ntur ury y fr from om c cri risi ri s s an nd co c nf nfliict c , ra r th therr tha han n by de n. design Floo odi d ng and nd Fed der e al aliz izat iz atio at ion io Th he first re reco co ord ded u use se of th the e te erm “in nfr fras astr truc ctu ure re”” in i 19 1927 27 was a bo br ou ugh g t fo fort rth h duri during ng tthe he Gre reat at Fl Floo ood, d, arg rguablly th t e mo most st destru st ructiv ru ivve fl fo oo od in the his isto tory to r of th ry the e Un Unitted Sta tate tess ass “th the e set se e of o sy ystems, s wor s, orks ks a and nd n net ettwo ork ks up pon o whi hich ch a an n in ndu dust sttri rial all eco c nomy iss rel eliant elia ant nt—i —iin ot othe h r word he words, wo rd ds, s the u und nder erpi pinn nnin ings gs of mo ode d rn n 2 societ etie ties es an and d ec econ onom on omie om iess. ie s.” U s.” Unp np pre rece cede dent nted ed rai ainf nfal all th hro oug u h ho out the Mi M ss s is issi sipp si pp pi Ri Rive verr Ba ve asi s n st s ar arte ted te d in A Aug ug gus u t 19 1926 26, 6, an and d a ye year arr later turn tur ed into o fl f oo oodw d atterrs so dw sout utth to o tthe he Gu G lf of Me M xi xico co,, of co offf the coas coastt of New w Orl rlea ea ans ns. Th The de elu uge was d dev evas asta t ti ta ting ng:: mo ng more e than an n 120 lev evee eess we ee were were e des estr troy tr o ed oy ed,, mo more re e than han 16 ha 65 mi m llio llion n ac acre ress of far arml m an ml and d in inun unda un date da date ted; a and nd m mor ore or e than th han a 600 0,0 ,000 000 p peo eop eo ple dis ple disdi pllaced aced and 2 246 46 lives ives los iv o t. An es esti t ma ti mate ted te d 23 230 0 mi m llio lllio ion n do doll llar ll arss in ar reco co onstr truc u tion n and m mittig igat atio ion n pr proj ojec oj ects ts werre re equ quir ired d, le ead adin ing g to tthe h federal he d a re--or orga gani ga niza ni zati za tion a tion ti and nd d rree-ap ap ppr p op opri riat ri atio at io ion on of lev evee e s an nd trrib i ut u arry la land ndss wi nd w th thin in the he flo ood odpl p ai a n un unde derr th de the e ae aegi giss of gi of th the he U.S. U.S. U. S Arm rmy y Co Corp Corp rpss of Eng ngin in neers ee ers (US USAC ACE) AC E).. En E) E ab able led le d by tth he he 1928 19 28 Fl F oo ood d Co C ntro ntro r l Ac A t, tthe he con ontr ontr trol o of le ol leve eve vees es a and n wat nd ate errs ex e pand pa nded nd ed the man man anda date da te o off th the e Mi Missiissi s pp si pi Riive v r Co C mm missi ission on,, on w ose full mandate now included th wh he ma mana na nage age geme me ent nt and n p pro rotection of transportattion structur u es (ro ro oad a s an and d br brid idge id gess), re ge re-source protection (oil and coal), and futu ture re e ene nerg rgy generation (hydroelectric power). Flood d control be b came a man a ifold d utility. Underlying it was wa a the hydrrological region of the Mississippi, covering 41 1 percent of the United St S ates.

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National Weather Service, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.

Urban Flooding Water level of the Mississippi River at 52.8 feet above datum in Arkansas City, Arkansas, on April 27 during the Great Flood of 1927. Source: U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration

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121 12

Diagram: OPSYS/Laura Gosmino and Anna Kramer

Euclidean Geography Spatial effect of exclusionary zoning practices in Euclid, Ohio, the birthplace of modern land planning with Interstate 90 neatly separating historic residential land to the north from commercial and industrial land to the south, leading toward newer residential development.

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Eucllid idea ean Zo ea Zon ning and nd Plann nn nin ing g The Th e in nce cept ptio pt ion io n of zo zoni ning ni ng iiss ce cent ntra nt rall to the ra the bir irth th off in i fr fras astr as truc tr uctture uc tu in North th h America. In a lan andm dmar dm ark ar k ca case se dat atin ing in g ba back ck to 19 1926 26, 26 Vill Vi llag ll age off Eu ag Eucl clid,, Oh cl Ohio io vs. Ambler er R Rea ealt ea lty lt y Co Co.. (27 272 2 U.S S. 365 65)), a U S. U. S Sup upre reme re me Cou ourt rt jjud udge ud ge a app ppro pp rove ro ved ve d an iinj njun nj unct un ctio ct ion io n by a m mu uniici c pali litty li ty to pr prev even ev entt th en the e deve deve velo lopm lo pmen pm entt of an in en indu dust du stri st rial ri al c clu lust lu ste st er ne ext to o a residential neighborhood and nd d town cen nt nter. Sym mptoma to m tiic of not-in-my-backyard retortss, th he ca ase le led d to tthe fiirs rstt le legi gislated instance of urban land gi d segrregattion which prec pita ci ate ted d mo m dern pla lanniing by b way of singlle-use se e, exclusionary 3 zoni ning ni n . Euc ucliide uc d an planning led to the wid idesprrea id ad pr practiice e of la an us and use e se epa para ation and classificatio on. IIts ts p per erva er vasi va sive si ven ve ne ness be eca cam me so wi w de despre read re ad tthat, t, in th he absence ab of a regio onal or nati t on o al plann nn nin ing g au auth thor th orit or itty, Eu Eucl clid cl ide id ean zoning pre redi disp di spos sp osed ed periph her e al agricul ultu ul tura tu al la land ndss fo nd for fu futu ture tu re u urb rban rb an exp exp xpan ansi an sion si on. Wi With t th the th e si simu mult mu ltan lt aneo an eous eo us rris ise is e off motor orrizati tion an a d wi w der tra anspor orta or tata tion ti on corrridors, land use subdiviisi s on ina nad na dverte dver rte tent ntly ena nt nabl na bled bl ed tthe he in nsertio on of transportation n and d utility y co corrrid rrid dor orss as a buf uffe fers fe rs between inco tw com co mpatible lan nd usess. Ma Mark rkin rk ing in g th the e bi birt rth rt h of moder der ern n lan nd jurrispr p ud ude ence acros osss No os Nort rth rt h America a, zoni ning ni ng rrem emai em ains ai ns to this th is day day o one ne o off th the e most stt iins nstr ns trum tr umen um e ta tall me ech chan nis isms m in the so oci cial a , sp spatial, and eco c no omiic st strructurre of the Nor ortth Ame or m rica an 4 land la ndsscap nd a e since th he Je Jeffferso soni so n an grid.

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124 Official Illustrated History and Directory of Euclid, Ohio (1928): 97-98

Redefining Infrastructure

edef

In his earlier book, Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), Friedman radically proposes an “agenda for action for the recovery of political community [and self-production of life] begins at this point. It includes the decolonization of the household, its democratization, its self-empowerment, and its reaching out. […] To gain their autonomy and to transform themselves into politically active, producing units, households must selectively de-link from the system that keeps them in servitude. Their allocation of time to the exchange economy must be reduced so that resources can be gained for other activities. Households must learn to be more self-reliant in the production of life and do for themselves what they used to obtain from the market.” (358) Friedman’s observations clearly imply how the terrain of planning as well as the landscape of infrastructure operate as active grounds for the reproduction of life and open pathways towards democratization through decolonization.

Equally compelling and ironic, yet equally obscured, is the emergence of an entirely different Euclidean space, sometimes referred to as Cartesian space. Referring to Greek mathematician and father of geometry, Euclid of Alexandria, Euclidean space is based on geometry in two- or three-dimensions (thus excluding the fourth dimension of time). Its uncritical practice in planning has led to a paradigm of a rational, scientific management approach to land planning (orthogonal blocks, equal parceling, and parallel boundaries) and further led to centralized, closed, exclusionary, and inflexible approaches to land use organization. The practice has been criticized by insurgent planner of the twentieth century, John Friedmann, who called for “the collapse of Euclidean world order of stable entities and common sense assumptions that have governed our understanding of the world for the past two hundred years. The engineering model of planning that served us during this period, with its penchant for advance decision making and blueprinting and its claims to superiority to other forms of decision making because of its scientific character, are thus no longer valid and must be abandoned. We are moving into a non-Euclidian world of many space-time geographies, and it is the recognition of this change that obliges us to think of new and more appropriate models.” See John Friedmann, “Toward a Non- Euclidian Mode of Planning,” in Journal of American Planning Association 59 No.3 (1993), 482, and Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), which advocates for the urgency of decentralization, where planning practices are scalable, novel, flexible, sociopolitical, geographic, temporal, and transactive. Both Euclidian planning (in terms of geometric and orthogonal spaces) and Euclidean zoning (in terms of single and subdivided land-use zones) are widespread internationally through the dissemination of American architecture and engineering firms, as well as American planning pedagogy through universities and academics.

Lying in relative “obscurity” in the twenty-first century as Michael Allan Wolf refers to it, Euclidean zoning's origins are rooted in the century-old court case, Village of Euclid vs. Ambler Realty Co. (1926). The landmark case led to the implementation of modern singleuse zoning of land in the rapidly incorporating space of metropolitan environments of North America, from cities to towns, to villages. See Wolf's The Zoning of America (Lawrence, KA: University of Kansas Press, 2008): ix. The village engineer, Frank A. Thomas, who oversaw the regulatory zoning of Euclid during the landmark court case and strategically went on to form a consulting company in Euclid (later to became CT Consultants), would “provide a broad range of engineering services to assist municipalities” across the US and Europe. His firm has now grown into a consortium, CT/Floyd Bowne International, offering a wide range of engineering, procurement, and construction services. See “CT Continues Growth With Addition of E.G.&G.,” www.ctconsultants.com/news/ct-continuesgrowth-with-addition-of-e-g-g.

Euclidean Zoning and Euclidian Planning

Zenneck, A., New Orleans: The New Orleans Picayune, [1874], Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C.

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Records of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, RG 23

Public Operations Maps of valley overflow and federal flood relief measures with reparation strategies along the Mississippi River in 1927 under the Hoover administration, after successive series of flooding. Redefining Infrastructure

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URBANIZATION & THE PUBLIC IMPERATIVE FOR INFRASTRUCTURE In the background of flood events and zoning laws, two other major transformations marked the North American landscape: the urbanization of market economies and the regionalization of local resources. With the end to the Great Westward March and the closing of the Western frontier, urbanization established a definitive shift from a rural–agrarian pattern toward an urban–industrial one. The National Census revealed that in 1920, half of the country’s population lived in cities and suburbs instead of rural areas.5 The farming exodus of the nineteenth century marked a turning point as city populations exploded, especially in the Northeast and Midwest regions. America became urban. From the increasing size of dense agglomerations came a dramatic set of new challenges in the supply of basic, essential services. Effluents and Engineering While flooding and land reclamation preoccupied the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the effective drainage of cities and towns saw the birth of an entirely new professional specialization: the sanitary engineer. With the Yellow Fever epidemic in the 1790s, cholera outbreaks in the late 1800s, and the flushing of untreated sewage and dumping of garbage in water courses that served as drinking water supply, cities on the East Coast saw considerable cases of waterborne disease.6 Three types of effluents conditioned the new urban discipline of sanitation engineering: groundwater, surface runoff, and sewage. Colonel George E. Waring Jr., the illustrious sanitary engineer of the nineteenth century, advocated the separation of effluent conveyance while acknowledging the inseparability of the planning of these components as a system.7 From cesspools to illicit dumping, the uncoordinated methods of sewage posed a clear and present danger to public health and necessitated a reconception of two essential sectors of the urban landscape: sanitation and transportation.8 With limitations placed on surface capacity, urban density privileged roads and streets with underground pipes (covered canals, buried streams) and subterranean facilities as the principal means of conveyance.9 Simultaneously, the use of comprehensive city plans was fading, largely from the failure of urban planning to control the fragmentary expansion of large industrial metropolises.

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Engineering News and American Railway Journal 37 No.4 (1897), 56â&#x20AC;&#x201C;57

Modern Systems of Separation Engineered profiles of sewers, drains, and closets for urban sewage conveyance, typical of systems advocated by preeminent sanitary engineer Col. George E. Waring Jr.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1889 treatise Sewerage & Land Drainage.

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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. House Doc 531 31, 1948 948

Wealth through Water Power projects throughout the Columbia River Basin proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1933, and authorized by Roosevelt under the New Deal Program to develop a series of multipurpose dams designed to combine fresh water storage, river floods, river transportation, agricultural irrigation, and power production. Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. House Doc 531, 1948 (Oregon Historical Society)

Powe Po er an and d El E ec ectr tricity tr No oth her fac acto to or af a fected the nineteenth century city more than ele el ectr t icity. y Man anuf an ufac uf a tu turi ring ri ng towns ns in th the e 18 1800 0 s relied on coal 00 al-p -pow-p ered er e ste te eam ffor or e ene erg gy. y Inflexible, dirty, and noxi xiou xi o s, heavy industrria i l base ee eco co onomi miess wer mi ere e betterr suited d in i large ge e, comp mpact, cen mp en ntral lo oca cati t ons wi w th t c close se proxi ximi xi m ty to railheads and ha arb r orss for oill and coal. Advanc ces in n elec e tric cal power enabled lon ng di d stance transmi m ssion and rad adic ically ic y ope pene pe ed up larger urban ar areas. Cheap baselload powe po we er co c ulld also be prrod duc uced from chea ap Mi M ddle East oil or abu bunbu da ant Mid dwe wesstern co c al. Siinc ce 90 9 percent n of the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rural dwellnt errs ha ers had d no electricity by the latte te 192 920s, electrical pow 92 ower ow er provided 10 mean me ans fo an forr me mech chan ch a iz zat atio io on an and d au automa m tion. The he wid des espr prea pr ead ea d av avai a lab bil ilitty of o electtriici city ty exp xpan a ded workin ng hours be bey yond nd d the h lim imit itss off it d ylight da ht and ref e rigera ati t on no of perish shab sh a less comp ple lete tely te y urb rban aniz an iz zed the 11 trad dittio ona n l fo f od o chain. By th the 19 930 30ss el e ec e tricit ity it y wa as st s il illl fa farr mo more re e effi ef f ciently prod o uced in one la arg r e centrall locati tion ti o , bu butt trran ansm smis sm isis sion overr grea e t distances enab able ab l d greaterr urban expa p nsion and regi re g on gi onal int nterrco nt c nnec cti tivi v ty vi ty.. Un Unli like the Eurrop o ean city, el elec ectr ec t if tr ific icat ic atio at ion io n in Ame merica me ca a pre r -dat ated at ed urb rban an dev evel e op opment, leaving room m to gr g ow.12 T e co Th comb m in nat a ion of o sew ewage, trans ew n portation, and power infrastructure put ci c vil en engi gine gi neer ne erin er ing in g at the forefront of planning and development.13 In the absence of fe federal or state law on land nd o orr in infr fras fr astr as truc tr ucture, uc m ni mu nici c pa ci pall go goverrnme ment me nts to nt t ok k on the task of de deve velo ve lo opm pmen e t while engi g ne gi neer e s totalize z d th the e de d sign process by em embr brac br acin ac ing th in the e me metrics, e th he te echnology gy, and th gy he co c nstructi tion ti on of ne new w ur urban n sy sysst stem stem ems. The gro gr ound n work was laid fo forr th the e pr p e-eminen nce of a te tech c no ch n cratic engine n erin in ng el e ite that would soon come to do domi minate mi e the ttwe w ntieth we c ntur ce ury. ur

ROOSEVE ELT T, REFO ORM M, AND D REGIONALIZATION Retros Retr ospe pect ctiv ivel e y, y the ear arly y twent ntieth century marked a turning in g po p in intt in urb urban an A America ca. The sudden n cra rash of th the e st stoc o k oc market in th the e la late ate 1920s 0s, prolon nge ged d dr drou ough ghts ts iin n the Midwest throughout the 1930s 0 and d tthe h military buildup to the Seco he ond World War swiftly put into questtio ion n th the he pr pred e om ed omin inan in antt hi an hist stor oy of laissez-faire economics and nd the h passsi sive ve rolle of g government. t 14 Responding to the Great Depression, U.S. U Pr P essid iden ent Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR) swiftly D. y rolle ed ou o t the public c works ks e era of the New Deal between 193 933â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1 1935 by creating an alph hab a et of agencies empo p wered to kic icks kstartt tthe he economy m and recla aim 15 land. From the AAA (Agricult l ur ural Adj djus ustm t ent Ac ct) to the WP PA (Works Progress Administ stra rati tio on), ) the new w ffederal str tru ucture r ad ddressed the two most pre ress ssing g iss isssues es ffac acin ing g th he na ati tio on: economi no mic c stagna n tion and imm mminent decent ntra rali lizatiion on.. In Infl flue uenced 16 by rreg egiona alist Howard W. Od O um m, FD DR fo fore esa saw w th the e re equ quir irement me nt ffor o coo o pe p rative plann nnin in ng th thro ough th he vi visi sibl ble ha hand nd of go govvernmentt in ene nerg r y produc uctiion a and nd soil con onserv rvat atio on, h hou ousing ng 17 7 developm men ent, t and d highway ay con onst stru r ctio on. n

132 3

The President as Planner Franklin D. Roosevelt and Wally Richards overlooking a comprehensive plan while touring Greenbelt, Maryland, one of three suburbs planned by the Resettlement Administration of the New Deal in the late 1930s.

Source: Library of Congress, National Archives, 1937 Redefi Red efining Infrastructure

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Source: Photo courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration, review display, 1957

Super-Planning Public exhibition opening of the systemic configuration of the National Highway System planned under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 under Dwight D. Eisenhower, the successor to FDRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Interregional System of Toll-Free Highways consisting of seven east-axis and three north-south linkages. From left to right: Special Assistant to the Administrator Robert M. Monaghan, Federal Highway Administrator Bertram D. Tallamy, and Harold C. Wood, Sr. of BPRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Motion Picture & Exhibits Section, and Assistant Commissioner for Research E. H. Holmes.

Priv vate Road ds to Public Highways The late 1920s was a turning point for urbanization. The inflexible, ce enttralized structure of industrial cities and heavy manufactu uring indusstrial town ns was unlocked by three simultaneous technollogical shiftts: the inc creased speeds in truck transport, the expa and ded d reach of electrricity, and the explosion of automobillity. Often attrib buted to his second successor, FDR R'ss legacy was the e co ontin nental hig ghway system ena actted as partt of the New Deall. By the la ate 193 30s, presssure for constructing g a nettwork of hig ghways wass build ding up p. The agony of farm-to-m marrke et dirt pa aths an nd privately owned toll roads posed d signiificant ob bstacles to regional mobiliity and communic cation. Free roads be19 came syn nony ymous with freedom and democra acy.18,19 Op pposing the priva ate control off roads and yet still cautious of eminent do20 main, FDR saw the 41,000-m mile interrregional hiighway system that he conceived as the spine of a new urban network k21 for the decentraliizatiion of cittiess and the develo opmen nt of new greenbelt ho ousing settlements. FDRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plan for the large est, greattest public works project in n the worrld was put on hold by World War II, but was ressume ed by Eisenhowerr in 19 956 as the U.S S. Inte erstate and Defense Highway System..22

Private to Public The first issue of Public Roads magazine in 1918, after the inception of the 1916 Federal Road Act and the first authorization of transportation funding by the Bureau of Public Roads originally administered by the Department of Agriculture. Source: Photo courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration, Bureau of Public Roads, Historical Division

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Crops and Conservation What motorization did d for cities, mechanization did for ag griculture. Mowers, reapers, and plows were rep e laced with the gas-powered tractor, which accelerated d food produc ction on and rural economies at unprecedented rates. With few wer workers and lower la l bor costs, crop yields skyrocketed, bu butt lowerr cr crop op p ic pr ices es and nd hig gher machinery costs forced d farme mers to wo work rk m mor ore e land la nd,, of les esse serr qu qual alit ity, y, tto o pa pay offf ne new w eq equipmen entt de debt bts. Meage er economic con ec o di dittions du uring g the Grea at Depr pres essi sion on pushe h d costcutting ev even en ffurtherr. Ca Cash sh c cro r ps of co corn, wh whea e t, t and oats took k preced den ence, while e we well ll-k -kno n wn so soil il c con onse serv rvat atio on practices we were re abandoned. From m th the e Ca C na adi dian an pra airies to t the h panhand n le es in the southe ern r US, S, gra rass ssla land n s be beca came m vul u nerable to the dan angers of dro rought and d wind stor orms ms:: a lo oom oming g pr p elud de to the he decade of the Du Dust st B Bow owl.l. A Aff ffec ecting n more than 75 pe perc rcen entt of the h count n ry across twent ntyy-se seve ven st stat ates es,, th the e fa farm rmin ing g cr crisiss res esul ulte ted d in a N New ew Deal program to re egu gula late farmi m ng pract ctic ices es,, di dive vers rsif ify y cr crop ops, s, a and nd manage yield ds. O Ope pera ra ati tional a iz zed by th t e Ci Civi vili lian an Co Cons nser erva vati t on Corps,, the So Soil Co Cons nser erva vati tion on L Law aw in n 19 935 3 further tac ackl kled ed soil and an d mo moisture los osss wi w th the G Gre reat at She h lter Bel eltt Prroj ojec ect, t, invvol olvi v ng more mo re tha an 20 200 0 mi m llio ion n tree eess to est stablish h a 100 00-mile-wide, 12 200 00-m -mil ilee-lo long ng win indb break a from Al A be erta to T Tex exas as.. Preemp m tiive me eas asur ures es iinc nclu ude ded d cr c op p rotation, str trip ip ffar armi ming g, contour plow win ing, g and terrace ce far a mi m ng tow ward dive versifying the cro op 23 cove co verr fo forr feed edstock. Reg giona al gr g ain co coo operrat atives were e fo formed ed to o hel elp p fa farm rmer erss po pool ol the heir purchas asin ing g po powe wer. Uncoo ordinated ed and an d ruth t lesss p pra ract ctic ices off se self lf-g -gui uide ded d fa farmers came to an end d by a fed der eral ally ly rre egulated system off so soil i conservation kn k ow o n 2 24 today as tthe he Nat atur u al a Resou o rc rces es Cons nser erva vation on Service.

Forester as Forecaster Pioneering researcher of forest, streamflow, and flood control, Dr. Raphael Zon's 1933 Plan for a 2000-mile forest shelter belt in the Great Plains for enlisted crews of Civilian Conservation Corps, the soil soldiers of American silviculture, and the tree army of FDRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Works Progress Administration. Source: U.S. Forest Service Photo and Civilian Conservation Corps logo, first designed by the U.S. Government (1930s) 136

Source: National Wea athe therr Serv Ser iceâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;NOAA, George E. Marsh Collection

Soil Tsunami Biblical in proportion, the wall of dust and darkness approaching Stratford, Texas, on April 18, 1935, when droughts and tornadoes hit the Dust Bowl after decades of ruthless, unregulated land-farming practices across the U.S. Midwest and Canada during the 1930s.

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United States Farm Security Administrationâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Office of War Information (Overseas Picture Division, Washington Division) courtesy of the Library of Congress, 1933â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1945

Watershed as Infrastructure Display panel of the TVA showing the watershed boundary crossing through seven different states as a complex urban infrastructure involving flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, economic development of public resources, and private lands throughout the Tennessee Valley.

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Private Utilities to Public Power The late 1920s was a terminus for power speculators. The trustbusting Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 burst the bubble on under-regulated, over-inflated, privately held holding companies. Utility giants Wilbur Foshay, Samuel Insull, and George Ohrstrom either went bankrupt or fled the country.25 From this shift, FDR saw a major opportunity to combine his agenda of Recovery–Relief–Reform with the production and supply of power in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Informed by the Connecticut Valley Power Exchange (CONVEX) formed earlier in 1922, the TVA’s mandate combined public and private objectives as a model of regional planning never seen before in the US.26 Under the guidance of Arthur Morgan and Benton MacKaye, the TVA managed the nation’s fifth largest river system to reduce flood damage, produce power, maintain navigation, provide recreational opportunities, and protect water quality in the 41,000-square-mile watershed. By making planning an imperative, FDR realigned the role of public governance and instituted a decisive shift in the prevailing dynasty of private, localized control of land resources.27 With the Defense Act in place by 1916, Roosevelt’s public plans and programmatic innovations in the 1930s became the blueprint for an interregional infrastructure where farm fields, drainage systems, transportation networks, power plants, and energy grids became matters of national social security.

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DEREGULATION, DIVESTMENT, DECLINE, AND DECAY In the foreground of an overheated postwar economy, the U.S. population doubled from 125 million to 250 million between 1950 and 1990. Placing excessive pressure on the demand for public services, a major shift occurred in federal governance and public infrastructure in the early 1980s under the Reagan administration. Mirroring Margaret Thatcher’s methods in Great Britain, Ronald Reagan laid the ground work for deregulation and divestment to kick start a stagnating economy. To reduce the national deficit, Reagan’s strategy relied on corporate tax cutting and privatization of public services.28 From military manufacturing to energy generation, no public sector was spared. In the footsteps of his predecessor Jimmy Carter, who deregulated the transportation sector, Reagan started with the oil and gas industry in the 1980s.29 Reversing FDR’s legacy, privatization effectively snowballed after Reagan paved the way for the outsourcing of public services by successive administrations for the next three decades.30,31,32,33

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Infrastructure as Matter of National Security Neo-reformist proposal by economist Pat Choate and political scientist Susan Walter, typical of the 1980s advocacy for infrastructure renewal and capital investment, where economic and administrative efficiency presided over national infrastructure planning. Source: Pat Choate and Susan Walker, America In Ruins: The Decaying Infrastructure, Duke Press Paperbacks, 1981

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Brothers-in-Arms, or Les FrĂ¨res du Laissez-Faire B-movie-actor-turned-President Ronald Reagan shaking hands with Milton Friedman, Nobel-winning monetarist economist and intellectual architect of the free-market policies for Republican U.S. Presidents, and adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

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Photo courtesy of Ronald Reagan Library

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Underlying this deregulatory legacy inherited from Reagan’s supply-based economics is the decay of urban infrastructure.34 Privatization of public services extended well into the ownership of public assets and management of public works, crystallizing the nation’s silent crisis today as Pat Choate and Susan Walter chronicled in the early 1980s with America in Ruins: The Decaying Infrastructure.35 A major network of post-war infrastructures—airports, harbors, roads, sewers, bridges, dikes, dams, power corridors, terminals, and treatment plants—are now suffering from lack of repair and maintenance.36 Recent bridge collapses in Minnesota and Montreal or the prolonged effects of Hurricane Katrina are symptoms of the hidden costs associated with the serviceable lifespan of public infrastructures or the complexities of outsourcing the design, engineering, operations, or maintenance of public infrastructures. Plagued by delayed maintenance and chronic underfunding, crumbling infrastructure will require an investment of $2.2 trillion over the next five years.37 Representing double the amount currently invested, several questions are being urgently raised about the long-term effectiveness of deregulation policies that exist today. How then can we rethink the conventional logic of infrastructure—the background process of essential services that underlies cities and regions—to effectively sustain sprawling and diversifying populations for the future?38

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Source: Tennessee Valley Authority, 2008. Aerial photograph provided by TVA OE&R â&#x20AC;&#x201C; ER&S Geographic Information & Engineering

Tipping Point Aerial view of the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant at the confluence of the Emory River and Clinch River in Tennessee, where 4 million cubic meters (1 billion gallons) of coal fly ash slurry were spilled after a dike rupture on Monday, December 22, 2008.

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Diagram: OPSYS/Fadi Masoud. Photo (background): Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Gulf of Mexico (May 24, 2010) Source: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS Rapid Response Team, US/Japan Aster Team

Learning from Failure A timeline identifying the major urban–regional disasters during the past century, including hurricanes, droughts, and floods in response to the occupational hazards of engineered infrastructure such as levee breaks, bridge collapses, and chemical spills.

Chesapeake City B Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Gallopin Bronx-whites Thousand Islands Bridge Os Upper Steel Arch Bridge (Falls View Bridge) Collapse: Ni Golden Gate Bridge Os Appomatox River Drawbri St. Francis Dam Break: V

The Great Mississippi Flood Levee Breaches Across

Boston Molasses Disaster: Boston, Massachuse Québec Bridge Collapse: Québec City, Québec 1 Québec Bridge Collapse: Québec City, Québec (1907) Railroad Bridge Collapse: Eden, Colorado 1904) Point Ellice Bridge Collapse: Victoria, British Columbia (1896) Walnut Grove Dam Break: Wickenburg, Arizona (1890) South Fork Dam Break: Johnstown, Pennsylvania (1889) Niagara-Clifton Bridge Collapse: Niagara, Ontario / New York (1889) Busey Bridge Disaster: Boston, Massachusetts (1887) Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster: Ashtabula, Ohio (1876) Portage Bridge Collapse: Portageville, New York (1875) Wheeling Bridge Collapse: Wheeling, West Virginia (1864)

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BP Oil Spill: Gulf of Mexico (2010) Fernle Levee Failure: Fernle, Nevada (2008)

TVA Kingston Fossil Plant Coal Fly Ash Slurry Spill: Roane County (2008) Little Calumet River Levee Breach: Munster, Indiana (2008) The Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railway Bridge Collapse: Cedar Rapids, Iowa (2008) Macarthur Maze Flyover Collapse: Oakland, California (2007) Harp Road Bridge Collapse: Oakville, Washington (2007) I-35w Mississippi Bridge Collapse: Minneapolis, Minnesota (2007) Highway 19 (De La Concorde) Overpass Collapse: Laval, Québec (2006)

Cn Rail Caustic Soda Spill: Cheakamus River, British Columbia (2005) Taum Sauk Reservoir Break: Lesterville, Missouri (2005) New Orleans Levee Failures: New Orleans, Louisiana (2005) Jones Tract Levee Breach: Sacramento/Joaquin Delta, California (2004) Big Nickel Road Bridge Collapse: Sudbury, Ontario (2004) Igor I. Sikorsky Memorial Bridge Collapse: Stratford, Connecticut (2004) Big Bay Dam Breach: Purvis, Mississippi (2004) Sgt. Aubrey Cosens V.C. Memorial Bridge Collapse: Latchford, Ontario (2003) Kinzua Bridge Collapse: Kinzua Bridge State Park, Pennsylvania (2003) Interstate 95 Howard Avenue Overpass Collaps: Bridgeport, Connecticut (2003) I-40 Bridge Collapse: Webbers Falls, Oklahoma (2002) Queen Isabella Causeway: South Padre Island, Texas (2001)

The Martin County Sludge Spill: Martin County, Kentucky (2000) Pier No. 34 Collapse: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2000) Hoan Bridge Collapse: Milwaukee, Wisconsin (2000)

Aamjiwnaang First Nation Chemical Poisoning: Sarnia, Ontario (1999) Feather River Levee Collapse: Arboga, California (1997) Csxt Big Bayou Canot Rail Bridge Collapse: Mobile, Alabama (1993) Claiborne Avenue Bridge Collapse: New Orleans, Louisiana (1993)

Summitville Mine Leakage: Rio Grande (1992) San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge Deck Collapse: San Francisco, California (1989) Cypress Street Viaduct Collapse: Oakland, California (1989) Tennessee Hatchie River Bridge Collapse: Memphis, Tennessee (1989) Schoharie Creek Bridge Thruway Collapse: Fort Hunter, New York (1987) Mianus River Bridge Collapse: Greenwich, Connecticut (1983) 14th Street Bridge Air Florida Crash: Arlington, Virginia - Washington, DC (1982) Lawn Lake Dam Break: Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado (1982)

Berkeley Pit Mine Spill Groundwater Pollution: Butte, Montana (1982) Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse: Kansas City, Missouri (1981) Sunshine Skyway Bridge Collapse: St. Petersburg, Florida (1980)

Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor Meltdown: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (1979) Love Canal Chemical Dump Leaking: New York State (1978) Kelly Barnes Dam Break: Toccoa, Georgia (1977) Teton Dam Break: Teton, Idaho (1976) Buffalo Creek Breach and Flood: Logan County, West Virginia (1972) Sidney Lanier Bridge: Brunswick, Georgia (1972)

Ontario Minamata Mercury Poisoning: Dryden, Ontario (1970) 13th Cuyahoga River Ignition And Conflagration: Cleveland, Ohio (1969) Silver Bridge Collapse: Point Pleasant, West Virginia / Kanauga, Ohio (1967) Point Pleasant Bridge Collapse: Pleasent River, Ohio (1967) Heron Road Bridge Collapse: Ottawa, Ontario (1966) Baldwin Hills Reservoir Breach: Los Angeles, California (1963) Second Narrows Bridge Collapse: Vancouver, British Columbia (1958)

Basin F Shell Chemical Company Spill: Denver, Colorado (1956)

Feather River Levee Breach: Yuba (1955) Duplessis Bridge Collapse: Québec City, Québec (1951) Bridge Collapse: Chesapeake City, Maryland (1942) g Gertie) Collapse: Tacoma, Washington (1940) stone Bridge Collapse: Bronx, New York (1939) cillation: Thousand Islands, Ontario (1938) agara Falls, NY / Niagara Falls, ON (1938) scillation: San Francisco, California (1937) idge Collapse: Hopewell, Virginia (1935) Valencia, California (1928)

s 10 States (1927) etts (1919) 1916)

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ECOLOGY AS ECONOMY Retrospectively, the generic, technological apparatus of modern infrastructure has largely overshadowed the pre-eminence of the biophysical systems that underlie it. While in the past, industrial economies were forced to contaminate or destroy the environment in service of the economy, today that equation is being reversed. Mutually dependent, the economy is now inseparable from the environment. Responding to the current state of decaying infrastructures and ecological frictions, new models and practices39 are beginning to challenge the dogma of neoliberal deregulation and the weakness of federal planning in the following ways: A. Ecological Engineering: linear, static, monofunctional methods of engineering give way to design flexibilities, circular operabilities, interconnections, interdependencies, and multidimensional capabilities toward performance and pleasure. B. Unplanning: redevelopment and rezoning of land through the layering of land uses and biophysical systems, generates financial mechanisms and social proaction necessary to the reclamation of decaying infrastructure and contaminated land. C. Designing for Failure: reliant on a culture of contingency, flexibility, and preparedness, risk and doubt are becoming force generators that are redrawing the contours of urban regions vis-Ă -vis emerging levels of vulnerability, where hydrophysical infrastructuresâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;namely watershed regionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;operate as strategic, intermediary scale for designing across different planned jurisdictions and legal territories.40,41 Questioning the unchallenged prominence of civil engineering as the most influential discipline in the twentieth century as well as the unnoticed inertia of urban planning, the field of infrastructure is taking on extreme relevance for public practices and organizations. The merger of biophysical systems with contemporary infrastructure is now rapidly becoming the dominant order for urban regions. Road networks and fresh

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water supply can no longer be planned without their watersheds. Sewage treatment and power plants can no longer be engineered without their wastesheds. Buildings and facilities can no longer be designed without their energy systems. From this vantage, ecology is in and of itself an economy. Infrastructure as Landscape42 Demands for more renewable forms of development and flexible forms of infrastructure are catalyzing interdisciplinary cross-over. Sliding between planning and engineering, contemporary landscape practice can propose a sophisticated operating system for urban regions where the complex agency of living systems and dynamic processes can be deployed through long-range, large-scale strategies. From the rise of environmental concerns in the 1970s to the crisis of public works in the 1980s to the erosion of engineered structures in the 1990s, the ecological restructuring of urban infrastructure must include the management of water resources, waste cycling, energy generation, food production, and mass mobility. Paramount to practice and pedagogy, infrastructure needs to be reintegrated and redefined as a sophisticated, instrumental landscape of essential resources, processes, and services that collectively underpins and upholds the ongoing, unfinished urbanization of the twenty-first century.43

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1920, more power could be transmitted across longer distances. In addition to better roads and faster vehicles, a whole array of technologies made decentralization possible and convenient, including electrical energy distribu1. According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the tion; telecommunications, including broadcasting (radio, English Language–4th Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, television); and narrowcasting (telephone). See Alan S. Berger, The City: Urban Communities and their Problems 2000). (Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown Company, 1978). 2. Prior to the Civil War, the work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) was preceded by the Corps of 13. By the 1930s, 60 percent of households owned an Topographical Engineers. See Henry P. Beers, “A History automobile. The clamor and smell of horses and buggies of the U.S. Topographical Engineers, 1813-1863,” Mili- were being replaced with the fumes and fuels of cars and tary Engineering (June 1942): 287–291 and (July 1942): trucks, and their attendant services (fuel stations, mechanical garages and parking lots), naturally leading to 348–352. the next challenge: traffic and congestion. Self-appointed 3. As an instrument for assigning land use types, Euclide- traffic engineer William Phelps Eno came to the rescue of an zoning should be differentiated from “zoning density” the rule-less road with inventions like the one-way street used in inner cities. See M. Christine Boyer, Dreaming the and the roundabout, in addition to countless rule books Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning (Cam- and behavior changes. Espousing the theory of continubridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983): 139–170. The first case ous, uniform traffic flow through control was central to of the use of zoning density was in New York, explains Eno’s view, a central tenet of transportation today. Road Raphael Fischler in “The metropolitan dimension of early engineering became synonymous with urban planning, zoning: Revisiting the 1916 New York City Ordinance,” while speed and mobility became unquestioned drivers Journal of the American Planning Association 64 No.2 of urban form across North America. See William Phelps (spring 1998): 170–188. Eno, The Story of Highway Traffic Control, 1899–1939 4. Sidney Willhelm’s Urban Zoning and Land-Use Theory (Saugatuck, CT: The Eno Foundation for Highway Traf(1962), and Michael J. Pogodzinski and Tim R. Sass’s fic Control, 1939) and The Science of Highway Traffic The Economic Theory of Zoning: A Critical Review (1990) Regulation, 1899 and 1920 (Washington, DC: Brentano’s, are two important texts from the planning discipline that 1920). have identified, assessed, and argued for a deeper un- 14. In the aftermath of World War I, the 1929 crash was a derstanding of the significance of zoning as spatial prac- period of economic crisis characterized by John Kenneth tice. Galbraith as the failure to restore a functioning post-war 5. Between 1880 and 1920, almost 40 percent of the world economy, described in his The Great Crash (New townships in the United States lost population from York, NY: Mariner Books, 1954). economic migration toward metropolitan regions. See 15. The most comprehensive account of landscape planCharles Hirschman and Elizabeth Mogford, “Immigration ning in America is Francesco Dal Co’s “From Parks to and the American Industrial Revolution From 1880 to the Region: Progressive Ideology and the Reform of the 1920,” Social Science Research Vol.38 No.4 (December American City,” in The American City: From the Civil War 2009): 897–920. and the New Deal, ed. Giorgio Cucci, Francesco Dal Co, 6. See Martin V. Melosi, The Sanitary City: Urban Infra- Mario Manieri-Elia, and Manfredo Tafuri (Cambridge, MA: structure in America from Colonial Times to the Present MIT Press, 1979): 143–292. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). 16. Howard W. Odum’s opus Southern Regions of the 7. See Col. George E. Waring Jr., “The Separate Sewer United States (1936) considerably influenced presidenSystem,” The Manufacturer and Builder 21 No.9 (Septem- tial policy in the early twentieth century. See William ber 1889). In an 1889 article entitled “Sanitary Engineer- Edward Leuchtenburg, The White House Looks South: ing,” the New York Times reported that lack of attention Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson to this new science was considerable and that architects (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State Press, 2005). ignored its developments at their own peril (September 17. Key advisor to FDR who helped shape the Civilian 8, 1889). Conservation Corps, Frances Perkin shepherded other 8. Starting in 1855, Chicago was the first comprehensive important New Deal initiatives, including the Public city to install a sewer plan in the US; by 1905, all U.S Works Administration by the Federal Emergency Relief towns with populations more than 4,000 had city sewers. Administration, the National Labor Relations Act, the Social Security Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. 9. As the City Beautiful gave way to the Sanitary City, the modern age of sewage systems and civil engineering 18. According to FDR’s right-hand man at the Bureau of was born. The planning of the Park & Parkway System Public Roads (BPR), Thomas H. MacDonald, who overin Buffalo (NY) by Frederick Law Olmsted and George saw the government-sponsored manifesto by the Bureau E. Waring Jr. in the nineteenth century is one of the best of Public Roads entitled Toll Roads and Free Roads, House examples of open-space planning in conjunction with Document No.272, 76th Congress 1st Session (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1939): “Free sanitary engineering and transportation networks. Roads are the Ideal for Free People.” “Free Roads are the 10. According to the 1930 United States Census. Ideal for Free People.” See Frank Sheets, “The Develop11. Radical time-savings could be achieved for domestic ment of Primary Roads During the Next Quarter Century: chores with household electrical appliances. An Address Delivered at the 25th Anniversary Meeting of 12. With voltages increasing rapidly between 1900 and the AASHO” (October 9–13, 1939): 139. Epigraph: Paul N. Edwards, “Infrastructure & Modernity” in Modernity and Technology, ed. Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey, and Andrew Feenberg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 185.

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19. See “New Deal City” by Sue Halpern, Mother Jones river system, and stimulated sustainable economic de(May/June 2002). http://www.motherjones.com/poli- velopment in the public interest. tics/2002/05/new-deal-city 27. The Great Depression was the catalyst: assuaging 20. Arguably, roads are the last, and potentially most im- deep-rooted, hardline attitudes by rugged individualists, portant public space in both North America, and on the smoothing the path for a U.S. president focused on the economy of the commons. From the Soil Conservation planet. 21. Furthering the objectives of decentralization and de- Program to the Interregional Highway System to the mocracy, FDR’s progressive vision of the highway system Tennessee Valley Authority, FDR’s epic vision of social moved ahead with the planning of greenbelt towns by progress was “a piece of social and physical engineerthe New Deal Resettlement Administration (RA), led by ing of a scale […] and profundity” that, according to agricultural economist, Rexford Tugwell. Planned along German-born British historian Reyner Banham, was “difmajor intercity corridors, three new towns were built out ficult to match even in the Russian five-year plans.” See of more than 3,000 models. Erroneously depicted as gar- “Valley of the Dams,” in A Critic Writes: Selected Essays den cities or Radburn carbon copies, FDR’s urbanism by Reyner Banham, ed. Mary Banham, Sutherland Lyall, (read: super-urbanism) was informed by Tugwell’s docu- Cedric Price, and Paul Barker (Berkeley, CA: University of mented admiration of the planned Soviet economy and California Press, 1996): 204. See also Reyner Banham, its collectivist ideals. Fomenting socialism during a pre- “Tennessee Valley Authority: The Engineering of Utopia” dominantly anti-Soviet era, the greenbelt projects were Casabella 542–543 (January/February 1988): 74. rare exemplars of planned decentralization anticipating future urban sprawl. The urban cooperatives, the superblocks, and the cul-de-sacs that make up these experiments have long matured, but remain a forward-looking demonstration of America’s foray into the public practice of urban planning. See Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), and Sue Halpern, “New Deal City,” Mother Jones (May/June 2002). http://www. motherjones.com/politics/2002/05/new-deal-city 22. See American Public Works Association, Top Ten Public Works Projects of the Century Program 1900–2000 (Washington, DC: APWA, 2000). 23. Seed stock included oats, alfalfa, barley, and milo (sorghum) to feed cattle, hogs, sheep, horses, and chickens.

28. Under Reagan, federal spending shifted from transportation and energy to the military sector. See John D. Donahue, The Privatization Decision: Public Ends, Private Means (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1989).

29. Ronald Reagan was formerly registered as a Democrat and strong admirer of FDR and the New Deal era before switching to the Republican party in the early 1950s. 30. Modeled on Thatcher’s Energy Policy of 1983, Reagan loosened the grip of government on the free-market economy. His loyal vice-president George H. W. Bush loosened the energy market in the early 1990s with Management Circular A-76. In the late 1990s, Clinton oversaw the deregulation of the financial market with the removal of New Deal-era anti-speculation laws (1933 Glass-Steagall Act) that kept banking, insurance, and brokerage separate. George W. Bush eased up environmental standards for air and water pollution, sponsoring the growth of coal and petrochemicals. The compound effect of these deregulatory measures are considered the principal causes of the housing mortgage foreclosure crisis and credit crash in 2008–2009.

24. In total, 3.5 million people were employed in conservation projects, 2.5 billion trees planted, 40 million acres of farmland protected, 1 million acres of grassland reclaimed, and 800 state parks created along with 52,000 campgrounds between 1933 and 1941. See Douglas Helms, “Hugh Hammond Bennett and the Creation of the Soil Erosion Service,” in Historical Insights 31. Against the backdrop of deindustrialization, the Reano. 8 (Washington, DC: Natural Resources Conservation gan administration instituted the adage that government was synonymous with bureaucracy. “Government is the Service, USDA, September 2008). 25. FDR was committed to the benefits of electricity as problem, not the solution, […] just leave it to the maran instrument of democracy: “But these cold figures ketplace” became conventional wisdom reinstating the do not measure the human importance of the electric primacy of free enterprise in America. power in our present social order. Electricity is no longer a luxury. It is a definite necessity. It lights our homes, our places of work and our streets. It turns the wheels of most of our transportation and our factories. In our homes it serves not only for light, but it can become the willing servant of the family in countless ways. It can relieve the drudgery of the housewife and lift the great burden off the shoulders of the hardworking farmer.” See The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. 1, 1928-32, (New York, NY: Random House, 1938): 727, reprinted from The Works of Franklin D. Roosevelt, The “Portland Speech,” A Campaign Address on Public Utilities and Development of Hydro-Electric Power, Portland, OR (September 21, 1932).

32. By the turn of the twenty-first century, the federal government had become the largest industry for the private sector. There was and still is a flood of money expected to be made in the privatization of infrastructure. For an emerging account of the hidden benefits of the valuation of infrastructure as an asset, see “Roads To Riches: Why investors are clamoring to take over America’s highways, bridges, and airports—and why the public should be nervous” by Emily Thornton, BusinessWeek (May 7, 2007), and Amanda Witherell “Who Owns Our Cities? Privatizing Public Services Imperils Cities,” RP&E 15 No.1 (Spring 2008). 33. See Deborah Solomon, “The Builder: Interview with Felix Rohatyn,” The New York Times (February 18, 2009).

26. The TVA was arguably the most sophisticated and 34. The underlying conflict in the privatization of pubcomprehensive program of the New Deal. It supplied re- lic services is that it does not account for the spin-off liable, competitively priced power, supported a thriving Redefining Infrastructure

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benefits and synergies associated with public delivery of services that effectively equalize the extremes between different classes. See Jenny Anderson, “Cities Debate Privatizing Public Infrastructure,” The New York Times (August 26, 2008).

system, whereas in Canada, the practice of wetland reclamation or substitution is prohibited.

40. See János Bogárdi and Zbigniew Kundzewicz, Risk, Reliability, Uncertainty, and Robustness of Water Resource Systems (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 35. Another important factor includes the failure of Su- 2002). perfund to clean more than 1,300 severely contaminated 41. See Michael Hough, “The Urban Landscape: The Hidsites around the US, as a case in point of the effects of den Frontier,” Bulletin of the Association for Preservation deregulation. Its administrative body, CERCLA, had used Technology - Landscape Preservation Vol.15 No.4 (1983): more than 90 percent private contractors for the execu- 9–14. tion of more than a thousand cleanup projects, yet most of them got locked up in endless litigation with very little 42. The understanding of infrastructure as a landscape work done on the ground. Now, more than 400,000 sites enables us to engage dimensions of urbanism that have with real and perceived environmental hazards dot the previously been either ignored by their banality or conAmerican landscape, totaling more than $2 trillion in de- sidered untouchable by virtue of the magnitude at which valued property, according to a national report on brown- they operate. As an integrative and horizontal field that fields redevelopment by The United States Conference transcends disciplinary boundaries, contemporary landof Mayors, titled “Recycling America’s Land: A National scape practice is gaining considerable momentum as it Report on Brownfields Redevelopment 1993 -2010,” Vol. includes the operative, logistical, and ecological aspects of infrastructure. Sponsoring interdisciplinary crossover, IX (November 2010). this dual field of design implies a dual identity in both 36. John Kenneth Galbraith foreshadowed this crisis research and practice, where synthesis of ecology prethree decades ago: “much of the problem of the envi- conditions the detail of implementation, where long-term ronment arises from under-investment in elementary resource management is as important as short-term moservices and plants for keeping things clean or cleaning bilization of capital, where the commonwealth of pubthings up. It is the kind of expenditure against which the lic systems presides over the uncoordinated guise of modern economy systematically discriminates” in Eco- self-interests, requiring the sustained engagement from nomics & Public Purpose (New York, NY: Pelican Books, public agendas and private motives. From this platform, 1973): 305. landscape infrastructure strategies can be telescopic, 37. See ACSE, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure sliding across a spectrum of scales: short, immediate in(2008) and Pat Choate and Susan Walter, America in Ru- terventions sequenced over long periods of time with duins: The Decaying Infrastructure (Durham, NC: Duke Press rable effects. As public brain trusts, universities become complicit in this urban agenda, capable of transcending Paperbacks, 1983). 38. Calling for a response to the divide between the competing ideologies: between the technical and the poculture of the sciences and the humanities, Paul Sears, litical, the liberal and the conservative, the private and in a provocative essay entitled “Ecology - A Subversive the public, the historic and the futuristic. The gradual Subject,” pointed out that: “the view of nature derived de-professionalization of conventional disciplines tofrom the ecological studies called into question some ward common ecological and economic objectives will of the cultural and economic premises widely accepted allow flexible public–private practices to cut across slugby Western Societies. Chief among these premises was gish specializations that all too often stunt land redethat human civilizations, particularly of advanced tech- velopment and economic renewal. These cooperations nological cultures, were above or outside of the limita- can usurp stylistic variations or disciplinary differences tions, or 'laws' of nature.” See Robert P. McIntosh, The in project execution. In stark contrast to the twentiethBackground Of Ecology: Concept And Theory (Cambridge, century paradigm of speed and permanence, the effects UK: University of Cambridge, 1985), 1. Sears was the of future transformation will be slow and subtle, requirfirst to speculate that if ecology were” taken seriously ing the active and sustained engagement of long-term, as an instrument for the long run welfare of mankind, opportunistic partnerships that bridge the private and [then it would] endanger the assumptions and practices public sectors.

accepted by modern societies, whatever their doctrinal 43. Current-day conditions corroborate the imperative: commitments.” Paul B. Sears, “Ecology - A Subversive sudden power outages across the northeastern United States and Canada in 2003, the disastrous hurricanes Subject,” BioScience Vol.14 No.7 (1964): 11. 39. Although the push for a federal-regional land use on the Gulf Coast and subsequent spiking of oil prices in policy was defeated in the 1970s, consolation prizes 2005, the deferred maintenance programs across North came in the form of protective measures across broad America, and the resulting bridge failures in 2007, all concern for environmental matters, resulting in notable mark a decisive shift in conventional practices whereby legislation (National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the unchecked globalization of generic, end-of-pipe enthe Clean Air Act Amendment of 1970, the Federal Water gineering and uncoordinated, reactionary planning have Pollution Act of 1970, the Federal Water Pollution Control reached a tipping point. Act Amendments of 1972, and the Coastal Management Act of 1972) but these acts are only mere remedies to the larger challenge of long-range public planning. As a point of comparison between planning policy and the pattern of land development in the US and Canada: wetland reclamation in the US is allowed through substitution of same-size acreage within another watershed 152

Originally published in Ecological Urbanism edited by Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty (Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2010): 332–349.

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Redefining Infrastructure

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154

Source: Ontario Stone, Sand, and Gravel Association (OSSGA) 2011

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“The importance of mobility and access in the contemporary metropolis brings to infrastructure the character of collective space. Transportation infrastructure is less a self-sufficient service element than an extremely visible and effective instrument in creating new networks and relationships.” Alex Wall, “Programming the Urban Surface,” 19991

“The emphasis in the future must be, not upon speed and immediate practical conquest, but upon exhaustiveness, interrelationship and integration. The coordination and adjustment of our technical effort […] is more important than extravagant advances along special lines, and equally extravagant retardations along others, with a disastrous lack of balance between the various parts.” Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 19341

Synthetic Surfaces.

Courtesy of the United States Geological Survey.

Foreign Trade Zone No. 49, New Jersey, 2003. Orthoimagery detail. Across from left: Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) Terminal A; Pier 3, FedEx Cargo Bay; Runway 4L-22R and 4R-22L; the Peripheral Ditch; New Jersey Turnpike; and Port Newark/Elizabeth Container Terminal.

< Extensively referenced in his essay “Programming the Urban Surface,” Alex Wall cites the work of Vittorio Gregotti in a special issue of Casabella (January/February 1989), exclusively dedicated to “The Road / La Strada,” featuring several notable others including the work of Bernardo Secchi, Willem Neutelings, Joan Busquets, Jean-Louis Cohen, André Guillerme, and Jean-Pierre Gaudin.

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Asphalt may be among the most ubiquitous, yet invisible materials in the North American landscape. Its scale and form practically render impossible the conception of it as a single bounded system, yet its function depends precisely upon the singular continuity of a horizontal surface. Highways, terminals, interchanges, off-ramps, medians, sidewalks, and curbs are such pervasive components of the built environment that they are often overlooked as influential characteristics of contemporary culture in North America.2 These seemingly disconnected elements form a distinctly engineered operating system that supports a multitude of regional processes and generates a wealth of contemporary programs. Many of these lie outside of the conventional axioms of European-influenced theories of urban design and planning. How then do we account for, and articulate the logic of urbanization in North America? Adopting a material lens on urbanization, an examination of the synthetic processes, spatial corridors, and surfaces of speed can shed light on this question, and the often-contested nature of continuity and smoothness of contemporary urbanization.3 Synthetic Surfaces

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Recently, the discourse surrounding “landscape infrastructure” and “landscape urbanism” has emerged in North America to elaborate upon the role of landscape in many architects and urbanists’ thinking on the contemporary city. Several authors have recently attempted to articulate the logic of North America’s spatial structure as a way of understanding contemporary urbanization. Stan Allen, for example, compares the evolution of the North American urban landscape to “a radical horizontal urbanism […] developed as a vast, mat-like field, where scattered pockets of density are knit together by high-speed, high-volume roadways.”4 Alex Wall, an architect and urbanist, refers to this transformation as “the extensive reworking of the urban surface as a smooth continuous matrix that effectively binds the increasingly disparate elements of our environment together.”5 At a smaller scale, a growing number of authors are discussing the influence of material technologies on the conditioning of the urban surface, understood here as a landscape. Again, Allen is instructive, articulating the role of synthetic surfaces of landscape in relation to the materiality of urbanism: “The surface in landscape is always distinguished by its material and its performative characteristics. Slope, hardness, permeability, depth and soil chemistry are all variables that influence the behavior of surfaces.”6 One of the most underrepresented materials and one deserving of greater attention, asphalt may be among the most important in the history of North American urbanization. Though its history predates ancient Rome, one example of the material’s more-recent cultural relevance can be found in its inclusion in the Milan Triennale with an exhibition curated by Mirko Zardini titled Asfalto. With visual acumen, Zardini’s installation examined the synthetic attributions of this usually gray surface by uncovering the historical, technical, cultural, and visual layers of the mundane material “commonly considered an undesired, yet necessary skin.”7 160

Overlooked, the ultimate impact of this material on the built realm would not be fully inscribed across the North American landscape until the advent of the twentieth century. Although asphalt and roads themselves have been demonized in the past decade as the evils and perils of contemporary urbanization,8 it is well-documented but lesser understood that use of asphalt is extremely sustainable. Not only is asphalt pavement the most recycled material in America today, it is being reused at a rate of 99 percent, according to the Federal Highway Administration.9 No other material has been found to be so flexible and so adaptable, capable of absorbing so many functions, enabling so many uses, and producing so many effects. This singular material innovation, coupled with the reflexive mechanism of mobility it supports, can thus be traced back as the source of some of the most synthetic10 and systemic aspects of the North American landscape today—those aspects that are gaining increasing attention by the practices articulated through the prism of landscape urbanism.

Preconditions The history of urbanism in North America starts in the mud.11 Well before the advent of oil, steam, coal, or the invention of the airplane, the train, or even the motorcar, America was characterized more or less by an agonizing unevenness, a topography primarily composed of potholes and ruts that did very little but present as obstacles to regional mobility and communication. Modern industrialization would soon dismantle the resistance sustained for so long by the environmental medium of mud, dust, and darkness. Slowness, the agonizing paradigm of the nineteenth-century landscape, quickly gave way to speed; the essence of modernity.12 Henry Adams described this state of arrested development at the end of the nineteenth century: “America is required to construct, without delay, at least three great roads and canals, each several hundred miles long, across mountain ranges, through a country not yet inhabited, to points where no great

Material Resistance: US Route 1, 1911. Photo courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration

markets existed—and this under constant peril of losing her political union, which could not even by such connections be with certainty secure. […] Between Boston and New York is a tolerable highway, along which, thrice a week, light stagecoaches carry passengers and the mail, in three days. From New York a stagecoach starts every weekday for Philadelphia, consuming the greater part of two days in the journey, and the road between Paulus Hook, the modern Jersey City, and Hackensack is declared by the newspapers in 1802 to be as bad as any other part of the route between Maine and Georgia […] In the Northern States, four miles an hour is the average speed for any coach between Bangor and Baltimore. Beyond the Potomac the roads become steadily worse, until south of Petersburg even the mails are carried on horseback.”13 The state of the roads was indicative of a state of geographic and civic emergency. A

letter from the League of American Wheelman by Isaac B. Potter in 1891 outlines the economic imperative: “The United States is the only country in the world, assuming to be progressive, that is so poorly provided with highways; that their condition is a source of amazement to the foreigner; showing by a series of pictures of the splendid roads of Germany, France & Italy, and other European countries, and by way of contrast, some typical pictures of the lines of sticky mud, with ruts hub-deep at certain seasons, that go by the name of country roads, in the most populous and prosperous States of the Union.”14

Frost Action What differentiated the North American situation from the European context was frost.15 With mild winters, no European surface was ever exposed to permanent cycles of freezing and thawing that by and large destroyed dirt highways. Water could therefore be Synthetic Surfaces

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Hot Surface: Asphalt Pavement & Steam-Powered Compaction, 1910. Source: Robert Glenn, Lakeside Industries, 1910

used as the compaction agent in European road construction. But a more-resilient material was required to combat the swampy, muddy surface of the New World, a material that would be capable of withstanding deep freeze cycles of northern temperate climates and more robust than the inferior European techniques. Charles Goodyear had already developed “the perfect paving material” as early as 1844—vulcanized rubber, a confection that could be heated without melting or cooled without cracking16—but the material would ultimately prove too expensive for the scale and the scope of an intercontinental highway enterprise. Asphalt came to the rescue of an economy that was in desperate need of a drier, smoother future.17 Cultural historian Jeffery T. Schnapp describes the paradox of asphalt as an urban catalyst in European cities: “Asphalt erupts on the scene of modernity to redeem the world of industry of the banes of friction and dust.18 Dust clouds have been around since the beginning of time. But the coaching revolution of the nineteenth cen162

tury transformed them into signifiers of accelerated movement long before the appearance of the stream or motion lines that would indicate velocity in twentieth century cartooning and graphics. Dust was also what differentiated driver passengers from pedestrians, the enfranchised from the disenfranchised, within the contours of a nation-state now defined as a transportation grid […] Dust was the pollutant of the nineteenth century. Asphalt came to the rescue. It cleaned up speed.”19

Surface Economies The prospect of weatherproofing North America’s roadways was first conceived the day Edward Joseph De Smedt, a professor from Columbia University, applied, for the first time in the world, a modern, engineered, graded, maximum-density asphalt pavement.20 Laid out in 1872 in front of City Hall in Newark, New Jersey, the construction of a 1,400-foot segment on William Street was launched together with the industry of road-

War Game: Transcontinental Motor Convoy, 1919. Source: 86-19-190 K.C. Downing Collection, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, 1919

building, as we know it today.21 Joining the ranks of the “grandfathers of roadbuilding,” such as the Scottish inventors John Metcalfe, Thomas Telford, and John Loudon McAdam, De Smedt’s technique distinguished itself from his predecessors22 in that it synthesized 1,000 years of material developments into a simple reproducible technique. The surface technique proposed a hot-in-place, semiliquid asphalt mix application that could be laid down in a series of lifts, according to a desired thickness and density. A technique that could only emerge from the geographical circumstance of the New World—a continent over 100 times the size of Scotland—where issues of scale and operational logistics supersede issues of material quality and resource availability. De Smedt’s technique also meant that the surface could be engineered according to types of vehicles and volumes of traffic flow for a range of topographical conditions. De Smedt’s 1870 patent describes the mat-like technique with technical precision:

graded and I first put a thin layer of hot sand upon it, about half an inch in thickness, and upon this layer of sand I put a layer of hot sand and asphalt, that which was previously mixed, under a comparatively moderate degree of heat, this last layer being about one inch in thickness. Over this layer […] I pass a hot roller, and then apply a thin layer of hot sand, half inch thick, and over the latter a layer, an inch thick […] which is rolled with a hot roller, as before. This is repeated until the desired thickness for the road or pavement is obtained. By this process or mode of laying, I obtain in the road or pavement the proper proportions of sand and asphalt without any difficulty whatsoever, and insure that the proper thorough incorporation of the sand and asphalt, and sand layers, so that a homogenous mass is obtained throughout.”23

“[T]he surface on which the road or pavement is to be laid is properly

De Smedt’s overlay technique utterly transSynthetic Surfaces

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The Revolutionary Tournapull, 1948. The first integral, articulated wheel tractor scraper earthmover, developed by Robert G. Letourneau. Source: Ben H. Fatherree, The History of Geotechnical Engineering at the Waterways Experiment Station, 1932–2000, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers–Engineer Research & Development Center (2006)

formed the road-building industry. According to the first complete survey of America’s roads, completed in 1904, of the more than two million miles of rural public roads, fewer than 154,000 miles were surfaced usually with gravel, stones, or crude paving materials. But soon after the standardized guidelines of the Federal Road Act of 1916,24 4,500 miles of blacktop would be laid down. With better tensile strength than concrete and equally good surface traction, asphalt pavement replaced all other forms of road construction. What eventually made it so effective was its regional adaptability. By midcentury, asphalt could be refined from coal or crude oil, blended with virtually any locally available aggregates, from quartzite to granite, to produce a versatile, waterproof, trafficable surface anywhere on the continent.25

Expeditions In the summer of 1919, a young lieutenant colonel named Dwight D. Eisenhower joined a U.S. Army convoy whose objective was to locate and traverse by motorized vehicle a transcontinental route joining the east and west coasts of America. Dubbed the 1919 164

Transcontinental Convoy, the expedition spanned the continent over sixty-two days. The expedition, echoing and outdistancing the previous military expeditions of Lewis and Clark among others, consisted of 37 officers and 258 enlisted men astride 81 motorized vehicles traveling 3,200 miles from Washington, DC to San Francisco.26,27 The convoy reached San Francisco via the Lincoln Highway over a treacherous surface terrain of dirt roads, rutted paths, dark winding trails, and shifting desert sands. Less than 10 percent of the country’s roads were surfaced with gravel, stone, or some other crude paving materials.28 The rest was just mud, dust, or sand. Traveling at an average of 6 miles per hour, Eisenhower witnessed firsthand the frontier like conditions of the existing roads. “Passing through 350 communities in eleven states,” he wrote, “approximately 3,250,000 people witnessed the convoy and its pioneering triumphs. Local publicity exposed the convoy to an additional 33,000,000 people across the country while steadily increasing the number of recruits and good roads partisans.”29 The line traced by the transcontinental expedition would later resurface as a

preliminary sketch of Eisenhower’s greatest and most important achievement.

Automation By the late 1920s, following further developments of De Smedt’s technique, the pace was set for the construction of more than 4,500 miles of highways. As mechanization took command, concrete construction equipment30 was rapidly adapted to withstand high-temperature liquid emulsions for the purposes of asphalt paving. Everything from dozers, scrapers, graders, millers, screeders, and rollers was enlisted for the cause. Spreading from the roadbuilding industry to manufacturing and housing, no sector of the industry was spared the supremacy of mass production. Harper’s Magazine reported the work of Willliam Levitt in the 1920s, a brilliant example of streamline progress, using machinery whenever possible in the name of efficiency: “Beginning with a trenching machine, through transit-mix trucks to haul concrete, to an automatic trowler that smooths the foundation-slab, Levitt takes advantage of whatever economies mechanization can give him. The site of the houses becomes one vast assembly line, with trucks dropping off at each house the exact materials needed by the crew then moving up. Some parts—plumbing, staircases, window frames, cabinets —are actually prefabricated in the factory at Roslyn and brought to the house ready to install. The process might be called one of semiprefabrication.”31 Now that mass-production permeated almost every aspect of the construction process, unprecedented levels of cost-efficiency and speed were in sight.

Mobilization Hot-mix asphalt was now center stage for a theater of explosive invention. Along with the internal combustion engine, vulcanized

rubber, refined petroleum, the air tube, the pneumatic tire, the ball bearing, coldpressed steel, diecast metal, hydraulics, and lubricants led to the eventual motorization of almost every component of the North American landscape: horse-drawn carts were being replaced with motor-wagons,32 coaches with motorized buses,33 and bicycles34 with motorized quadricyles.35 Crossbred with industrial manufacturing techniques, vehicles were almost surpassing the speed of trains, and with this, came the demand for a smoother, more extensive, and more connected system of roads and highways. Now that asphalt roads could be streamlined, highway networks had to be planned. Following the Federal Road Aid Act in 1916, state authorities were empowered to carry out federal highway projects, so roadbuilding companies could now apply De Smedt’s technique on a geographic scale. The early transformation of dirt to asphalt was slow. Foreign conflicts abroad entirely diverted labor, equipment, and materials toward the efforts of the two world wars, placing the road building project on hold. But soon after World War II, New Jersey governor Alfred E. Driscoll mobilized the necessary means to spearhead the development of modern freeways. Again, speed was of the essence. World War II brigadier general, William Wesley Wanamaker, was enlisted to expedite the construction of North America’s first paved superhighway, the New Jersey Turnpike.36 Like an allied front, Wanamaker divided the massive project into seven separate contacts with, as the caption to a 1949 map of the turnpike declared, a sole purpose and objective of “118 miles safely and comfortably, without a stop!”: “That’s what this modern 'magic carpet' being built by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority will provide vehicle owners when it is completed late in 1951. Long sight distances, wide travel lanes and shoulders, easy curves, and no crossroads assure safety and comfort. With fifteen traffic interchanges where vehicles may enter or leave, the turnpike will conSynthetic Surfaces

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Pre-highway Era Map, 1911. Source: Map originally drawn up by Gary Holman (Eisenhower Museum), scanned from Eisenhower Foundation–Overview 10-3 (Fall 1984)

nect with leading highways to famous seashore resorts east and to other points west. North–south travelers also will be served more quickly and more economically. Savings in travel time on the turnpike are estimated at as much as 40 percent versus travel on existing highways.”37 Mobilizing equipment, extracting aggregates, and mixing materials on-site precipitated the next pivotal development: the batch plant.38 Paragon of road building logistics, the batch plant process effectively reduced transportation costs and fast-tracked construction schedules by centrally locating all necessary equipment required to construct roadway infrastructure.39 Round-the-clock dredging operations brought in 5 million cubic meters of silt material from as far as Coney Island to lay the base course for the 324-foot-wide roadbed on high ground. In its path were the Newark Meadows. Turn-of-the-century ideals of land reclamation epitomized the solution to growing urban density, as illustrated in a press release from the Turnpike Authority:

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“The prejudicial effect of the proximity of these marshlands upon the healthfulness of the cities on their borders and on the salubrity of the adjacent country districts is the strong argument for their drainage and improvement. They are not only insalubrious, but also comparatively non-productive in an agricultural point of view. The possibilities of these meadows when drained and the sanitary advantages of their reclamation, aside from the aesthetic setting, make a strong impression upon all who have seen the rich and beautiful polders of Holland.”40 Dubbed Operation Sand, the pairing of modern hopper dredgers and three hundredyear-old land reclamation techniques handed down from the Europeans proved useful for one of the final segments of the turnpike. Socalled “unproductive” marshlands and surrounding pig farms were irreversibly drained and filled to make way for what are today the New Jersey Turnpike, Newark Liberty Inter-

Plan for the United States Interstate Highway System, 1947. Photo courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration, Washington, DC

national Airport, and Port Newark/Elizabeth. Built in a record twenty-three months, the country’s largest swampland in the vicinity of a major urban area—ironically called the Garden State—was turned into the world’s most modern express highway route. Aimed at passing through the nation’s most densely populated state, the new line—more or less a supersize metropolitan bypass—shaved two hours off the trip between New York and Philadelphia. As proclaimed by Governor Driscoll near the turnpike’s completion, the economies of time afforded by the synthesis of transportation surfaces seemed irrefutable: “In 1949, we determined to build in New Jersey the finest highway in the world, linking the interstate crossings of the Hudson River with the interstate crossings of the Delaware River, for the convenience of the citizens of New Jersey and our sister states. The project is called the New Jersey Turnpike. Our Turnpike Authority has substantially completed the project with incredible speed […] The Turnpike is

designed to strengthen the economy of New Jersey and to promote the general welfare of our country. Its importance to the defense effort is obvious.”41 Boasting thirteen toll plazas, 12-foot-wide lanes, 10-foot-wide shoulders, and six lanes, the implementation of the New Jersey Turnpike resulted in the standardization of highway geometries that are found today in the California Highway Design Manual.42 Adopted as a road building bible, the highway design standards would serve as a model reproduced throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and nearly everywhere else in the paved world. By the time the turnpike opened, asphalt covered more than 5,000 square kilometers of surface area, one foot deep over two feet of stone and sand. As retired Turnpike Authority engineer R. Bruce Noel put it, “we probably had the most outstanding pavement. The Turnpike’s original pavement […] never had to be torn up [or] replaced. And it will be there forever.”43 The original Jersey Freeway model, epitomized Synthetic Surfaces

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Head-on Collision, August 27, 1952 (left), Reprinted from Hancock County Journal-Pilot (1952), scanned by Marcia Farina; The New Jersey Turnpike Authority’s Heavy Vehicle Median Barrier. (right) Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office, www.uspto.gov

by its novel rest-stops, tollbooths, gas stations, and drive-in movie theaters would soon become the basis of a road-based culture that is today, in one form or another, generic infrastructure. SYSTEMATIZATION However modern, the New Jersey Turnpike was less than perfect. An engineering test bed, the Jersey Turnpike was marred by corrective S-curves “because of positioning errors resulting from the inattention (of local surveyors) to official geodetic references.” Pulitzer prize-winning science correspondent for The New York Times, John Noble Wilford recounts in his 1981 book The Mapmakers that the official survey markers had been established by Ferdinand R. Hassler—the Swiss engineer who was enlisted by Thomas Jefferson to lead the National Geodetic Survey—some hundred years prior. Wilford states, “The curves were the only way for the turnpike to connect to some of its cloverleaf turnoffs.”44

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Networks The 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act emerged as the nation’s infrastructural palliative. Thirty-seven years after his cross-country military expedition of 1919, President Eisenhower laid out a monumental standard—a 43,000-kilometer surface network with a minimum 24-feet width for two lanes in each direction. Originally charted by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the late 1930s, the interregional highways would follow existing roads wherever possible: “More than two lanes of traffic would be provided where traffic exceeds 2,000 vehicles per day, while access would be limited where entering vehicles would harm the freedom of movement of the main stream of traffic. Within the large cities, the routes should be depressed or elevated, with the former preferable. Limited-access belt lines were needed for traffic wishing to bypass the city and to link radial expressways directed toward the center of the city. Inner belts surrounding the central business district would link

Tri-level Construction on the Turnpike: Route 4 Parkway and Woodridge Avenue interchange, 1950. Source: Photograph reprinted from the New Jersey Turnpike Authority Archive, from the press release entitled, “Unusual Construction on the New Jersey Turnpike”, October 24, 1950

the radial expressways while providing a way around the district for vehicles not destined for it.”45 Over the course of those thirty-seven years, Eisenhower would be absorbed with visions of continental seamlessness. His presidency singularly focused on surveying the surface of the United States to map the highway system and to raise funds to build it. The U.S. Interstate and Defense Highway System was marshaled as a strategic organizational device. Underpinned by military defense objectives, the basis of the superhighway system was intended to connect major cities spread out across the United States and to overcome five major shortcomings of the existing transportation, spelled out by Eisenhower’s vice-president Richard M. Nixon: “The annual death and injury toll, the waste of billions of dollars in detours and traffic jams, the clogging of the nation’s courts with highway-related suits, the inefficiency in the transportation of goods, and the appalling inadequacies to meet the demands

of catastrophe or defense, should an atomic war come.”46 Eisenhower had apparently witnessed firsthand how smooth highway surfaces had been clear advantages to the Germans in World War II. Prewar German claims that construction of the Autobahn alone would rapidly invigorate their auto economy and also diminish unemployment were quickly proven to be a gross understatement.47 Conceived coincidentally six months before the Suez Canal Conflict, Eisenhower’s 1956 National System of Interstate and Defense Highways is without a doubt the most significant, and perhaps most understated, public works project in the history of America.48 Master planned as a national imperative conditioned on geographic accessibility, Eisenhower insisted that the system would recast the role of America: “[T]he amount of concrete poured to form these roadways would build 80 Hoover Dams or six sidewalks to the moon […] To build them, bulldozers and shovels would move enough dirt Synthetic Surfaces

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1697 1785

Stoppage: the most important traffic control device in the history of the world, the STOP sig sential four-way intersection.

1807

Crossing: with the proliferation of railroads throughout America, warning signs pop up at ma

SCHOOL

MILES

SPEED LIMIT

Marking: the Manual of Uniform Traffic Devices is given birth, setting the standard for types

First Concrete Highway, Pennsylvania

Ground Control: the development of asphalt and concrete roadways in the post-war boom,

1911

YIELD RIGHT

First Cloverleaf Interchange, Woodbridge, New Jersey

WAY

Form Follows Function: the universal design for the STOP sign and the YIELD sign are finally

1869 1870

Form Follows Freeways: with the inception of Eisenhower’s National Defense Highway System

First Freeway, Highway 110, Los Angeles

Deconstruction: with the bounty of highway construction comes highway repair. Orange const 1901

1905

1909

Engineering Culture: with the advent of the Highway Design Manual published for the first tim

First Tri-level Highway Junction, New Jersey 1914

1925 1928 1929

Surface Capacity: increasing volumes of suburban traffic to the city centers spawn the deve

1932 1934

1940 1942 1943

Roadside Culture: a booming U.S. economy finally legitimizes road tripping as America’s mo

1948 1949 1952 1953 1954 1956 1958

Traffic Calming: a new field of highway designers emerges at the turn of the century with an 1961

1971

Mixing Bowl, Jersey City 1978

Multi-Modality: President Bush’s Intermodal Surface Transportation Act, nicknamed “ice tea 1988

n is introduced to the city of Detroit in 1914 to prevent accidents and crashes at roadway intersections, while the first speed limit remains at a lean 20 miles per hour. Every point of intersection on the entire U.S. square-mile grid would soon become the site of what we know today as the quintes-

ajor crossings and major points of conflict. An evolution of the STOP sign, the first 3-color traffic signal is introduced in Detroit resulting in three new traffic actions: stopping, slowing, and going. Simultaneously, speed limits nearly double in less than a decade to a whopping 35 miles per hour.

s of signs and pavement markings by classifying them as regulatory, warning, or guidance signs. Except for the STOP and YIELD signs, regulatory signs were black on white rectangles; diamond-shaped slow-type signs warned drivers to slow down; signs that cautioned were square.

STOP AHEAD

coupled with the present-day speed limit of 55 miles per hour, engenders the creation of warning signs to prevent crashes at intersections, road bends, curves, and zig-zags, especially useful during night driving.

y perfected to their present state, respectively with white letters on a red octagon and black letters on a yellow triangle.

m, the entire continent of the United States begins to see the light of regional highways that connect major urban centers. Los Angeles, the City of Freeways, introduces the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first and largest stacked interchange at the junction of I-105 and I-110.

me by the California Transportation Department, street life as we know it is over. From warning signs to regulatory signs, every component of streets, roads and highways fall under the jurisdiction of the highway engineer.

elopment of occupational strategies such as HOV lanes and carpooling, to increase the capacity of roads and highways.

ost privileged past time and with an increased speed limit to 65 miles per hour, comes world class roadside amenities and blue roadway signs.

n appetite for speed bumps and chicanes, seeking to use the architecture of the road as the main device for slowing down traffic and reducing an ever increasing number of road accidents, the No.2 cause of death in America after heart attacks.

â&#x20AC;?, crack opens an entirely new genre of signage adapted to alternative forms of transportation, signaling the beginning of the end of the domination of the motorcar.

Synthetic Surfaces

Driving Surface: Timeline of Graphic Highway Signage of the US. Diagram: OPSYS/Brett Hoonaert

truction signage begins to dominate the American landscape, for what would become the universal indicator of traffic delays, bottlenecks, and detours.

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and rock to bury all of Connecticut two feet deep. More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one would change the face of America with straightaways, cloverleaf turns, bridges and elongated parkways. Its impact on the American economy—the jobs it would produce in manufacturing and construction, the rural areas it would open up—are beyond calculation.”49

Barriers The effect of Eisenhower’s diagram was exponential. The construction of the superhighways propelled the United States into five decades of relentless motorization. With smoothness at a grand scale came speed. In less than fifty years, surface speeds had grown more than 1,000 percent, from 6 to 65 miles per hour. The geotechnical challenge of roadbuilding was now solved; increasing traffic flows resulted in the foreseeable: governance of speed took the controls. As early as 1954, President Eisenhower described the paradox of speed and mobility during his July 12 Grand Plan speech: “There were 37,500 men, women and children killed in traffic accidents last year, and those injured totaled another 1,300,000. This awful total presents a real crisis to America. As a humane nation, we must end this unnecessary toll. Property losses have reached a staggering total, and insurance costs have become a real burden […]. Our first most apparent penalty is an annual death toll comparable to the casualties of a bloody war, beyond calculation in dollar terms. It approaches 40 thousand killed and exceeds one and three-tenths million injured annually.”50

Ensuing highway landscape of the “mixing bowl” interchange in Newark, New Jersey (left); Typical freeway-to-freeway interchanges (right). Source: U.S. Geological Survey; ©2001 California Department of Transportation, all rights reserved 172

Made from concrete for its compressive strength, the first median barrier used in New Jersey was installed in 1955, standing at only 18 inches tall. As an expanded roadside edge, the vertical barrier looked like a low vertical wall with a curb on each side,

functioning as a protective divider between opposite traffic flows. From operational observations rather than crash testing, the shape changed and the material reinforced, increasing from 24 inches in 1932 and to 32 inches in 1959. Going upward from the horizontal, the first 2 inches from the pavement rose vertically, the next 10 inches at a 55-degree angle, and the remainder at an 84-degree angle.51 With modern slip forming technologies, the commonly seen shape was soon found almost everywhere in North America, now known as the Jersey barrier.52

Separations As a vertical outgrowth of the horizontal surface system, Jersey barriers prevented collisions, but also prevented crossings. As soon as the u-turn disappeared, the ‘jughandle’ emerged. A spatial invention, this traffic device was conceived to allow unimpeded flow in a practically infinite number of directions, by simply raising the surface of a traffic lane over another. The premier engineering strategy, at-grade separations were adopted wherever two roadways crossed or two transportation modes overlapped. Intended to prevent collisions and fatal accidents at-grade, the jughandle evolved into a more standard, vertical format of the highway intersection known as the interchange, or the fly-over. Its most classical form, the four-way cloverleaf, allowed for nonstop flow between two high-volume roadways. Unless the interchange was congested, no stopping was required. The first cloverleaf was opened in New Jersey in 1929, on what are now US Interstate 1/9 and NJ State Highway 35. That typology has grown to infamous proportions with junctions on the New Jersey Turnpike such as the Merge, the Tri-Level Interchange, and the Mixing Bowl.

Foreign Trade Zones53 Urbanism’s next obstacle was capacity. By 1995, 90 percent of the system had surpassed its designed life. Since the interstate highway system was built to accommodate twenty years of traffic growth for more than 100 million people, the capacity of the sys-

tem was severely overtaxed with a population nearing the 300-million mark in less than fifty years. To address urban congestion, mass transit, and aging infrastructure, a series of surface transportation programs were enacted in the late twentieth century, such as the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act in 1991 and Transportation Equity Act for the Twenty-First Century in 1998. By providing federal funds for state and local projects, the acts demonstrated the extricable bond between transportation and economies to maximize the capacity of existing transportation systems across the continent. The initiatives ranged in scale and in scope: new intermodal travel corridors such as the AirTrain projects established at Newark Liberty and John F. Kennedy International airports by the New York/New Jersey Port Authority and new highway trade corridors were being forged with the implementation of the National Corridor Programs and the Coordinated Border Infrastructure Program between Mexico, the United States, and Canada by the North America’s Superhighway Coalition. Reacting to the growing need for seamless circulation, these intermodal surface programs were synonymous with what Alex Wall refers to as “the reworking of movement corridors as new vessels of collective life.”54 The accelerated development of “foreign trade zones” across the United States is a concurrent critical development that took place in response to needs for capacity and intermodality. Foreign trade zones are not considered part of the United States’ customs territory. Within the zones, companies maintain inventories, factories, or assembling and manufacturing facilities and therefore may defer, reduce, or eliminate import duties. Decentralized and distributed, these zones signal the incubation of a synthetic infrastructure: a poly-modal system that fuses truck stops, train stations, harbors, and airport terminals into one undifferentiated land mass of streets, roads, highways, railways, tunnels, shipping lines, and flight paths. One of the most notable examples is Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) No. 49 in Newark, New JerSynthetic Surfaces

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Foreign Trade Zone No. 49, New Jersey, 2003. Aerial photograph featuring Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), the New Jersey Turnpike, and Port Newark/Elizabeth Container Terminal. Source: U.S. Geological Survey. Synthetic Surfaces

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Kill van Kull, Newark Bay: Three-dimensional sonar image with draped stratigraphy showing depositional zones in the channel bottom. The protruding topography at the base illustrates the bedrock diabase outcroppings that are scheduled for removal by drilling and blasting. Source: © 2003, e4sciences | Earthworks

sey. Located at the convergence of seven major roadways, two of the busiest commercial airports in the world, and the largest seaport in the Western hemisphere, all linked by the New Jersey Turnpike. FTZ No. 49 stevedores more than 7 billion dollars of cargo every year and employs 80,000 people, making it the largest, most active in the country, with Houston’s FTZ No. 84 in close competition. The staging ground for courier companies like FedEx and UPS, as well as luxury vehicle manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes, the proliferation of foreign trade zones is stunning. From 1950 onward the number has increased from 5 to 243 across the United States, handling cargo by air, rail, truck, and sea worth more than 225 billion dollars. At almost 10,000-acres in size, the six foreign trade zones in the New Jersey/New York metropolitan region are almost equal to the size of Manhattan.55 Once America’s largest suburb, New Jersey had suddenly become its biggest warehouse.

Surface Pressure The multiplying effect of Eisenhower’s highway system did not simply end with the 176

proliferation of multi-modal transportation. From the abundance of access networks on land emerged an unforeseen consequence “off land.” With the advent of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the mid 1980s and the rapid increase in trans-Pacific trade during the 1990s, significant pressure was placed on the surface capacity of FTZ No. 49 port facilities.56 Three million tons of cargo were being funneled through the Port of New York and New Jersey each year, heading toward the richest consumer base in the world with a net worth of 80 billion dollars annually. Known as Atlantica, the trade network radiates from New York as far out as Illinois and Ontario, reaching 80 million people lying within a 24-hour truck trip off the midAtlantic coast.

Mud and Silt Squeezed in by a major inter-tidal system, the harbor’s precarious situation is nothing new. Since the first recorded landing in New Amsterdam nearly three hundred years ago, port facilities have always contended with the pressure from upstream sediment flow that irreversibly fills the harbor’s main

Mud Dump: The 12 Mile Dumping Ground, now known as the Historic Area Remediation Site (HARS). Shaded relief of seafloor topography. Courtesy of The Woods Hole Field Center, U.S. Geological Survey Coastal and Marine Program, Woods Hole, MA

shipping channels.57 What differentiated the past from the present, however, is the growing size of vessel drafts. At full capacity, Post-Panamax ocean freighters require clear channel depths of at least 15 meters, nearly double the harbor’s natural depth. With an annual depositional rate of 2 million cubic meters of mud and silt filling its harbor, port authorities were now bound by a material conundrum. To resolve this pressure above and below the surface of its waters, the main administrative body of the harbor—the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey—embarked on a massive deepening project of its shipping channels for the rapidly growing fleet of Super-PostPanamax deep-draft ocean freighters that were transforming international maritime trade.58 Tripling channel depths from a 6-meter to an 18-meter mean low water level posed a unique logistical complexity.59 Joseph Seebode, environmental engineer and chief of New York/New Jersey Harbor of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, summarized the paradox in 2001: “Dredging the channels poses an environmental and

engineering challenge. There’s a lot of blasting, drilling, and dredging to be done, [but] all that material must to be disposed of.”60

Dredging Up until the early 1990s, dredging consisted of little more than digging and dumping. The Army Corps of Engineers had made use of offshore sites for spoil materials within the vicinity of the New York Bight for more than two hundred years and well in to the early 1990s.61 Sites known as the 12 Mile Dumping Ground were used for sewage waste, the Mud Dump for dredge sediment, and the Cellar Dirt Dump for blasted rock from the New York subway system. Those operations came to a grinding halt at the end of the 1990s.62 Triggered by what is referred to as the “Amphipod issue,” the 1997 Ocean Dumping Act placed an unilateral ban on dumping of contaminated sediments in open waters.63 Diminishing landfill space and skyrocketing landfilling costs on the East Coast near the turn of the century, exhausted all past practices, engendering an important shift in operational sites and material flows. Synthetic Surfaces

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Geological Cross-section of Foreign Trade Zone No. 49. From left: Garden State Parkway, Interstate Route 28, US Route 22, US Route I-9, Newark Liberty International Airport, The Peripheral Ditch, New Jersey Turnpike, McLester Street, DENJ Landfill, Jersey Gardens Shopping Center, Port Elizabeth Marine Terminal, and Newark Bay (top). Source: S. Stanford (2002) Surficial Geology of the Elizabeth Quadrangle, Essex, Hudson, and Union Counties (NJ Geological Survey Open File Map 42, Scale 1:24,000)

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Strategic Placement Sites of Dredged Material (bottom, right) including the HARS Mud Dump off the coast of New York, Bark Camp Mine in Pennsylvania, OENJ Landfill in Elizabeth (now the Jersey Gardens Mall), and the Meadowlands in New Jersey Diagram: OPSYS. Hydrodynamic Mesh, model of the dredging contract area in New York Harbor (bottom, left). Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

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Diversion Strategies: Tipping of a 1962 Redbird railcar to enhance the Shark River Reef, 2003. To date, the New Jersey Artificial Reef Program has made use of twenty railcars for the creation of fish havens and recreational dive sites (top). ÂŠ2008 Stephen Mallon; Shipping of dredged material from Newark Bay by rail, en route to a pug mill for amendment near the Bark Camp abandoned coal mine in Pennsylvania, 2000 (bottom). Photo courtesy of New York/New Jersey Clean Ocean & Shore Trust

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Authorized by the Water Resources Development Act, the Dredged Materials Management Program came to the rescue. Monumental in scale, the program aimed to achieve a “superior industry-standard ocean access to accommodate the demand for international cargo through [the] region.”64 Boiling down to building underwater super highways, the program would effectively result in synthesizing port activities, environmental operations, and urban land uses into one large, cohesive landscape operation. Quantitatively, the first-phase project required the dredging, reprocessing, and distribution of approximately 5 million cubic meters of mud, silt, and sediment to a multitude of inland sites.65 Logistically, the program entailed the mobilization of large pieces of equipment to safely remove large volumes of mud and silt from the shipping channels, dry docks, berths, and public marinas of the harbor. With the centralized efforts of the New Jersey Department of Transportation, the Office of Maritime Resources, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps set out a diversion strategy and upland placement of the dredged materials from offshore dumping sites toward productive urban functions in the region of New York and New Jersey.66 The dredging operations and the materials management program were therefore divided into nine different contracts to be performed over the course of a decade.

Geotechnics The sheer scale and magnitude of the operations are compelling.67 Whereas the Central Artery Tunnel Project in Boston generated a mere 10 million cubic meters of overburden,68 the Port Authority was now dealing with a geological volume of nearly five times that size, distributed over an equal period of time. What further differentiates these two regional situations is the finite aspect of the construction process in downtown Boston compared to the infinite process of sedimentary processes in Newark Bay. For the first phase of deepening projects in the Arthur Kill and the Kill van Kull in the Port of Newark/Elizabeth, the Army Corps of Engineers enlisted some of the largest dredg-

ing machines. The fleet of equipment was robust and versatile: three backhoe dredgers (the New York, the Tauracavor, and the Maricavor), two deepwater drill boats (the Apache and the MB 301), and two clamshell diggers (the Michigan and the Bean II) operated by choice contractors like Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company of Oak Brook, Illinois, and Bean Stuyvesant Dredging from New Orleans.69 Equipped with real-time kinematics technologies and global positioning systems, dredging operations were precisely undertaken on a nonstop, seven days a week, twelve hours a day rotation. Diversion strategies soon followed the dredging operations. Coupled with sediment decontamination technologies like soil washing, photo-stabilization, cement binding, and thermal destruction, the economies of scale offered by the program led to the recapitulation of a multitude of infrastructural landscapes70 with an almost endless array of transformative land uses.71 Most importantly, the geotechnical characterization of the seven different types of materials determined the logic of postdredging use within closest possible proximity: red-brown clay toward subaqueous pit encapsulation, silt toward non-aquatic upland sites, and the remaining bedrock (glacial till, serpentinite, diabase, sandstone, and shale) toward artificial reef construction. Once the bane of the highway system, mud was by now resurfacing as a rather visible and transformative medium.72 Five major disposal locations were specifically planned for the diversions as a final decisive result: the Historic Area Remediation Site (HARS, formerly the Mud Dump), the EN-CAP landfill, the Shark River Reef (Shark RR), the GATX or Port Reading or the National Lead site (GATX/PR/NL), and the Pennsylvania Mines and New York and New Jersey Quarries (PAM/NYQ/NJQ). Any overflow materials would then be diverted to a subsidiary site.

Site Manufacturing With this consolidation, 200 acres of quarries across New Jersey—mostly from the turnpike era—were encapsulated for surface Synthetic Surfaces

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reclamation;73 embankments and spillways were constructed for geotechnical stabilization at the Newark Container Terminal;74 and base courses were laid for highway expansion projects in Atlantic City in the past decade. The versatility of this strategy even spanned the boundaries of the state. Pennsylvania found use for 4 million cubic meters of amended mud and silt for the localized surface encapsulation of the Bark Camp abandoned coal mine75 as well as laying the base course of a new 5,000-foot runway at the Philadelphia International Airport. In total, 42 million cubic meters of material are planned for the drilling, blasting, siphoning, and dewatering of dredgeate from the harbor at a cost of slightly more than 1 billion US dollars. Over the next decade, esti182

mates show that these operations will keep more than 230,000 people working, while maintaining access for millions more.76 With Pennsylvania’s capacity to receive more than a billion cubic meters of material for its 365,000 abandoned coal mines, and the consolidated cost savings of more than 100 million US dollars, the future “mining” of mud as “raw feed material seemed endless.”77

SYNTHESIS Future projections are staggering. Over the next four decades, more than 10 billion dollars will be spent on more than two hundred deep-draft seaports to ship and process

more than 2 billion annual tons of cargo, requiring the relocation of an estimated 2 billion cubic meters of dredged material at an annual bill of slightly more than 2 billion US dollars: enough material to bury the states of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania under a 1-meter-thick layer of mud.78 The prospects on land are no less dramatic. By 2006, the United States Federal Highway Administration will have spent more than 100 billion dollars on highway infrastructure and will employ close to 28 million people, keeping 300 million Americans travelling more than 1 billion miles every year. Thirty years after Apollo 11’s first lunar landing, the United States will have constructed 4 million miles of roadways and laid down enough asphalt to build a 100-lane expressway to and from the moon. From the 7-mph Duryea Motor Wagon in 1896 to Noble’s Thrust Supersonic Class 763.035-mph land speed record, the United States will have increased its surface speed by more than 2,000 percent in less than a hundred years; fast enough to travel around the world in less than two days.79

From the sand pumping and asphalt paving operations that have led the construction of the transcontinental highway system, to the mud dredging and materials management operations of the deepening of New Jersey’s seaport in the early twenty-first century, the coupling of transportation networks across North America with the reflexive mechanisms that support them and the topographies they generate suggest the latent effectiveness of these synthetic surfaces. The contemporary, reciprocal project of landscape infrastructure and landscape urbanism suggests that ongoing attention to the seemingly banal surfaces of urban operation, from speed to synchronization, is a critical task.

In its century-long search for unimpeded seamlessness, asphalt has therefore become more than a technological panacea. It has effectively become a binding agent whose flexible surface has spawned the growth of what can be called a bionic system—a synthesis of biological, mechanical, and electronic resources80—that now spans the entire continent, reaching deep across the sea, the air, and the ground, effectively connecting global commercial activities, regional transportation infrastructures, and contemporary land uses. Seen from space, the consolidated surface of North America looks less like a landlocked continent and much more like a borderless construction site. Its transportation network resembles a circulation diagram taken from the blueprint of an incomplete factory floor where the circuitry of highways and shipping channels functions as a load-bearing mechanism and traffic as the surface grease: infinitely optimizing internal urban functions and seeking out new channels of distribution for new inventories of material and access to new sources of energy.81 Synthetic Surfaces

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1. Alex Wall, “Programming the Urban Surface,” in Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, ed. James Corner (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999): 238; Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1934): 372. 2. Kevin Lynch strongly advocated for the organizational capacity of circulation systems and their different constituent parts throughout his career as author and practitioner. In Site Planning (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1962), Lynch dedicates an entire chapter to systems of movement, establishing “access [as] a prerequisite to the usefulness of any block of space. Without the ability to enter, to leave, and move, within it, to receive and transmit information or goods, space is of no value, however vast or rich in resources. In one sense, a city is a communication net, made up of roads, paths, rails, pipes and wires. This system of flow is intimately related to the pattern of localized activities, or land use. The economic and cultural level of a city is roughly in proportion to the capacity of its circulation system…” (118). The recent recapitulation of the discourse on the organizational capacity of circulation systems is owed to two contemporary practitioners: Alex Wall and Keller Easterling. In Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways, and Houses in America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), Easterling clearly articulates this latent capacity: “Generic spatial production, for instance, amplifies small adjustments by way of its own banality”(4). 3. Charles Waldheim was one of the first urbanists in North America to articulate this point of view with the formulation of landscape urbanism. See Waldheim, “Landscape Urbanism: A Genealogy,” Praxis Journal 4 (2002): 4–17, and Waldheim’s Landscape Urbanism Conference at the Graham Foundation in Chicago (1997) and traveling exhibition mounted at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York (1997). See also Grahame Shane, “The Emergence of Landscape Urbanism” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Charles Waldheim (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006): 55–67, and Julia Czerniak, “Challenging the Pictorial: Recent Landscape Practice,” Assemblage 34 (1998): 110–120. 4. Stan Allen, “Mat Urbanism: The Thick 2-D,” in Case: Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital and the Mat Building Revival, ed. Hashim Sarkis (Munich: Prestel/Harvard Design School, 2001): 118–126. 5. Wall, “Programming the Urban Surface,” 221. 6. Allen, “Mat Urbanism: The Thick 2-D,” 124. 7. See Mirko Zardini ed., Triennale di Milano, Asfalto: Il Carattere Della Città (Asphalt: The Character of the City) (Milan: Electa Editrice, 2003). 8. See Jane Holtz Kay’s Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998). 9. See the Federal Highway Administration’s “Asphalt Pavement Mix Production Survey: 2009-2010” and “Asphalt Top the Charts for Environmental Stewardship–Again” by Kent Hansen, Dave Newcomb, and Margaret Cervarich in Hot Mix Asphalt Technology (September/October 2011): 20–21. 10. Two distinct meanings of the term synthetic are employed in this article. In its first and more commonly understood use, synthetic references a state of substitution for a natural occurrence. Underpinning this article, the second meaning is broader in scope since it relates to synthesis, the process of the combination and the composition of different elements to form a whole or a complex of parts. The critical meaning of “synthesis” is explored in depth by entomologist Edward O. Wilson in Consilience: Toward a Unity of Knowledge (New York, NY: Knopf, 1998), which is based on Julian Huxley’s Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1942). See Massimo Negrotti, Toward a General Theory of the Artificial (Exeter: Intellect, 1999) for a comprehensive distinction between the synthetic and the artificial, the substitute and the fake. 11. See Maxwell G. Lay, Ways of the World: A History of the World’s Roads and of the Vehicles that Used Them (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), for an encyclopedic survey on how mud, dust, drainage, erosion, sediment, and transport were central to the transformation of the North American landscape up until the early twentieth century. 12. The impact of speed—and accelerated forms of movement—on the contemporary landscape has produced two generations of researchers in the latter half of the twentieth century. Philosopher and architect Paul Virilio is one of the most notable proponents. In Vitesse et Politique/Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology (Paris, FR: Éditions Galilée, 1977), Virilio is particularly instructive regarding the geopolitical agency of paved surfaces: “Can asphalt be a territory? Is the bourgeois State and its power the street or in the street? Are its potential force and expanse in the places of intense circulation, on the path of rapid transportation?” (4). Dr. Matthew T. Ciolek is another notable practitioner whose research involves the field of “dromography,” which involves the synthesis of geography, history, and logistics of trade routes, transportation, and communication networks. See Ciolek, “Global Networking: A Timeline” (1999), www.ciolek.com/PAPERS/milestones.html. 13. Henry Adams, History of the United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (1889–1891): xx. “By 1902, Adams withdrew from politics and converted to the amenities of an 18 horse-power Mercedes-Benz, he spent more and more time away from Washington; instead, he explored France in his new motor car.” Expressed at the end of the eighteenth century, Henry Adams’s ideals are a premonition of the future: “My idea of paradise is a perfect automobile going thirty miles an hour on a smooth road to a twelfth-century cathedral.” See “Henry Adams, Globe Trotter in Space and Time” in On the Road in American Culture, www.univie. ac.at/Anglistik/easyrider/data/HAdams.htm.

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14. Isaac B. Potter, “The Gospel of the Good Roads: A Letter to the American Farmer from the League of American Wheelman,” Manufacturer & Builder 23 (New York, NY: Western and Company, 1891): 1. 15. Frost action refers to the cyclical process of freezing and thawing in soils. Freezing produces frost heaves, which lift up the surface layers of the soil or the pavement. The heaves are caused by the growth of ice lenses between the soil particles. See Alfreds R. Jumikis, Thermal Soil Mechanics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1966): 3–4. For this reason, wood—an orthotropic material—was the primary building material throughout the continent for bridges and railroads. “Wood was a desirable construction material for several reasons. It is a renewable resource that is resistant to the effects of deicing agents and can sustain substantially higher loads over a short period of time. It is lightweight and easier to fabricate and construct, and it can be constructed in any type of weather without affecting the material.” See Robert Fletcher and Jonathan Parker Snow, “Paper No.186: A History of the Development of Wooden Bridges,” Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers 60 (1934). 16. Charles Goodyear, “Improvement in India-Rubber Fabrics” United States Patent No. 3,663 (New York, NY: June 15, 1844): 1–2. 17. Asphalt is not to be confused with coal tar. Asphalt is a highly viscous liquid that occurs naturally in most crude petroleum. Asphalt is separated from the other components in crude oils (such as naphta, gasoline, and diesel) by the process of fractional distillation. It is sometimes confused with tar, which is an artificial material produced by the destructive distillation of organic matter. Both tars and asphalts are classified as bitumens, a classification that includes all materials entirely soluble in carbon disulfide. A known carcinogenic, coal tar or “pitch” was gradually phased out of the road building industry in mid-century, as the petroleum industry made refined asphalts more available. Coal tar is still commonly used as a waterproofing agent for roofs. See The Asphalt Handbook (Lexington, KY: The Asphalt Institute, 1947). 18. More than the wheel, Robert Leibensperger attributes the growth of the North American mechanical industry to the emergence of tribology, the science that deals with the design, friction, wear, and lubrication of interacting surfaces in relative motion, such as bearings and gears. See Robert Leibensperger, “The Conquest of Friction,” Mechanical Engineering (November 2003). 19. Jeffrey T. Schnapp, “Three Pieces of Apshalt,” Grey Room 11 (2003): 5–21. 20. Previous innovations were developed by Thomas Metcalfe and John Loudon McAdam using a variety of aggregates and physical shapes to determine the most effective morphology for building dry roads. The most critical one deals with raising the surface through “crowning,” creating positive drainage and ensuring dryness. See Irving Brinton Holley, “Blacktop: How Asphalt Paving Came to the Urban United States,” Technology and Culture 44 (2003): 703–733. 21. See Edward Joseph De Smedt, “The Origins of American Asphalt Pavements,” in Paving and Municipal Engineering 5 (December 1879): 251. 22. John Loudon McAdam wrote extensively on his findings. An extensive description of his work can be found in his “Remarks on the Present System of Road-Making” (1816) and “Practical Essay on the Scientific Repair and Preservation of Roads” (1819). In contrast, Thomas Metcalfe’s discoveries possessed a special advantage that granted him greater freedom to experiment with material coarseness and densities: he was blind. 23. See Edward Joseph De Smedt, “Improvement in Laying Asphalt or Concrete Pavements for Roads,” United States Patent No. 103,581 (New York, NY: May 31, 1870): 1. 24. The 1916 Federal Highway Administration empowered each state with a highway agency and a team of engineering professionals to carry out federal-aid highway projects. 25. See Hugh Gillespie, A Century of Progress: The History of Hot Mix Asphalt (Lanham, MD: National Asphalt Pavement Association, 1992). 26. On the order of Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led an expedition to survey natural resources and water courses across the American Northwest for transportation and communication purposes. Their 1804–1806 expedition led to a succession of four major surveys of the American West, later giving birth to the United States Geological Survey in 1879. See U.S. Geological Survey–U.S. Department of the Interior, “From Lewis and Clark to the U.S. Geological Survey,” www.usgs.gov/features/lewisandclark/LC_USGS.html (accessed February 3, 2005) 27. Captain William C. Greaney, “Principal Facts Concerning the First Transcontinental Army Motor Transport Expedition, Washington to San Francisco, July 7 to September 6, 1919,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Archives, www.eisenhower.archives.gov (accessed February 8, 2005) 28. See Joyce N. Ritter, The History of Highways and Statistics (U.S. Department of Highway Administration, 1994) and United States Bureau of Public Roads, Highway Statistics: Summary To 1955 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1957). 29. Dwight D. Eisenhower, At Ease: Through Darkest America with Truck and Tank (New York, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1967): 166–167. 30. Although more durable, concrete paving was overcome by the asphalt industry due to its cost effectiveness, homogeneity, and construction speed. The use of concrete made a major comeback with the advent of slipforming technologies in the 1970s. 31. Eric Larrabee, “The Six Thousand Houses That Levitt Built,” Harper’s Magazine 197 (1948): 79–83.

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32. The multiplying effect of highways and the motorization of transport vehicles radically changed the freightmoving industry. In the early 1900s, Dan Tobin recognized this trend and set out to organize the fast-growing motorized truck delivery and warehousing industry with the country’s largest union, known today as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. See “The Teamster Century,” www.teamster.org/about/history.htm. 33. As a passenger-pooling strategy, the first intercity buses were introduced in the early 1920s. The buses were dubbed “greyhounds” because of their gray paint and streamline appearance. See Larry Plachno, “Greyhound Buses Through the Years,” National Bus Trader (2002): 17–24. 34. The Good Roads Movement was ironically founded by a bicyclist in 1902, a period when bicycles were hated as much as automobiles. President of the American League of Wheelmen, Horatio Earle also co-founded the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. See Horatio Sawyer Earle, The Autobiography of ‘By-Gum’ Earle (The State Review Publishing Company, 1929). 35. Henry Ford was infatuated with the process of synthesis. One of his major innovations was a direct result of it. By deciding not to attach an engine to an existing carriage, he constructed a four-wheel body based on the principles of bicycle manufacturing, making a quadricycle. The combination of different components synthesized a new whole object, effectively resulting in the invention of the motorcar. See Henry Ford, “Motor-Carriage,” United States Patent No. 686,046 (Detroit, MI: November 5, 1901): 1–2. 36. In the Cement and Concrete Reference Guide (Washington, DC: The Portland Cement Association, 1997), the Portland Cement Association reports “significant technical and design developments during the 1930s and 1940s made concrete paving faster, less expensive, and more durable. […] At this time, concrete pavement also exhibited problems with scaling, the flaking or peeling away of the surface, which studies determined to be the result of freeze-thaw cycles, accelerated through the use of deicing salts. Studies showed that the introduction of tiny air bubbles in the concrete mix could reduce the problem. This led to the development of air-entrained concrete, now used in virtually all U.S. road building. The invention of the slip-form paver in 1949 was another milestone in the development of concrete paving technology, as it allowed road crews to place wide sections of concrete continuously and therefore far more efficiently than before. Slip-forming is now used for highway paving projects in almost every state.” www.cement.org/think-harder-concrete-/paving/concrete/highways (accessed June 30, 2014). 37. Caption, 1949 New Jersey Turnpike map, New Jersey Turnpike Authority. 38. One of the largest quarries to supply the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike was owned by Passaic Crushed Stone in northern New Jersey. In operation since the beginning of the interstate system in 1956, it yields more than 1 million tons of aggregate annually. Passaic Crushed Stone, the last large, productive quarries in the country owned by Tilcon, is located in the Highlands, a geological formation predominantly underlain by granite and gneiss of the Precambrian Age, the oldest rock formation in New Jersey formed 1.3 billion and 750 million years ago. Granites and gneisses are excellent aggregates for hot mix asphalt and concrete mixtures. 39. Chief engineer of the Asphalt Institute Vaughan Marker provides an in-depth perspective on the developments of the pavement industry over the past fifty years in Dwight Walker, “A Conversation with Vaughan Marker,” in Asphalt Magazine (summer 2002): 20–25. 40. See DPR, “Operation Sand,” New Jersey Turnpike Authority–Press Release, Department of Public Records (Trenton, NJ: October 12, 1950): 1. For a broader explanation of the 300-year-old unbroken trend of the perception of marshlands as wastelands, a perception that is widely reversed today, see William Cronon, “Modes of Prophecy and Production: Placing Nature in History,” Journal of American History 76 No.4 (March 1990): 1121– 1131. 41. See Paul J. C. Friedlander, “High Road from the Hudson to the Delaware,” The New York Times (November, 25 1951). 42. The geometry of interstate highways is essentially based on a theoretical design speed standard made visible by three main characteristics: flatter horizontal curves, longer vertical curves, and greater sight distances. 43. See New Jersey Turnpike Authority, “Construction Progress Updates,” Department of Public Records (Trenton, NJ: November 12, 1956): 1. 44. In 1969, a similar circumstance ensued “in Pennsylvania, when the state highway department, used its own reference points on each side of a river, instead of the Geodetic Survey’s; construction of a bridge started from each shore, and in midstream the two sections were four metres apart.” See John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2001): 356. 45. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Message to the Congress RE: Highways” (Abilene, KS: Dwight D. Eisenhower National Presidential Library Archives, February 22, 1955), and Richard F. Weingroff, America’s Highways 1776–1976, (Washington, DC: Federal Highway Administration, 1976). 46. Vice-president Richard M. Nixon citing Eisenhower: “Telegram To Richard Milhous Nixon, July 12 1954,” The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Doc. 976, World Wide Web Facsimile, The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/976.cfm (accessed July 1, 2004) 47. There are diverging accounts of the geographic and the economic benefits of the German highway system during the middle of the twentieth century. See Eckhard Gruber and Erhard Schütz, Mythos Reichsautobahn, Bau und Inszenierung der Straße des Führers 1933–1941 (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 1996) for a compelling interpretation of German military highway infrastructure as tactical propaganda.

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48. Jacqueline Tatom investigates this idea further in her essay “Urban Highways and the Reluctant Public Realm,” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Charles Waldheim (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006): 179–195. 49. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change 1953–1956 (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1963): 548–549. 50. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “July 12 1954 Speech,” delivered by vice-president Richard M. Nixon to the nation’s governors. This speech was given only three months after his famous Domino Theory speech on April 7, 1954, which discussed the effects of atomic energy research and the arms race. See Richard F. Weingroff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Federal Role in Highway Safety (Washington, DC: Federal Highway Administration, 2003). 51. The geometrical objective of the New Jersey profile is to redirect a vehicle upon impact and minimize damage to its wheels and car body. See Charles F. McDevitt, “Basics of Concrete Barriers: Concrete barriers appear to be simple, but in reality, they are sophisticated safety devices” Public Roads Magazine 5 (March/April 2000). Another innovation in the configuration of the road surface was the “suicide lane.” In the 1920s and '30s, roads were built with three lanes: one lane for each direction and a shared middle lane for passing vehicles in both directions. This presented the very real possibility of head-on collision. The concept behind this lane is similar to the dashed yellow line found on two-lane highways, which permits passing. Suicide lanes were finally phased out by the 1960s, with the roadways being widened to a full four lanes or more. 52. Left-hand turn islands and safety islands are more commonly found in urban areas since the 1930s. 53. Foreign trade zones are not considered part of the United States’ customs territory. Within the zones, companies maintain inventories, factories, or assembling and manufacturing facilities and therefore may defer, reduce, or eliminate import duties. See Foreign Trade Zone Manual (U.S. Customs Service, 2004). 54. Wall, “Programming the Urban Surface,” 234. 55. “Foreign Trade Zone No. 49 Fact Sheet,” The Port Authority of New York/New Jersey (2004): 1–2. 56. See Eric Lipton, “New York Port Hums Again With Asian Trade,” The New York Times (November 22, 2004). 57. The average depth of the Port Elizabeth and Newark harbor is 6 meters. The port district of New York and New Jersey comprises the Hudson River to Croton Bay, the Upper Bay, the East River, the western end of Long Island Sound, Newark Bay, the tidal Passaic and Hackensack Rivers, the Kill van Kull, the Arthur Kill, Lower Bay (to the Rockaway-Sandy Hook transect), and the tidal Raritan River http://www.panynj.gov/port/vehicle-shippingprocessing.html (accessed March 20, 2001) 58. The beam length of Post-Panamax and Super-Post-Panamax ships exceeds the maximum allowable width of 32.3 meters of the Panama Canal. These ships navigate the Suez Canal for transoceanic shipping. In the Port of New York and New Jersey deep-draft ships currently operate at 75 percent of their capacity due to the shallowness of the waters, resulting in significant losses for both the sealiners and the ports. See Drewry Shipping Consultants, Post-Panamax Containerships - The Next Generation (London, 2001). 59. See Andrew C. Revkin, “Shallow Waters: A Special Report–Curbs On Silt Disposal Threaten Port Of New York As Ships Grow Larger,” The New York Times (March 18, 1996): A1. 60. Joseph Seebode, Chief of the New York/New Jersey Harbor Programs Branch for the Army Corps of Engineers in Gayle Ehrenman, “Digging Deeper in New York,” Mechanical Engineering 125 No.11 (November 2003): 51-53. 61. Dredged material is mostly sediment that has settled into waterways through natural erosion and depositional processes. Sediment can be divided into several geologic types: sand and gravel, silt and clay, and glacial till and rock (Source: New Jersey Department of Transportation – Maritime Resources). Its dark green to black color originates from the diabase rock that lies in the upper reaches of the harbor, part of what is known as the Newark Supergroup basins that trail along the coastal reaches of North America. See Paul E. Olsen and Robert E. Weems, “Synthesis and Revision of Groups within the Newark Supergroup, Eastern North America," The Geological Society of America Bulletin 2, No.109 (February 1997): 195–209. 62. Since the 1970s, the New York District of the USACE and the U.S. EPA selected an underwater site about 10 kilometers off Sandy Hook in New Jersey at the mouth of the Hudson Canyon in the New York Bight. This 6.5-kilometer area, affectionately known as “the Mud Dump,” became the sole repository of dredged material for the next thirty years. 63. Amphipods are crustaceans used as bio-indicators for heavy metals in marine environments. See Miller Associates, “Dredging–The Invisible Crisis,” CQD Journal for the Maritime Environment Industry 2 No.1 (January 1996). 64. “Channel and Berth Deepening Fact Sheet,” The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (March 2005): 1. 65. USACE NY District, “Beneficial Uses of Dredged Material,” www.nan.usace.army.mil/business/prjlinks/dmmp/ benefic/habitat.htm. 66. The State of New Jersey has a long-standing tradition in the effective relocation of residual materials for productive renewed uses. Over the past two decades, the New Jersey Artificial Reef Program has created a vast repository of aquatic havens, fishing reefs, and recreational diving sites with the safe disposal of consolidated material, including 130 military vessels and 250 subway cars off the coastline of New Jersey. See New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection–Division of Fish and Wildlife, “Study Reveals Reefs Enhance New Jersey’s Marine Environment,” New Jersey Reef News (2000): 1–4, and “State Deploys Decommissioned Subway Cars in Artificial Reefs: Final Round Of 50 Cars Splashed At Shark River Reef Site,” New Jersey Department Of Environmental Protection News Release (October 14, 2003). Synthetic Surfaces

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67. Dredging primarily consists of two activities: removal of sediment material from sea channel bottoms and management of that material for constructive purposes. See W. Scott Douglas, “The Use of Sediment Decontamination Technologies for the Management of Navigational Dredged Materials” (Newark, NJ: Maritime Resources Program–Society of American Military Engineers, November 20, 2002). 68. Excavated material from the Central Artery Tunnel Project was relocated for the surface remediation of Spectacle Island, a former landfill, while the rest was trucked to surrounding inland sites for encapsulation and surface remediation. The surface of three adjoining landfills—formerly the granite quarries for building and memorial construction since the early 1800s—were re-profiled into a major recreational complex, now part of the 7,000-acre Blue Hills Reservation, a segment of the Boston Metropolitan Parks System, founded in 1893. These reconstituted surfaces and their new topographic configurations essentially signaled the synthesis of complex infrastructural logistics, material transactions, and large urban operations. 69. See USACE, “World’s largest fleet of machinery working in New York/New Jersey Harbor,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fact sheet (January 2003): 1. 70. See Elizabeth Mossop, “Landscapes of Infrastructure,” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Charles Waldheim (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006): 163–177. 71. See USACE, “Dredged Material Management Plan for the Port of New York and New Jersey, Implementation Report” (New York, NY: New York District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1997). 72. The amendment of dredgeate with Portland cement and coal ash yields three benefits: it binds contaminants to sediment particles, removes excess water, and improves the structural characteristics of silt and clay particles. 73. See USACE, “Dredged Material Management Plan for the Port of New York and New Jersey,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fact sheet (June 2005): 1. 74. The New Jersey Department of Transportation Berm Project is a case in point. “The project involved the design, construction and evaluation of two model embankments built entirely from 50,000 cubic meters of sediment dredged from the Union Dry Dock in Hoboken. The dredged material was stabilized to form a soil-like matrix utilizing 8-12 percent Portland Cement.” See Sadat Associates, Use of Dredged Materials for the Construction Of Roadway Embankments I-V (Newark, NJ: New Jersey Department of Transportation, December 2001): 1–1465. 75. See Joseph McCann, “Scrap Exporter’s Expansion Solves Environment Problem,” American Metal Market (September 27, 2001). Surface encapsulation of mine sites in Pennsylvania involves the reengineering of topography for four reasons: the effective control of drainage, the creation of vegetal microsites, the improvement of accessibility, and the elimination of exposure from sulfur-bearing rock to the elements, which has been shown to cause acid runoff. See “The Use of Dredge Materials in Abandoned Mine Reclamation Final Report on the Bark Camp Demonstration Project” (Newark, NJ: New York/New Jersey Clean Ocean and Shore Trust, Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation Bureau of Land Recycling and Waste Management, 2001): 1–57. Alan Berger discusses the emerging networks of space recoverable from ongoing processes of deindustrialization in greater depth. See Alan Berger, “Drosscape,” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Charles Waldheim (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006): 197–217. 76. See USACE NY District, “U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Port Authority of N.Y. and N.J. Start $79 Million Deepening Project–Investments Build Underwater Super Highways in Port of New York and New Jersey,” press release (April 28, 2005). 77. The project of post-industrial remediation is divided into two main practices. On the one hand, there are practitioners of site-level remediation that rely on measures of inward-looking strategies of spatial beautification or surface concealment, employing renderings, and property plans aimed solely at visualizing the immediate or short-term benefits of design. The other, perhaps more informative practice, lies with regional-scale materials management strategies resulting from logistical, environmental, social, and financial complexities usually associated with a distribution of sites, in varying sizes and conditions, with a higher magnitude of complexity. These sites often involve the synthesis of regional transportation infrastructures and ecosystems where strategies must rely on incremental transformation, broader physical impacts, and long-term effects. See Niall Kirkwood, Manufactured Sites: Rethinking the Post-Industrial Landscape (London: Spon Press, 1991). The case of the Dredged Consolidated Materials Management Program at the scale of the mid-Atlantic region points toward the potential effectiveness of this broader strategy, which simultaneously relies on a border timescale. Initiated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Port of New York and New Jersey as several other environmental agencies with multi-disciplinary experts, the overall financial savings balanced by net ecological and social gains suggests an intelligent strategy for large, complex, and open-ended projects. Recently, James Corner has referred to this strategy as “design intelligence” which offers the potential to unlock and seize “opportunism and risk-taking” in contemporary landscape practice. See Corner, “Not Unlike Life Itself: Landscape Strategy Now,” Harvard Design Magazine 21 (fall/winter 2004): 32–34, and Corner, “Terra Fluxus,” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, edited by Charles Waldheim (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006): 21–33. 78. Based on facts and figures from the following sources: Committee on Contaminated Marine Sediments, Marine Board, and Commission on Engineering And Technical Systems, National Research Council, “Contaminated Sediments in Ports and Waterways–Cleanup Strategies and Technologies” (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1997): 20, and American Association of Port Authorities and Maritime Administration, “The North American Port Container Traffic–2003 Port Industry Statistics” and “United States Port Development Expenditure Report” (U.S. Department of Transportation, May 2004). 04).

79. See Pierre Bélanger and Dennis Lago, “Highway Surface: A Brief History of the United States Interstate and Defense Highway System” in Mobility: A Room with a View, ed. Francine Houben and Luisa Calabrese (Rotterdam: NAI Publishers, 2003): 409. 80. John Brinkerhoff Jackson was an early proponent of landscape as a fusion of different environmental, cultural, and urban systems. In “The Public Landscape” (1966) he formulates the idea of an “environmental megastructure” to synthesize this condition. See Landscapes: Selected Writings of J.B. Jackson, ed. Ervin H. Zube (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970): 153–160. Jackson’s idea is responding to the failure of the megastructures movement in the field of architecture and urban design at the end of the 1960s, a movement comprehensively inventoried by Reyner Banham in Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (London: Thames & Hudson, 1976). 81. Clare Lyster investigates this process in greater depth in her essay “Landscapes of Exchange,” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Charles Waldheim (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006): 219–237. In “Programming the Urban Surface,” Alex Wall is again instructive: “The importance of mobility and access in the contemporary metropolis brings to infrastructure the character of collective space. Transportation infrastructure is less a self-sufficient service element than an extremely visible and effective instrument in creating new networks and relationships.” (238)

Originally published in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Charles Waldheim (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007): 239–265. Synthetic Surfaces

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Photo: Edgar Cleijne, 2002

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“The real problem in waste utilization is more economic than technical. Many wastes do not occur in sufficient quantity at any one spot to make their use possible, or the cost of collection and storage defeats the project.” Harrison E. Howe, Possibilities in Saving and Utilizing Industrial Wastes, 19191

“Picking up and reclaiming the scrap left over after production is a public service, but planning so that there will be no scrap is a higher public service.” Henry Ford, Learning from Waste, 19262

“Business is on the verge of a transformation, a change brought on by social and biological forces that can no longer be ignored or put aside, a change so thorough and sweeping that in the decades to come business will be unrecognizable when compared to the commercial institutions of today.” Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce, 19933

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As the twentieth century recently came to a close, a decisive transformation in environmental attitudes has occurred in fields ranging from business and economics to real estate and land development. Heightened by the pressures of globalization, this shift is principally the result of the convergence of economic and ecological imperatives toward closing the material loop in what are now known as circulation economies. Along with new modes of accumulation,4 the design of new industries, new organizations, and new manufacturing processes focus on producing more and more, with less and less. This shift has spawned a series of developments and practices focusing on three underlying strategies to jump-start the post-industrial economy of the twenty-first century:5 the dematerialization of waste, the utilization of brownfields, and the generation of urban ecologies.6 One of the most notable and promising advances is the emergence of new waste ecologies, formed on the peripheries of large metropolitan agglomerations that are uniquely centered on the recycling of material residuum. Critically reevaluating the overlooked relationship between waste, ecology, and urbanism, the following text explores how a new landscape of disassemblyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an Ecology 5.07â&#x20AC;&#x201D;is catalyzing the birth of novel ecologies across major urban agglomerations, in varying contexts, and across different continents, where the significance of circular economies make growth possible beyond production.8 Ecologies of Disassembly

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< Lagos Island Nigeria Jankara Jetty Market, at the intersection of Idugmabo Road and the Third Mainland Highway looking south toward the Central Business District of Lagos Island, Nigeria. Photo: ÂŠ Alf Gillman 196

Garbage Capitalism Full-page advertisement of the Mobro 4000 barge incident in the Wall Street Journal, 1987, paid for by the Steamfitting Industry Promotion Fund. Source: ÂŠ1987 The Wall Street Journal

Waste Streams In 1987, a barge piled with 3,168 tons of garbage from a small town named Islip in New York began a 162-day, 6,000-mile search for a port willing to dump its load. Barging its way into the media spotlight from North Carolina, Louisiana, Mexico, the Bahamas, and Belize, the Mobro 4000, as it was named, eventually circled back to New York, rejected by a total of six states and three countries.9 incinerated in Brooklyn. Since the 1960s, New York City has faced a local disposal crisis. city were shut down. By then, the crisis had proven that centralized systems of planning and engineering had reached a tipping point and could no longer deal with the magnitude and complexity of urban waste streams in big cities. Fueling this crisis were concerns over the long-term risk of waste disposal sparked by environmental accidents across the world, most notably the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in 1986 and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.

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The garbage crisis reached its full depth in 2001 with the closure of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest disposal facility, the Killsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the Giza of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;has since rendered visible the real economic and ecological post-closure remediation is considered, the full cost of waste dumping, including downstream impacts and greenhouse gas emissions, is estimated to be somewhere between

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As a countervailing measure,

early 1990s. As a result, the recycling industry exploded, shaving off about 25 percent of the total volume of solid waste. The initial onslaught of recycling programs created a glut such as post-closure operations and downstream impacts, the cost advantages of material 11 Previously unforeseen economic and ecological synergies are growing between public regulatory agencies and private turnkey enterprises where it matters the most; at the source, in urban areas.12

The Giza of America Size and height comparison of Fresh Kills Landfill to other historic monuments around the world. Diagram: OPSYS Ecologies of Disassembly

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From a distance, the famed return of the Mobro 4000 and the closure of the Fresh Kills America. They signal a major transformation in the structure of urban wastesheds toward nate big cities.

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Topography of Trash A mega landfill near Detroit, Michigan, which receives an average of one tractor-trailer from out of state, every three minutes during rush hour. Photo: Pierre BĂŠlanger Ecologies of Disassembly

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in the USin the US Waste Generated Solid Waste SolidGenerated Annual Municipal Total Annual TotalMunicipal

1805 1805 0.5 million 0.5tons million tons (0.1 ton (0.1 per capita) ton per capita)

1843Master Vinyl:ofMaster experimenof experimen1690 Fibers 1690: Fibers Rittenhouse : Rittenhouse Mill Mill1843 Vinyl:

talVictor physics, Regnault Victor Regnault synthesiz-synthesizin Philadelphia in Philadelphia recycles the recycles first the first tal physics, es severaleschlorinated several chlorinated hydrocarbons, hydrocarbons, paper using paper fibers using from fibers wastepaper from wastepaper precursors precursors of vinyl. of vinyl. and rags.and rags.

1843 Vulcanization: Charles 1795 Prohibition: 1795 Prohibition: George- George- 1843 Vulcanization:

Charles discoversdiscovers the process theofprocess of town, VA passes town, VAthe passes first known the first known GoodyearGoodyear vulcanization, vulcanization, which converts which rubber converts rubber U.S. garbage U.S. ordinance garbage ordinance by prohibitby prohibitinto a non-stick, into a non-stick, supple, and supple, soft and soft ing the dumping ing the dumping of waste in of the waste in the surface. surface. streets. streets.

1849 Grease: 1849 Grease: White andWhite and 1828 Chemical 1828 Chemical Synthesis Synthesis : : establish establish Barren Island, Barren NYIsland, NY Friedrich Friedrich Wรถhler synthesizes Wรถhler synthesizes urea ureaReynolds Reynolds waste processing waste processing site, and soon site, and soon from aluminum from aluminum chloride and chloride and becomes becomes the world's thelargest world's plant, largest plant, potassium potassium cyanide, demonstrating cyanide, demonstrating producing producing grease, fertilizer, grease, and fertilizer, and the unity the between unity organic betweenand organic and nitroglycerin. nitroglycerin. inorganicinorganic chemistry.chemistry. 1853 Crude Oil: oil Crude distilled oilinto distilled into 1842 Fertilization: 1842 Fertilization: Baron Baron 1853 Oil: by Ignacyby Lukasiewicz, Ignacy Lukasiewicz, a a Von LiebigVon discovers Liebig discovers that plants that plants kerosenekerosene Polish scientist. The fractional The fractional require foods require such foods as potassium, such as potassium,Polish scientist. process separates process separates crude crude phosphates, phosphates, and nitrogen, and nitrogen, leading leadingdistillationdistillation oil into its oil constituent into its constituent hydrocarbon hydrocarbon to the development to the development of commercial of commercial polymers polymers by meansby ofmeans their distinct of their distinct fertilizers.fertilizers. boiling temperatures. boiling temperatures. 202

Garbage Devolution Timeline of major milestones and highlights in New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waste handling and recycling industries during the twentieth century. Diagram: OPSYS

1849 2.3 million tons (0.1 ton per capita)

1854 Cholera:

Dr. John Snow deduces that contaminated water is the source of a London cholera epidemic. Although not accepted at the time, his conclusions would ultimately strengthen the association between sanitation and health.

1858 Magenta: Von Hoffman

develops magenta dye from coal tar, spurring research into organic chemistry.

1859 Fuel: Edwin C. Drake discovers oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania; its primary use is as a lubricant and, refined into kerosene, as lamp fuel. 1862 Germ Theory: Louis Pasteur develops with Claude Bernard a process in which liquids such as milk are heated to kill bacteria and molds.

1863 Refining: Clark & Rockefeller begin oil refining business in Cleveland, Ohio; by 1877 they would control 90% of oil refining in the US.

1870 Combustion: First

gasoline-powered internal combustion engine.

1865 Pipeline: First pipeline

moves oil five miles from Pithole City to Oil Creek railway, Pennsylvania.

1872 Asphalt: E.J. de Smedt lays out a 1400 ft. strip of hot-in-place liquid asphalt paving in Newark, New Jersey.

1866 Health: New York's

1874 Entropy: Thomson

Metropolitan Health Law enacted following a survey of the city's sanitary conditions.

1868 Celluloid: In search of a

synthetic material to replace the ivory in billiard balls, Hyatt invents celluloid, the first commercial synthetic plastic.

1869 Elements: Dimitri

Mendeleev publishes the first version of the periodic table of elements.

formally states the second law of thermodynamics, describing the inevitable increase of entropy in a closed system over time.

1874 Destruction: In

Nottingham, England, a new technology called "the destructor" provides the first systematic incineration of municipal solid waste in response to a cholera epidemic.

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1903 1903 9.8 million 9.8 million tonstons (0.1 ton per capita) (0.1 ton per capita)

1880 Dynamite: Repauno 1880 Dynamite: Repauno

1886 Aluminum: Hall and 1886 Aluminum: Hall and

Heroult develop the electrolytic Heroult develop the electrolytic founded L. DuPont to produce founded by L.by DuPont to produce process of extracting aluminum process of extracting aluminum fromfrom dynamite, following Nobel's dynamite, following Nobel's 18671867 bauxite ore; a metal once rarer and bauxite ore; a metal once rarer and patent. Nitrocellulose, a by-product patent. Nitrocellulose, a by-product of of more precious than gold becomes a more precious than gold becomes a dynamite production, is a key dynamite production, is a key basic industrial commodity. basic industrial commodity. component of early plastics component of early plastics suchsuch as as Rayon; meanwhile, dynamite Rayon; meanwhile, dynamite becomes a crucial toolmining for mining 1895 Garbage: The New becomes a crucial tool for 1895 Garbage: The New York York and highway construction. City Street Cleaning Commissioner and highway construction. City Street Cleaning Commissioner upfirst the comprehensive first comprehensive sets sets up the system for public garbage managesystem for public garbage manage1884 Disposability: 1884 Disposability: VรถlterVรถlter ment in the US. ment in the US. patents for grinding patents for grinding woodwood into into mechanical expire, sparking mechanical pulp pulp expire, sparking expansion the North Ameri1896 Viennese Model: Waste vast vast expansion in theinNorth Ameri1896 Viennese Model: Waste can paper industry. the next reduction plants are introduced can paper industry. OverOver the next few few reduction plants are introduced to theto the decades, disposable paper products United United States Vienna, Austria; decades, disposable paper products States fromfrom Vienna, Austria; such as corrugated cardboard boxes, compress organic wastes such as corrugated cardboard boxes, they they compress organic wastes to to paper and milk cartons extract grease, and other paper cups,cups, and milk cartons enterenter extract grease, oils, oils, and other the marketplace. by-products, butlater are later closed the marketplace. by-products, but are closed due due the noxious emitted. to thetonoxious odorsodors emitted. 1885 Incineration: 1885 Incineration: First First permanent incinerator the is U.S. is 1896 1896 Dumping: 760,000 permanent incinerator in theinU.S. Dumping: 760,000 cubiccubic built on Governor's Island in New yards of municipal waste dumped built on Governor's Island in New yards of municipal waste dumped into into York Harbor. the Atlantic off Virginia Coast. York Harbor. the Atlantic off Virginia Coast.

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1899 Sorting: 1899 Sorting: New New York York City'sCity's Street Cleaning Commissioner Street Cleaning Commissioner organizes the rubbish first rubbish sorting organizes the first sorting for recycling the United plantplant for recycling in theinUnited States. States. 1900 Pigs: Piggeries 1900 Pigs: Piggeries are are

developed eat garbage. developed to eattogarbage. Fifty Fifty an outbreak of vesicular yearsyears later,later, an outbreak of vesicular exanthema results the destrucexanthema results in theindestruction of thousands of pigs that were tion of thousands of pigs that were fed uncooked raw uncooked garbage. fed raw garbage.

1900 The average 1900 Ash:Ash: The average

Manhattan resident generates Manhattan resident generates of waste annually (more 15001500 lbs oflbs waste annually (more the current per capita thanthan the current per capita rate);rate); of which is from ash from 80% 80% of which is ash coal coal and and burned for heating. woodwood burned for heating. This This source of waste gradually becomes source of waste gradually becomes insignificant over the subsequent insignificant over the subsequent 50 years. 50 years.

1904 Recycling: 1904 Recycling: First First majormajor U.S. aluminum recycling plants U.S. aluminum recycling plants in Cleveland and Chicago. openopen in Cleveland and Chicago.

1952 74.0 million tons (0.5 ton per capita)

1905 Bakelite: Dr. Leo

Baekeland invents Bakelite, the first fully synthetic polymer, forerunner of nylon.

1908 Model T: Ford begins

production of Model T; three years later the first commercial gasoline station opens in Detroit, Michigan.

1913 Linear Production:

Ford Motor Company introduces the moving production line.

1914 Burning: 300 incinerators are operating in the US for burning household waste.

1919 Motor Convoy: Dwight

D. Eisenhower leads a U.S. Army convoy that demarcates a cross-country highway route.

1930 Nylon: DuPont corpora-

tion invents nylon. Material shortages caused by World War II spurs intensive research into plastics, with PVC, neoprene (synthetic rubber), polyethylene, polystyrene, and PTFE (Teflon) all developed by the end of the war. With the scarcity of silk, nylon finds its first commercial application in women's underwear.

1942 Collecting: The US

Federal Road Act standardizes guidelines for paved highway construction.

initiates the collection of rubber, paper, scrap metal, fats, and tin cans for use in wartime industry; a 25 percent diversion rate is achieved.

1918 Sea Dumping:

1948 Fresh Kills: Robert

1916 Standardization:

Violating the 1888 Marine and Harbor Protection Act, New York City resumes the dumping of waste at sea.

Moses commissions the opening of the Fresh Kills Landfill in New York. Along with the Great Wall of China,

the Fresh Kills landfill becomes the only man-made object visible from space.

1954 Can Deposit:

Olympia, Washington is the first place to offer a deposit on aluminum cans.

1955 Garburetor: Popularization of in-home garbage disposal.

1956 Highways: The Federal Aid Highway Act mandates the construction of the 43,000-km Interstate and Defense Highway System encompassing the United States. 1959 Landfilling: The

American Society of Civil Engineers publishes the Standard Guide to Sanitary Landfilling.

1960 Scrap: First North

American auto shredding facility established in Wayne County, Michigan. Ecologies of Disassembly

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1979Landfilling: Landfilling:EPA EPA 1979 1965Action: Action:The Thefirst first 1965

FederalU.S. U.S.solid solidwaste wastemanagemanageFederal ment law, Solid Waste Disposal ment law, Solid Waste Disposal Act,isisenacted. enacted. Act,

1970Protection: Protection:The TheU.S. U.S. 1970

EnvironmentalProtection ProtectionAgency Agency Environmental (EPA)isiscreated createdunder underthe theNixon Nixon (EPA) administration. administration.

1970Earth EarthDay: Day:On OnApril April 1970 22nd,the thefirst firstEarth EarthDay Dayisis 22nd, celebrated. The one-off event celebrated. The one-off event becomesan anannual annualglobal global becomes celebration. celebration.

1971Bottle BottleDeposit: Deposit: 1971

Oregonpasses passesthe thefirst firstbottle bottle Oregon deposit bill in the United States. deposit bill in the United States.

1971WMI: WMI:Waste WasteManageManage1971

mentInc. Inc.goes goespublic. public. The The ment company is formed by the merger company is formed by the merger WayneHuizenga’s Huizenga’soperations operations ofofWayne in Florida and Dean Buntrock’s in Florida and Dean Buntrock’s operationsininChicago. Chicago. operations

1972Banking: Banking:Section Section404 404 1972

theClean CleanWater WaterAct Actendorses endorses ofofthe

206

wetlandbanking bankingas asaacompensacompensawetland tory mechanism to support tory mechanism to support wetlandpreservation preservationrequirerequirewetland ments. ments.

1974Curbside: Curbside:The Thefirst first 1974

citywidecurbside curbsiderecycling recyclingfor for citywide newspapers starts in University newspapers starts in University City,Missouri. Missouri. City,

1976Conservation: Conservation:The The 1976

ResourceConservation Conservationand and Resource RecoveryAct Actisisdrafted draftedfollowing following Recovery the Oil Embargo and the Love the Oil Embargo and the Love Canal affair in the early 1970s. Canal affair in the early 1970s. TheAct Actestablishes establishesthe thefirst first The federal regulations for waste federal regulations for waste managementand anddisposal. disposal. management

1977Personal PersonalComputComput1977 ing:Launch LaunchofofApple AppleII,II,the thefirst, first, ing:

highlysuccessful successfulmass massproduced produced highly PC;ten tenyears yearslater lateran anestimated estimated PC; 20million millionpersonal personalcomputers computers 20 wouldbe beobsolete. obsolete.Electronic Electronic would wastesuddenly suddenlybecomes becomesreality. reality. waste

1979Oil OilEmbargo: Embargo:Iranian Iranian 1979

revolutiontemporarily temporarilyreduces reduces revolution worldwide oil supply. worldwide oil supply.

prohibitsopen opendumping dumpingand andsets sets prohibits the first industry standards for the first industry standards for landfillsininthe theworld. world. landfills

1980Superfund: Superfund:The The 1980

ComprehensiveEnvironmental Environmental Comprehensive ResponseCompensation Compensationand and Response Liability Act (Superfund) is passed. Liability Act (Superfund) is passed. Six years later, the Superfund Six years later, the Superfund Amendmentsand andReauthorization Reauthorization Amendments Act is passed. Rhode Islandisisthe the Act is passed. Rhode Island first state to pass mandatory first state to pass mandatory recyclinglaws lawsfor forcans, cans,glass, glass, recycling newspapers, and plastics. newspapers, and plastics.

1986Biggest: Biggest:Fresh FreshKills Kills 1986 Landfillbecomes becomesthe theworld's world's Landfill largestlandfill. landfill. largest 1987Mobro: Mobro:AAgarbage garbagebarge barge 1987

calledMobro Mobrosails sailsfrom fromNew NewYork York called up and down the U.S. East Coast, up and down the U.S. East Coast, lookingfor foraaplace placetotodispose disposeofof looking its waste. Rejected by facilitiesinin its waste. Rejected by facilities six states and three countries, the six states and three countries, the bargedraws drawspublic publicattention attentiontoto barge the perceived shortage landfill the perceived shortage ininlandfill capacity throughout the Northcapacity throughout the Northeast.The Thegarbage garbageisisfinally finally east. incinerated in Brooklyn andthe the incinerated in Brooklyn and ash is disposed of in a landfill ash is disposed of in a landfill nearIslip, Islip,Long LongIsland. Island. near

2016 2,200 acres Largest park developed in the New York City Area in over 100 years

2001 234.0 million tons (0.8 ton per capita)

2000 Plastic Nation: 1988 Ban: Ocean dumping is

banned. The Plastic Bottle Institute develops a material identification code system for plastic bottle manufacturers (No.1-6).

1988 Merger: Wheelabrator, the largest incinerator company in the United States, merges with Waste Management Inc. 1990 Growth: Waste Management Inc.'s revenues exceed $6 billion, making it the largest waste management corporation in the United States.

1991 Drop: In just 16 years, the

number of landfills operating in the U.S. drops by 70 percent, from 63,000 down to 18,500. Simultaneously, there is a 50 percent increase in the amount of trash generated.

1993 Specifying: RCRA regulations requiring more stringent landfill specifications (including liners, leachate collection and removal, groundwater monitoring) take effect. Six year alters, tougher standards for landfill containment force small landfill operators to close down; number of US landfills drops to 2,314 (from 8,000 in 1988).

Comprising 15.4% of municipal solid waste landfilled, the content of plastics in landfills rises from 0.5% in 1960.

2001 Terminal Barge: On March 22, Fresh Kills officially receives its last barge shipment of solid waste from households in New York City.

2002 Recovery: Following the 9/11 attacks, recovery efforts take place at Fresh Kills Landfill. 2003 Landfill to Landscape: Fresh Kills Landfill

closes, to become a park designed by landscape architect James Corner and Field Operations.

2003 Consultation:

2011 Lifescape: Sections of the Fresh Kills Landscape officially open to the public for recreation, kayaking, bird watching, hiking, and other events. 2013 Super Storm Sandy: While many families

were permanently displaced and beaches destroyed in the Rockaways and Coney Island, the hills and wetlands of Fresh Kills Park provided an important soft buffer for neighboring communities from the storm surge.

2013 Openings: As the West Mound of the Landfill resumes final layers of capping, restoration of the Main Creek wetland is completed, as the Owl Hollow Fields and Schmul Park open to the public.

Following a series of community consultations and public reviews, a Draft Master Plan is officially released in 2006 for fundraising and design implementation.

2010 Breaking Ground:

With key roads laid in place and Park Administrator appointed, the ground is broken at Schmul Park for the first time. Ecologies of Disassembly

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Decomposing Strategies On the cutting edge of this shift is a new, state-of-the-art composting facility in Hamilton, Canadaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most polluted harbor.13 At full capacity, the 40-acre facility can process up to 90,000 tons of organic waste every year, enough for a city of almost one million. Operais 10 times faster and uses less than one-tenth of the land base of conventional outdoor through global collaboration between public agencies and private entrepreneurs: the City of Hamilton provided the land, a Dutch mushroom expert supplied the engineering, and a Canadian contractor built it. Located on a former tire manufacturing facility owned by Firestone Tire & Rubber, the site was contaminated with PCBs and PHCs, requiring the use of deep molasses injection for contamination hotspots within the subsurface. The Great Lakes Commission, a transboundary regional watershed agency, oversaw the entire process, and within less than a year and for less than one-tenth of one percent of the full construction budget, the site was entirely decontaminated.

208

until 2005, composting operations have catalyzed an array of alternative industries based on the creation of different waste streams through separation. As Joel McCormick, facility manager, explains: “waste is simply acknowledged as part of the process of urbanization […] Diversion strategies are literally bringing waste back into the economic loop, squeezing waste handling giants out.”14 This shift is echoed by the Northeast Recycling Council, which asserts “recycling provides the bedrock for large, robust manufacturing industries in the United States that use reusable materials. It provides manufacturing industries with raw materials that are less expensive than virgin sources.”15 This is a long-term economic advantage that translates into value for consumers who ultimately spend less on products and packaging.

Hamilton Harbour Composting Facility, Aerating Grounds. Photo: Pierre Bélanger Ecologies of Disassembly

209

Multinational conglomerates, such as Philip Services Corporation, that once dominated Hamilton Harbor include the expansion of the Central Composting Facility to include recyclable materials sorting on a per-ton basis that, could generate ten times more jobs the statistical effect is staggering; â&#x20AC;&#x153;if just half of the 25.5 million tons of durable goods

210

than 100,000 new jobs could be created in this industry alone.â&#x20AC;?16 This is where the multithrough employment spin-offs, technological innovation, land redevelopment, and brownWhere bioremediation alone cannot solve the challenge of redevelopment in post-industrial cities, the incendiary effect of new integrated regional offset by the overall returns from productive land redevelopment..

The Big Three The constellation of landfills owned and operated by three of the largest waste management companies in North America. Diagram: OPSYS

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Ecologies of Disassembly Ecologi a

213

The prodigy of this waste ecology is in Denmark. Beginning in the 1970s, three regulatory each argued for the design, planning, and long-term management of the environment as a single, collective, multilayered, and complex public landscape. Because Denmark was faced with issues such as the depletion

214

Pipeline Picturesque View of the flue-gas transmission pipeline from the main power plant to the Statoil Refinery, part of a landscape of pipelines and corridors dedicated to the conveyance of fluids and gases throughout the region. Photo: Pierre BĂŠlanger

of disposal space, groundwater contamination, and gas emissions, the wholesale impact of these regulatory measures usurped conventional end-of-pipe treatment technologies

Ecologies of Disassembly

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Kalundborg, a small port town in Denmark, crystallizes the potential of this new order. Tucked in a deep fjord some 100 kilometers west of Copenhagen, Kalundborg garnered international recognition in the mid-1980s for the formation of a unique waste recycling network. In what is retrospectively recognized as the birthplace of contemporary industrial ecology, the driving force that underpins the network is the recycling of bulk chemical wastes as raw material inputs for other industries. At Kalundborgâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s core lie two of its largest industrial plants. In 1976, Novo Nordisk, the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest insulin producer, began diverting 10,000 tons of sludge and surplus yeast every year from the municipal216

Ship Shape The laydown areas of the Vestas blade factory in Nakskov, Denmark, and port of international shipping, in proximity of a regional materials sorting and recycling area. Photo: Google Earth, image ©2014 Aerodata International Data Surveys

ity’s sewage plant to local farms for use as organic fertilizer and pig food. A decade later, the Asnæs Power Station, the country’s largest energy supplier, began converting for cement production and waste-gypsum for plasterboard manufacturing. Combined,

recovering almost 70 percent of the typical loss experienced by large power generators. Ecologies of Disassembly

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Since then, a vast number of waste conversion methods have been engineered and industrial synergies forged into a â&#x20AC;&#x153;network economy of recycled fuels, feedstock, and composite building materials across the region.â&#x20AC;?18 Due to its scale and magnitude, this network includes a vast containment landscape of laydown areas, retention basins, containment berms, storage tanks, and warehouses. In between is an extensive circulation roads, channels, pipelines, forest

218

Dual Farming Synergistic land uses in the Kalundborg region, where farmers lease out farmland space to district energy providers for wind generation. Photo: Pierre BĂŠlanger

logistical transportation systems, land distributions, and public spaces has since been irreversibly generated. What holds it all together, according to Noel Brings Jacobsen, director of the Kalundborg Industrial Symbiosis Institute, are â&#x20AC;&#x153;the weekly contacts bewaste. It all happens by design.â&#x20AC;?17

Ecologies of Disassembly

219

perspective, foreign material imports have been substantially reduced; more than 30,000 been reduced by more than 75 percent through downcycling. Locally, Kalundborgâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s small town of 25,000 people saves 12 to 15 million US dollars every year, which triggers new urban investment and infrastructural upgrades on former industrial sites.19 Compounded, the whole process saves more than 600,000 cubic meters of water annually through the

Industry Synergy Headquarters of Danish industry, Copenhagen. Photo: Pierre BĂŠlanger 220

this ecology of waste is currently being replicated worldwide in variations ranging from resource recovery plants to eco-industrial parks. Since then, the model of industrial ecologyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;with its emphasis on process-based modeling and the dematerialization of traditional linear industriesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;has been duplicated worldwide in variations essentially premised on the cycling of wastes into secondary and tertiary market economies.20

Ecologies of Disassembly

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Infrastructure Flexibility These extended economies emerge from spatial interdependencies and from material elasticities that require greater often in the absence of regulatory controls or weaker land policing that the greatest level 21 The Jankara Jetty scrap market on Lagos Island is a case borders of the Ebute Ero wholesale market in Lagos, that serves as a surrogate dumping ground for all the islandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s markets. Its history legitimizes its importance as an essential component of the islandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s infrastructure. In 1998, an important maritime trade channel developed along the northwest shore of Lagos Island to circumvent trade blockages that were created during severe fuel shortages and lines succeeded in crossing large quantities of goods via lagoons on the border between 222

Recycling Cloverleaf Jankara Jetty and Materials Market, at the intersection of Idugmabo Road and the Third Mainland Highway looking south toward the Central Business District of Lagos Island. Photo: ©2001 Edgar Cleijne

southern Nigeria and southern Benin, and then subsequently by land and water routes to resume their course to Lagos Island.22 This is where the island’s trading surface enacts another dimension of its versatility: transportation is simply diverted and the shoreline, an extension of the island’s markets, is enlisted as a new channel. Flow resumes, and Capitalizing on its near geographic invisibility, the shoreline of Lagos Island can be understood as highly performing white space: land that is essentially off the map, but by virtue of its relative geographic position, productive. Left fallow at the end of 1990s, the formed staging area for Julius Berger’s Third Mainland Bridge in the 1980s has become the island’s largest dumpsite-recycling plant, operated by a shoreline village of 5,000 people. Ecologies of Disassembly

223

w ss

co sp cs

s s

space of the recycling quadrant in the southwest is highly differentiated and highlyc varis m ca able in size. The understructure is used as a metal-fabrication plant and block factory where shade is reserved for labor-intensive functions, never for warehousing. The recycling area between the on-ramp and off-ramps of the Third Mainland Bridge is allocated s dr by the Association of Fabricators, Welders and Recyclers, and each land assignment is s based on the demands and pressures of the island markets. Because of its close proximity s w to these other island marketsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;particularly the building materials market at Jankaraâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; s the recycling cloverleaf is highly organized and seems to do brisk business. Territories dr m mo s for scrap collection are extensive and well established. Collection routes run through Jankara-Okearin-Ebute Ero, slowly expanding or contracting according to local supply

224

Production Functions S sorting, disassembly, and stockpiling space (recyclers) M machining, fabricating, and reassembling space (metalsmiths and panel beaters) W warehousing and bunkering (petrol, diesel, kerosene)

Materials er m metal et (sheet, cable, and wire) p plastic tic (containers and bowls) f foam (c (containers) c concrete te (blocks) Wholesale Products P co cookers (m (made from European side panels, Japanese ccar doors, and North American tire rims) bu burners (made a from Indian tin cans and Chinese e glue containers) ca carts (from Indian c d bicycles and chaise lounges) te e refurbished telephones e (imported from China) drr fuel drums and water w barrels (delivered from N Northern Europe)

w w

Infrastructure st Support bs buss stop and parking g space (molues and danfoes) hc highway hw crossing (median e curb cut) mo o mosque mo q cs cooking c ng space (buka) bo borehole ol (for cooking) sp soakaway a pit ss s sport space ac (Sunday night fo football)

concrete e barrier swamp filling/land f reclamation at

Infrastructure Underbelly Diagram of surface functions, ground elements, and implied territorial divisions, where spatial planning below the Third Mainland Highway offramp takes place without plans. Diagram: OPSYS

n ctio la a d ti

on go La

carts equipped with long sideboards, market scrap like car panels, rims, fridge doors, cable, wire, and bowls are collected from the entire western part of the island during the

level processing plant that occupies the entire space of the cloverleaf.23 Each arriving item is disassembled into its simplest, purest material denominator: ferrous and nonferrous metal, plastic, or foam. Sorted, cleaned, and stockpiled, scrap is then converted into a wholesale material. Any metal with potential for added value, like sheet metal or tire rims, is resold to nearby metal repair shops for conversion into carts, cookers, or burners. All remaining metals are then resold wholesale to industrial manufacturers for meltdown as iron reinforcement bars. Cracked plastic bowls, polypropylene bags, and foam blocks are resold to local wholesalers, where the material is then recycled into a second generation of food bowls and mixing containers. Wood has very little commercial value and is fuel than a building material. s Ecologies of Disassembly

225

At the center of the southwest cloverleaf are huge stacks of 55-gallon blue food-grade containers from France and 42-gallon steel drums from Pakistan and China. Deemed unusable by the International Organization of Standardization, the containers are dumped latory cycle. Once the barrels and drums are washed in the cloverleafâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drainage soak pit, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re stacked into pyramids up to three meters high, ready for resale. Between the

226

quadrants, under the off-ramps, is a remanufacturing area. The recycling plant houses a small factory equipped with a welding station, an electrical center, a furniture shop, an appliance refurbishing area, and even a telephone repair shop. The manufacturing zone follows the curving shade of the overhead on-ramp. Shaded areas are allocated according to the seniority of different tenants, each one manufacturing discrete, essential, or logistical products such as cookers, carts, and barrels.

Cloverleaf Surface Ground-level view of the steel drum cleaning zone (foreground) and plastic barrel storage area (land is owned by the federal government but the operations inside the cloverleaf are formally organized by a group of market associations connected throughout the city). An excess by-product of a nearby sawmill, the sawdust is continuously deposited and layered on the ground once a week to absorb the chemical runoff from the barrel cleaning operations. Photo: Pierre BĂŠlanger Ecologies of Disassembly

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Cloverleaf Conference Monthly meeting of board of market women and traders from across Lagos Island under the Third Mainland highway cloverleaf. Photo: Pierre BĂŠlanger

228

Ecologies of Disassembly

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On a good day, an experienced metal fabricator can produce thirty-seven burners made from expired glue containers from China.24 Should the demand for kerosene burners ever fade, s/he can also weld water carts out of car bodies and wood cookers out of tire rims. Sunday’s shop operates six days a week and has operated here since the sand dredge 25

Photos: Pierre Bélanger

the city’s largest fuel bunker, the swamp is a material recycling plant, the off-ramp is

230

the shoreline, and the beach is an open-air warehouse staging the largest dry gin depot in West Africa.26 The associations are not marked with permanent buildings, rather by what looks to be ambulant surface constructions enabled by a preexisting infrastructure: overhangs, fuel barrels, material piles, curb cuts, landing decks, driftwood cubes, and sand spits. Ecologies of Disassembly

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As another measure of its versatility, the plant also functions as a block factory and a fuel is a curb cut. It is a handmade, foot-wide gash in a 4-foot Jersey barrier separating the ring road from the island. Built on top of a dump which was once a swamp, the land was reclaimed by the functions of fabricators, welders, and recyclers more than thirty years ago. It now occupies the ground beneath the 27 Designed as a 13-kilometer bypass Ring Road that merge into one at the Jankara Building Materials Market have created one

Mile 2 Junction

Trade Fair Loop

Building Materials Cooperative

Second Gate Festac Town Bus Stop

200 Retail Shopping Plaza, Sand & Gravel Depot, Danfos & Taxis Park

Perishables, Spare Parts & Clothing 8,000 private shops nearby, built up to first floor concrete level for future addition

Maza Maza Bus Stop

Alaba's Storefront & Intersate Luxury Bus Terminal

Volkswagen Bus Stop

Building Materials On- and Off-Loading Point

Okomaiko Bus Stop

Berger Junction Motor

Intersate Bus Terminal & Pure Water Factories

Kirikiri Road: Largest Used Car Auto Market in West

the functions of materials processing. The recycling plant is not described on maps of the city.28 The plant, and all its inhabitants, were literally wiped off the map when the federal government recapitulated all coastal lands falling within 100 meters of the Nigerian shoreline in 1993.29 Records of its historical role in Lagos Islandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s market economy are not easy to come by. When import tariffs caused food shortages in 1980s, the cloverleaf became an international food market; when oil and gas prices rose in the early '90s, the cloverleaf became a fuel market;30 when raw material supplies were made scarce in the late '90s, the cloverleaf turned into a material recycling plant.31

Toll Gate Bus Stop Fuel, Hotel, FOREX & White Bread

Cele Bus Stop

Oshodi Motor Park Perishables, Electronics & Pharmaceuticals

Mile 12 Junction Motor Park

Out-of-State Food Stuffs Transit Point: Tomatoes, Onions, Peppers, Yams, Sheep & Dried Fish

Challenge Bus Stop Ladipo Spare Parts Market, Tobunko Vehicles

Mushin Bus Stop Building Materials

Yaba Bus Stop

Sawmill Bus Stop

Dimensional Lumber & Manufactured Wood Products

Ojuelegba Motor Park

Yaba Okadas & Jeans

Western

Avenue

Tejuosho

Markets, Material Depots & Motor Parks

Stadium Bus Stop

Alaba Largest Electronics Market in West Africa

Bus Stops & Motor Parks Markets Depots Motorways, Bridges & Cloverleafs

Oyingbo Market INL THIRD MA

Alaka Bus Stop

Africa

Park

AND BRIDG

Exotic & Performance Cars

Iddo Motor Park

Iddo Market

RTEAN Head Office (Road Transport Employees Association of Nigeria) Interstate Bus Storage, Taxi Park, Truck Terminal, Oil Depot, Cold Storage & Mosque

Rice, Flour & Cassava Warehouses TER CAR BRID GE

Tin Can Bus Stop Concrete, Sugar Cane, Lorry Depot oB Ek

Ebute Ero Motor Park

rid ge

The largest wholesale node in the city

UTC Bus Stop

Third Mainland Bridge

Idumota International Pharmaceuticals & Videotapes

West African Dry Gin Depot

Okearin

Lorry Park

Jankara Everything but cars, right beside the biggest fuel bunker in the city Egerton

Apongbon Liquors, Wines & Spirits

Cloverleaf Economies Diagram of the twenty-five cloverleaf markets, material depots, and motor parks distributed throughout the metropolitan region of Lagos. Diagram: OPSYS

After Bridge Bus Stop Parking, News, FOREX

CMS Bus Stop Taxi Park, FOREX

Obalende Motor Park Fuel, Cash, Currencies, Cattle & Mosque

Ecologies of Disassembly

Awolowo R

Mechanics &

Demanufacturing Industries Synergies between different recycling operations and light manufacturing have now become the dominant order in contemporary industrial economies. Nowhere is this more evident than in the neo-industrial centers of Japan, a country with more than 125 million people living on an island roughly the size of Germany or the State of California. Following the battery of recycling laws passed after 2001, a nationwide shift took place Laws, as they were dubbed, targeted the 400 million tons of industrial waste and 50 million tons of general waste generated annuallyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;waste that historically would have been

Iida Toyama City, Toyama (2002)

Gifu

(1997)

Hyogo

(2003)

Okayama

(2004)

Yamaguchi Kitakyushu City

(2001)

(1997)

Omuta City, Fukuoka (1998)

Minamata City, Kumamoto (2001)

Osaka

Hiroshima

(2005)

(2000)

Naoshima Town, Kagawa (2002)

Kochi City, Kochi

(2000)

234

Suzuka City, M

(2004)

Sapporo City

(1998)

Hokkaido (2000) Akita

Aomori

(1999)

(2002)

City, Nagano

Mie

(1997)

Kamaishi City, Iwate (2004)

Uguisuzawa Town, Miyagi (1999)

Tokyo (2003)

Light Geographies Distribution of approved “eco-town” programs throughout Japan found in the historic centers of heavy manufacturing where steel, chemical, electric, and ceramic industries once predominated as the exclusive industrial base. Diagram: OPSYS

Chiba City, Chiba (1999)

Kawasaki City Aichi

(1997)

(2004)

China. Employing lands previously used for heavy industry, the Ministry of Environment in collaboration with the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry is now involved in the design of twentyJapan.32 Each one is built around the concept of zero waste and zero emissions, and is meant to demonstrate how the model of industrial ecology can be scaled up and synchronized with the recycling of contaminated land. Japan’s emerging industrial landscape is best described as one big chop-shop. Giant recycling factories are sprouting up in former industrial harbors, whose core operations are based on the process of mass disassembly. Ecologies of Disassembly

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Photos: Pierre BĂŠlanger, 2004

Major electronic companies such as Panasonic, Sony, and Mitsubishi are completely overhauling their current practices of shipping solid waste overseas to China and Taiwan toward new industrial parks where large factories and new industrial zones are unilaterally based on reverse assembly, known also as processes of disassembly. Compared to European recycling markets that rely on collective, centralized recycling systems, individual Japanese manufacturers develop and manage their own recycling programs for their brand-name products. To this effect, Japanese manufacturers have more robust feedback loops between upstream and downstream agents. Premised on life-cycling, products are now designed for disassembly, where end-of-life waste management costs are simply absorbed as an operational cost of the good at the point of purchase.

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Of these, Kitakyushu’s century-old history as a steel town is being rebuilt from the ground up with a conglomerate of recycling plants on a 300-hectare peninsula, which was formerly a toxic heap of slag and sludge left over from the operations of the Nippon Steel Corporation. Located in Japan’s Rust Belt, Kitakyushu looks like a high-tech junkyard from the air: a surfaces on the edge of Dokai Bay, a water body known—much like Lake Erie in the 1960s—as a dead sea.

Lines of Disassembly The reverse assembly process of electronics and automotives where, at the West Japan Auto Recycle Company in Kitakyushu, for example, passenger cars (a 1986 white Toyota Camry shown below) can be dismantled, chopped up, and baled within twenty minutes, regardless of its size.

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The organization of this massive landscape of disassembly is based on the singular hiergases. With the increasing costs of virgin resource mining and global transportation, ev-

Photo: Pierre BĂŠlanger, 2004

recycled: completely broken down, dismantled, reorganized, and reduced into its most basic constituent materials. When asked about the rather banal and generic appearance of the complex, environmental manager Yuji Tsukamoto has a simple answer: â&#x20AC;&#x153;the place is about production and performance, so time is always of the essence. Beauty here is in the turnover.â&#x20AC;? Mountains of plastic, paper, minerals, aggregates, wood, wires, cables, and metals rise up, accumulate, and sprawl across this vast topography of reverse assembly.

238

surfaces. Sorted and separated materials are then shipped off to industries across the region to be remanufactured into second- or third-generation products. Completing the process of waste wood into plastics, foams into additives, aggregates into concretes, plastics into textiles, scrap cars into spare parts. A portion of lease and operations fees is then recirculated to the Regional Environmental Alliance for the construction of wetlands and restoration of shorelines designed to eventually improve the hyper-eutrophicated waters of Dokai Bay. Aggregated yet decentralized, the Japanese system is quid pro quo: what goes into the economy must necessarily come out and what comes out goes back in. For all intents and purposes, the process is endless.

White Trash Mechanical triage of domestic and industrial white goods in a sorting and separation zone of Kitakyushu, Japan, where aluminum and other nonferrous metals are stored for reprocessing.

Eccolog Eco E olog ogiies o ogies ie e of of Di Disas sassem assem sem embly ly

the

Landscape Metabolism

Source: Image ÂŠ2014 DigitalGlobe

A logistical by-product of city building, the Japanese model of neo-industrial planning provides evidence of a critical correlation between the cycles of industrial process and the manufacturing of contemporary land uses where post-industrial sites can serve as productive, multi-functional landscapes that hold urban economies in a synthetic, constructed equilibrium.33 Though the historical and ecological contexts of Europe, Asia and North America widely differ, they present unique and compelling cases for understanding how strategies of demanufacturing and recirculation can restructure patterns

240

of land development. As a form of neo-industrialism, contemporary waste economies will emerging urban economic models throughout the world prove the effectiveness of how landscape-based strategies can potentially solve the challenges all at once with a dualized approach to the development of contemporary infrastructures.

Recycling of Land as Urbanization Once known as the Sea of Death with industries spilling chemical effluents and wastewaters directly into the Murasaki River, Kitakyushuâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dokai Bay has now become a productive 300-hectare peninsula with light manufacturing services, recycling plants, a technology research campus, a growing middle-class population, and a robust aquatic ecology. Source: City of Kitakyushu, 1960â&#x20AC;&#x201C;69 Ecologies of Disassembly

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Constructed Ecology Coastal view of the first wind energy project in Japan on the northern shoreline of Kitakyushu. The entire landscape is recycled: the landmass is built on a slag pile, the phytoremediation berm on metal-laden soils, and the permeable pavers from reprocessed concretes containing inoculated biomedical wastes. Photo: Pierre BĂŠlanger

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emerging landscape: Horizontality: through decentralization, vast horizontal spaces are required as a result of the massive surface area needed for material storage and large, singlestory plants for disassembly. Social Intelligence: optimum levels of automation in combination with skilled and knowledgeable labor inputs open secondary and tertiary labor markets for old and new generations. Cooperative Capital: capital developments, legislative loopholes, and resource feedbacks. Material Mobility: patterns of consumption must be synchronized with their outscale of the region. Systemic Fluidity: ing hydrologic systems to avoid contamination of aquifers and open waters.

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Comparing the economic and ecological histories of Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America, they all present compelling examples for understanding the latent reciprocity between industry, waste, and urbanism. Retracing the material geographies is the second industrial leap required in the waste economy. At the urban scale, multilateral feedback strategies that include diversion, separation, recycling, and composting g are proving effective as durable alternatives to conventional systems of waste management. As a result of global legislationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;such as the 1992 Basel Convention which prohibited the transnational movement of hazardous wastesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the preeminence of waste colonialism in the twentieth century may now become a thing of the past. Multilateral strategies are proving effective as durable alternatives to conventional systems of waste management that previously

European Unio

China Pakistan

India Thailand

Singapore

Australia

source (developed country) source (developing country) destination (developed country) destination (developing country)

New Zealand 244

relied on consolidated forms of disposal. With skyrocketing costs of virgin materials, resource mining, surging fuel prices, and more complex patterns of urbanization, exhausted economies are being jump-started through combined strategies of economic regeneration and ecological reclamation, where water, land, energy, and waste are the bedrock of a New World economy. Dismantling the Old World notion of the city, urbanâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;industrial synergies never before possible are forming beyond metropolitan areas, signaling the birth of a new and diffused urban economic pattern that is best described as an operational ecology. This ecology is held together by supply chains and distribution networks.

E-Waste Shed Redirected throughout the world according to different environmental regulations, regulatory cleavages and labor laws, flows of electronic waste are the most important, most rapidly increasing form of hazardous waste today. Diagram: OPSYS/Eryn Wiythoff, adapted from Josh Lepawskyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Global e-waste trade network (1996-2014)

Canada

United States

Mexico

South Africa

Brazil Chile

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In a dramatic reversal of twentieth-century Fordist dogma, typically linear, specialized, standardized modes of production are being overturned by emerging infrastructures that 34 But make no mistake, structural urban transformations require proactive and sustained cooperation between long-term players from both the private and public sectors, as well as from corporate and citizen organizations, from the state to the individual. To move growth beyond production, three factors will ultimately contribute to the potential of circular, urban economies: the global economics of resource mining, the planned shrinkage of post-industrial economies, and the design of waste ecologies. As the playbeing supplanted by the era of material mass-recycling. Since the close of the twentieth century, a decisive transformation in environmental attitudes has occurred in a range of sectors from business and economics, to real estate and land development. Heightened by the overexertion of globalization, this shift is the result of a convergence between economic and ecologic imperatives toward closing the material loop, optimizing energy uid new pathways and new markets, recirculating through alternate economies premised on the processes of disassembly, dematerialization, and deindustrialization. Underlying these

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complex, circular economies is the cultural rethinking of waste as a raw resource and natural process. This circular understanding of production underlies the nature of urbanization. For example, the invention of coal was the invention of tar; the invention of steel was the invention of slag; the invention of petroleum was the invention of plastic; the invention of cement was the invention of sulfuric gas; and the invention of sewage was the invention of sludge. Premised on the understanding of material lifecycles, this major change is spawning a series of urban strategies where a renewed engagement of waste as virgin material is providing the basic building block for the creation of contemporary urban economies: upcycling and downcycling of material goods, the cascading of energy decoupling and diversion of organics and inorganics, as well as the recycling and remediation of contaminated land. From the historic case of the Mobro 4000 trash barge in New York to the emerging issues related to the 40 million tons of e-waste generated globally, the construction of waste ecologies and the development of disassembly industries will enlist the dualization of urban infrastructure as a pressing and critical order. Put otherwise, the dematerialization of the industrial economy and the mapping of material geographies will become a pressing and critical task to effectively design the waste streams and the wastesheds of the twenty-

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1. Harrison E. Howe, “Possibilities in Saving and Utilizing Industrial Wastes,” Industrial Management

in North America as a result of what could be considered the failure of the environmental movement in the 1970s and 1980s to bring to justice the industrial polluters responsible and the failure to address the economic aspects of site reclamation of the more than 1,600 Superfund Sites and 40,000

2. Henry Ford, in collaboration with Samuel Crowther, “Learning from Waste,” in Today & Tomorrow 3. Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability

Hawken provides an important and early account of the genesis of industrial ecology, citing the examples of General Motors Robert Frosch “Strategies for Manufacturing,” 4. In The Condition of Postmodernity, David Harvey explains this structural shift through the accumulation: “Flexible accumulation, as I shall tentatively call it, is marked by a direct confrontation with the rigidities of Fordism. It rests on markets, products, and patterns of consumption. It is characterized by the emergence of entirely new cial services, new markets, and, above all, greatly organizational innovation. It has entrained rapid shifts in the patterning of uneven development, both between sectors and between geographical regions, giving rise, for example, to a vast surge in so-called ‘service-sector’ employment as well as to entirely new industrial ensembles in hitherto underdeveloped regions. It has also entailed a new round of what I shall call ‘time-space compression’ in the capitalist world—the time horizons of both private and public decision-making have shrunk, while satellite communication and declining transport costs have made it increasingly possible to spread those decisions immediately over an ever wider and accumulation,” in The Condition of Postmodernity: An Inquiry into the Conditions of Cultural Change 5. Across the world, the 1970s and 1980s saw the results of nearly a century of industrialization from the onslaught of two world wars and the fear of a third one during the Cold War. A second environmental renaissance is currently being experienced 248

6. Critical to the future of this emerging landscape is the dismantling of the Old World’s notion of the city, where the industrial and the urban are strictly separated for a more horizontal, distributed nucleation of land uses that operate as ecologies held together by the logistics and mechanics of city building while exploiting the competitive forces of global outsourcing, automated manufacturing, and just-in-time delivery. In North America, the separation between industrial and other urban land uses dates back to 1926 with the invention of zoning as a result of the seminal court case between the Village of Euclid and Amber Realty in Ohio. Predating the utopian visions of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City, the writings of Peter Kropotkin, Fields, Factories And Workshops: or Industry Combined with Agriculture and Brain Work with Manual Work Thomas Nelson & Sons extremely instructive in better understanding of the geo-economic reciprocity between industry, agriculture, and urbanism. 7. Ecology 5.0 is used here as a spin-off from David Wachsmuth's “Three Ecologies,” The Sociological Quarterly discusses the evolution of three different models of ecological thought in reference to urbanism: human McHarg's initial conception of the long-lasting School of Design can easily be inserted in between, deserving recognition as one of the initial models of operative ecological thinking that was developed between human ecology and industrial ecology as a technique to spatialize the study of ecologics. models, and its subsequent pluralization as a model of models: urban ecologies. Ecology 5.0 thus manifests the cross-dependencies, contradictions, ated with open and closed systems, including the overlapping landscape of social, material, political,

and geographic boundaries and time scales. See Pierre Bélanger, “Ecology 5.0,” New Geographies

the International Joint Commission of Canada and the United States.

8. For city planners, citizen organizations, community entrepreneurs, and city builders at large, most of these developments are occurring through legislation and politics, rather than by design or planning. The lack of attention given by landscape architects, urban designers, and architects to this shift is owed to a lopsided focus on visual and aesthetic aspects of site design rather than the productive and performative parameters of urban and regional development. Through the mass recycling of materials, the case of industrial parks throughout the developed world, for example, supports and substantiates the logistical and geographic reci-

Hamilton Area is owned by Philip Services Corpounder a one-billion dollar debt load from environmental lawsuits. See Michael Marley, “Philip, subsidiaries pursue bankruptcy cover in Canada,” American Metal Market PA: November 29– 16. See Brenda Platt, “The Five Most Dangerous Myths About Recycling,” The Institute for Local library/5myths.htm.

perspective. 9. Barbara Hogan, “All Baled Up and No Place to Go–Barge Trip Underscores Our Solid Waste Crisis,” The Conservationist ence of the Mobro 4000 incident, see Jeff Bailey, “Waste of a Sort: Curbside Recycling Comforts the Wall Street Journal cling Is Garbage,” New York Times Magazine 10. For a more comprehensive account of this turnof-the century phenomenon, see Pierre Bélanger, “Airspace: The Ecologies and Economies of LandTRASH

17. “A History of Environmental Policy in Denmark.” SusNord-Governance for Sustainable Development in the Nordic Region, 2003. www. prosus.uio.no/susnord/denmark/national_authorities/. 18. Conversation with Noel Brings Jacobsen, director, Kalundborg Industrial Symbiosis Institute, 19. Second- and third-generation materials are being reused as raw inputs, as opposed to virgin resources, which are proving to be more and more complex with the increasing costs of resource mining, offshore exploration, global transportation, territorial claims, and indigenous land negotiations. 20. What is often left underrepresented in the literature about Kalundborg is the importance of

upwards of $300 per ton, versus the current average price of $10 per ton in the United States, when 12. The fact that cities in North America are run-

21. This section on Lagos is informed by six successive trips culminating in 2008, and is

and the United States were to concentrate all the 44 square miles to adequately handle the needs for the entire United States for the next 100 years. The

given to two of his writings: and Change in Africa A. Simone and D. Hecht, Invisible Governance: The Art of African Micropolitics

of space, but rather a matter of economics. rently undergoing massive cleanups spearheaded by

22. The economic geographies of urban markets in along the Lagos-Abidjian 4,000-kilometer West Ecologies of Disassembly

249

African Trade Corridor. See Dr. Bio Goura Soulé, “Prospects For Trade Between Nigeria And Its isation Pour La Cooperation et Le Dévelopment ganisations et Stratégies des Commerçants,” Suivi Des Échanges Transfrontaliers Entre Le Nigéria et Les Pays Voisins (Bénin, Cameroun, Niger, Tchad), Écho Des Frontières 23. Idelofun Market Women Association, personal conversations with author, 2003, 2006, 2008. 24. Kayode “Sunday” Adeyemi, the tin-can-burner/ fabricator, personal conversations with author, 2003/2008. 25. Wilbur Smith and Associates, Master Plan for Metropolitan Lagos 26. Security watcher under the Carter Bridge off27. For a complete documentation of transportation master plans, see Lagos State Government, Lagos State Regional Plan 1980–2000 Lagos: Ministry of Economic Planning and Land Matters,

to identify this dual condition. See M. Peil, Lagos: The City and Its People 29. The declaration of coastal lands in public trust by the Babangida administration in the 1990s is part of a long line of successive land use decrees and legislative policies that, to different extremes and scales, have adversely affected Nigerians in the Lagos Lagoon region and especially the Niger Delta region as a result of oil wealth. See Rhuks Temitope Ako, “Nigeria’s Land Use Act: An Anti-Thesis to Environmental Justice,” Journal of African Law

31. Dr. A.A. Ogunsaya, ”Urban Markets as Freight Nodes in the Lagos Metropolis,” Habitat International 32. See Global Environment Centre Foundation, “Eco-Towns in Japan: Implications and Lessons for Developing Countries and Cities,” June 2005, http://www.unep.org/ietc/Portals/136/Publications/ Waste%20Management/Eco_Towns_in_Japan.pdf 33. “Synthetic” here refers to the combination ments and parts that can be either complementary or contradictory, or found in opposition. Critical to the understanding of this unnatural condition of synthesis, and a synthetic equilibrium, is the aspect of time. Here the related notions of “pace,” “synergy,” and “synchronization” which privilege cooperations, exchanges, and interrelationships are emerging notions that make the synthetic very real, and easily applicable in different circumstances to form new modes of production. In contrast, the opposite of the notion of time is the hegemony of “speed” in classic industrial production. From mining to agriculture to construction, the acceleration of industrial processes essentially underpinned modernity in the twentieth century, and has arguably exhausted itself. For a related discussion on the relevance of synergy, see Hermann Haken, The Science of Structure: Synergetics Buckminster Fuller’s Synergetics I-II 34. North America to explicitly articulate the relationship between waste, ecology, and urban patterns in Wasting Away: An Exploration of Waste and been reclaimed by Alan Berger in his seminal book

30. “Pénuries Chroniques d’Hydrocarbures in L’Écho Des Frontières,” Sommaire No.13, Suivi Des Échanges Transfrontaliers entre Le Nigéria et Les Pays Voisins (Bénin, Cameroun, Niger, Tchad), ers: Without the Activities of Fuel Hawkers, Many Motorists Wouldn’t be Able to Keep Their Vehicles on the Road,” This Day Originally published in Topos Magazine 60 (October 2007): 83–91. 250

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252 Jankara Jetty Market, Lagos Island, Nigeria. Photo: ÂŠAlf Gillman

The demolition of the GM Automotive Plant in Flint, Michigan. Photo: Leonard Thygesen, Demolition Videos & Buick Prints, 2013

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In the last century, capital [and power] became more important than land.â&#x20AC;? John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, 19671

254

Landscape as Infrastructure. 255

256

Nineteen-sixty-seven, the year that renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith released his revolutionary bestseller The New Industrial State, was a year of landmarks.2 That year marked the end of General Motors’ (GM) two-year long Futurama exhibition that attracted more than 29 million people at the New York World’s Fair. For the largest employer in the US, 1967 also saw the introduction of three new car models, including the Cadillac Eldorado, the Chevrolet Camaro, and the Pontiac Firebird. While GM celebrated the production of its one millionth US-made car that same year, it also faced a major labor backlash outside its headquarters in Detroit, one example of many in a year of civil rights rioting across the country in cities like Newark, Plainfield, Cleveland, Cambridge, Buffalo, and Milwaukee. This was also the year that the Outer Space Treaty banned the use of nuclear weapons in space while underground nuclear testing continued in Nevada’s Yucca Flat. Nineteen-sixty-seven also marked the half way point of the Vietnam War, just before San Francisco’s 1968 Summer of Love. It was also the year of Apollo 4, the first uncrewed flight in Earth’s orbit returning never-before-seen images of planet Earth. Landscape as Infrastructure

More importantly, 1967 was the year that a Milwaukee Journal was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public SerWisconsin and the Great Lakes. The award was a notable ad3

trends of downstream contamination from Wisconsin’s mainstay industries of paper manufacnation’s tion of noncompliance and nonenforcement, the

Potomac, and the

Mississippi, the -

the declaration of Lake Erie as a dead zone, the

rior,

mercury conLake SupeLake Huron.4

By the second half of the twentieth century, there was a conspicuous correlation between inespecially around the Great Lakes, once the in-

State of tion, infrastructure decay, and pollutants on the 5 The failure to return

specialized, or technocratic disciplines, such as dominated twentieth-century reform. How then 258

< Orbital Representation, 1967

The orbiting Earth at an altitude of 9,745 nautical miles, this view was photographed from the uncrewed Apollo 4 (Spacecraft 017/Saturn 501) on November 9, 1967, looking west toward the coast of Brazil, the Atlantic Ocean, West Africa, Sahara, and Antarctica. Source: NASA Space Flight Mission AS04-01-410. 1 . John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967): 494. 2. Originally from a small agricultural community in Southern Ontario, John Kenneth Galbraith laid out in his revolutionary bestseller The New Industrial State at the end of the 1960s, six of the most noticeable cumulative aspects of modern mass-industry with their corresponding spatial morphologies iwhich ncluded: A. Large physical scale of production (horizontal plants); B. Massive heavy equipment inputs (resource extraction and energy production); C. Large capital investments (banks and credits); D. Expanding labor divisions (management hierarchies, head offices and factory floors); E. Increasing corporate organizations (corporate campuses, research laboratories, and management systems); and F. Long-term planning (computing, forecasting software and data storage). 3. Quoting the Pulitzer Foundation: “For its successful campaign to stiffen the law against water pollution in Wisconsin, a notable advance in the national effort for the conservation of natural resources” (www.pulitzer.org/ bycat/Public-Service). The Milwaukee Journal of April 1967 featured a major three-part series called “Pollution: The Spreading Menace,” initiated by editor George J. Lockwood. In a 2013 article, “that series,” according to Jan Uebelherr from the Journal Sentinel, “helped push legislation stiffening regulations on the handling of waste by paper producers and other Wisconsin industries.” The National Press Photographers Association confirmed the journalistic importance of The Sentinel: “During that era, the Milwaukee Journal's photography department was probably the best newspaper photography staff assembled, with many of the photographers and editors going on to careers at National Geographic and Sports Illustrated and the leading weekly news magazines. Lockwood was known to be a great supporter of photography and photographers” (https://nppa.org/node/31003). 4. For a thorough discussion of water policies in North America and the Great Lakes over the past three decades, see John A. Hoornbeek’s “The Promises and Pitfalls of Devolution: Water Pollution Policies in the American States” Publius 35 No.1 (2005): 87–114, and Jo Sandin,“30 Years Later, Water Cleanup Continues to Fight Current in Milwaukee Area,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (September 9-11, 2011). After his veto was overturned by Congress, Nixon was forced to sign the

Press, Pollution, Pulitzer

The full-page graphic report of river pollution in 1966 that garnered national public recognition. Source: Milwaukee Journal (April 17–24, 1967): 5–6, 20–21 Landscape as Infrastructure

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Postâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Euclidean Geography

The cv of the Village of Euclid, in the context of the Euclid Creek watershed, Lake Erie, surrounding townships, crisscrossed by roads and highways including Interstate 90 (right to left). Diagram: OPSYS

260

Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments in 1972. While 1972 is popularly understood as the Year of the Clean Water Act, it has had many variations and forms when seen as a body of legislation, which actually began in 1948. In the Public Records, the act is originally listed and designated in different variations as “Federal Water Pollution Control Act” first in 1948, then as Clean Water Act, in brackets. Notable amendments include 1977 and 1987. In its 2010 report on the “Clean Water Act: A Summary of the Law,” the research service describes the lineage of legislation that it has undergone and specifically lists the term “Clean Water Act of 1977,” as the designation when it was signed in 1977 by Jimmy Carter. In his Statement of Signing on December 28, 1977, President Carter acknowledges the change in legislative designation: “I am pleased to sign the Clean Water Act of 1977, which amends the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972. This act reaffirms our national commitment to protect the quality of our waters and the health of our people” (www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index. php?pid=7063). From an environmental history perspective, there is a common reference of 1972 as the signing of the 1972 Clean Water Act, but as the EPA acknowledges, it is simply a common reference. From the point of view of legislation, the Clean Water Act represents a body of legislation that has been evolving in different status and amendments for a very long time since 1948, and arguably, most likely, before that, in other forms (www. epa.gov/regulations/laws/cwahistory.html). 5. For an authoritative discussion on the subject and case studies involving brownfields remediation and landscape architecture, see Niall Kirkwood, Manufactured Sites: Rethinking the Post-Industrial Landscape (London: SPON Press, 2001). 6. The modern industrial landscape of North America originates from Euclidean planning principles. In a landmark federal court case dating back to 1926, Village of Euclid, Ohio vs. Ambler Realty Co. (272 U.S. 365), a U.S. Supreme Court judge approved an injunction deposed by a public authority to prevent the development of an industrial cluster adjacent to a town center and residential neighborhood. The case led to the first legislated use of land classifications from which precipitated modern forms of planning through zoning. Reliant upon public ordinances, Euclidean planning has led to the widespread practice of land subdivision characteristic of the decentralized pattern of cities across the United States and Canada. To this day, zoning remains one of the most instrumental mechanisms in the social, spatial, and economic structure of the North American landscape. See “Redefining Infrastructure” in this volume and Sydney Wilhem’s Urban Zoning and Land Use Theory (New York, NY: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962), and “The Economic Theory of Zoning: A Critical Review” by J. Michael Pogodzinski and Tim R. Sass in Land Economics 66 No.3 (August 1990): 294–314.

support a nation’s economy—jump-start a new centralized, and technocratic practice of infralandscape of biophysical systems as a decentralmodern industry.6

The quest for a more contemporary understandwith a reconsideration of modern mass-industry

demolition dumpsite in Toronto, Ontario. The

notorious dumpsite. The 16-acre site—a mile droelectric and transportation project between as a chemical dump for more than 10 years between 1942 and 1953 by the Hooker Electro7 Prior to that, it had been military–

the municipality built a school and a hundred-

Landscape as Infrastructure

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7. Chemicals found at the Love Canal were by-products from the commercial production of chlorine, a building block for the military and energy industries (Love Canal Collections, University of Buffalo Archives).

cancer.8

Marie the dumpsite below her son’s elementary school. -

backyards.

8. Between 1974 and 1978, birth defects occurred in 56 percent of births at Love Canal and have been attributed to high levels of dioxin, the most toxic chemical known to humankind, according to the Love Canal Homeowners Association. Disputed and debated, these results have been subject of countless government studies over the past two decades. See Center for Health, Environment & Justice, “Love Canal. Fact Pack P001” (2001), www.chej.org/documents/love_canal_factpack.pdf.

pool had been popped up from its foundapointed out to me by the residents. Some of these puddles were in their yards, some were in their basements, [and] others yet dren returned from play with burns on 9

9 . See Eckardt C. Beck, “The Love Canal Tragedy,” EPA Journal (January 1979), www.epa. gov/history/topics/lovecanal/01.html.

President

eryone in the

operations and the

—between industrial

262

10. The use of the term “ecology” is explicitly taken outside the context of the field of environmental history and environmental design, which places the notion of ecology within the sciences of natural systems. Since that view is to a certain extent outdated, the term “ecology” is no longer a secular area of research but has multiple meanings and uses. “Ecology” is used to characterize a range of relationships between constructed conditions (industrial, urban, capital-based) and preexisting/pre-development conditions (biophysical systems, existing resources, pre-urban, precapital. These relationships between industrial operations and biophysical systems represent a complex ecology. In Environmental Monitoring at Love Canal Vol.1 (1982): 50, the U.S. EPA stated that “in order to understand the potential for contamination migration from the former canal, a thorough understanding of the geology, as well as the occurrence and movement of groundwater, at the site was necessary.”

Toxic Topography

Aerial view of Love Canal (New York), the site that spawned the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) in the 1980s, better known as the Superfund. Despite the abandoned lots and paved-over properties surrounding the fenced-in landfill, the site was de-listed by the

U.S. EPA from the Superfund in 2004 after 20 years and 200 million dollars worth of demolition, including remediation, and encapsulation. Source: Google Earth, Image ÂŠ2014 DigitalGlobe (top) and Love Canal, Niagara Falls, New York, 1986 (detail), from Waste Land. Photo courtesy of David T. Hanson (bottom) Landscape as Infrastructure

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Constructed Ecology

The crenellated jetty of the Leslie Street Spit, which projects 5 kilometers southward from the shoreline of Lake Ontario, near downtown Toronto. Landfilling operations are still active on the eastern half of the headland, while the western half is used for recreational and ecological park use. Below, the origins of the spit in 1964 as the fire dump where liquid effluents where set on fire on the edge of the shoreline within the vicinity of 400-hectare industrial area of the Portlands. Photos: Pierre BĂŠlanger, 2004 and City of Toronto Archives, 1964 196

11. Environmental legislation in the United States emerged at a time of heightened environmental awareness around the world, with incidents that occurred during the next decade such as the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania (1979–1980), the Ridderkerk toxic dumpsite in the Netherlands (1981), the Tar Ponds in Sydney, Canada (1982), the Times Beach dioxin spraying incident in Missouri (1983), the DOW chemical spill in Bhopal, India (1984), and the nuclear reactor accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine (1986).

air pollution.11 Passed in the wake of worldwide other industrial hazards and health risks across -

traction on the actual remediation and cleanup 12. The National Center for Policy Analysis provides a stinging indictment of the CERCLA program in “Superfund: A History of Failure,” Report No.198 (March 21, 1996).

12 local economies and Today, after a 200 million dollar lawsuit, the

million dollars in site remediation, the remaina fenced-in berm. The Leslie Street Spit While the catalyzed the era of post-industrial remediadumpsite some 300 kilometers across Lake On-

> Incidental Landscape

Sequence of accumulation and transformation of the Leslie Street Spit over the past forty years, showing the most recent access system and planning process by Field Operations/James Corner. Diagram: OPSYS/Dave Christensen

from the shorelines of downtown Toronto, the dumpsite is a linear headland constructed with waste materials, mostly concrete and rubble ban sites, the construction of subway tunnels,

Landscape as Infrastructure

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timelines

266

1960

1961

1962

1963

1964

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1973

1974 7

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

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1991

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1993

1994

2000

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1960s, '70s and '80s. Generically dubbed the Leslie Street Spit, the headland was initiated area which would simultaneously function as a coastal barrier for the city’s inner harbor. The be an ideal base material for the construction

cies slowly colonized the peninsular landmass. plants, birds, and mammals that took tance of the downtown area attracted considerearly as the mid-1980s, Leslie Street Spit as “one

habitats birds require, and has rendered others 13

13. Michael Hough, Cities and Natural Process, second edition (New York, NY: Routledge, 2004), 139.

Greater Toronto area, while simultaneously op14

relation between the mechanics of urban con-

268

14. Logistics are essential to large-scale infrastructures. It connotes the planning and management of the flow of resources, goods, and information, including the energy, waste, and people between points of production and consumption. When applied to the context of urban infrastructures, the logistical use of land entails the management, for example, of large volumes of fluids (hydrology) and large volumes of aggregates (topography). The value of logistics was applied early on in large-scale earthworks by the Corps of Topographical Engineers, an organization that predated today’s well-known United States Army Corps of Engineers. See Henry P. Beers, “A History of the U.S. Topographical Engineers 1813–1863,” Military Engineering 34 (June/ July): 287–291, 348–352.

hundred years and of the more than 350 lakeshore disposal facilities in the Great Lakes currently in operation, testify to the endurance of cess where cities are built on waste, and where 15. This program establishes policies and best practices for processing and diverting sewage and sludge from feedlots as fertilizer on farm fields to minimize water quality and public health impacts. See USDA, National Planning Procedures Handbook—Draft Comprehensive Nutrient Management Planning Technical Guidance (2008), www.nrcs.usda. gov/technical /afo/cnmp_guide_index.html.

Leslie Street a distance, the historical reclamation of land in -

16. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Environment Canada, there are approximately 50,000 brownfields in the Great Lakes region with real or perceived levels of contamination that pose significant obstacles to re-development. See USEPA, Office of Solid Waste “Basic Information” www.epa.gov/wastes/nonhaz/municipal/ index.htm

The The pattern of contaminated sites16 in the Great nomic shifts in a known as the Wis-

ter of the northeastern seaboard were primary -

fell from 509,000 workers in 1973 to 240,000 in 1983. The widespread deindustrialization and de-militarization of industries across the with incendiary effects—economically, socially, politically—across cities such as Gary, South Milwaukee, Sudbury, London, Hamilton, Buffalo, Syracuse, -

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Milwaukee

1765

270

Detroit

Chicago

1904

1970

2008

Landscape as Infrastructure

271 71

Trenton, and associated with the post-industrial fallout in the the international mobility of corporations, the deindustrialization of the -

< Constructed Ground

Historical development and pre-settlement patterns of shorelines and land building during the past two hundred years of cities across the Great Lakes, including Milwaukee, Detroit, and Chicago. Diagram: OPSYS/Dave Christensen

al borders southward to labor and raw materials were plant relocations led to industrial dis-incorporation, property abandonment, unemployment, and land17

17. On the effects of global outsourcing and its spatial manifestation in North America, see Thomas L. Friedman’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2005).

With lower labor costs, cheaper raw materials,

This economic fallout further precipitated the Roger and Me, Michael Moore criticized the

18. “Thailand becomes world’s pickup specialist,” by Wayne Arnold, The New York Times (June 17, 2005). On the surrogate industrialization that usurped the Motor City, see Roland Jones’, “As Detroit falters, Asian makers pick up speed; Toyota likely to surpass GM as world’s top carmaker; China lurks in wings,” NBC News (September 5, 2006). The entire discourse on post-industrial service economies, and the recovery of shrinking cities, has overlooked how production has moved to a different part of the world. Capital doesn’t simply remain static or disappear; it moves geographically.

in bankrupt in the 1980s.19 eration projects, such as the $13 million Hyatt

19. Michael Moore, Roger and Me (Warner Brothers Inc, 1989).

the abandoned landscape of General Motors abandoned. ity.20,21

mobil-

the city of

er are a testament to the imminent rebound of abandonment. 272

20. David Harvey, “Globalization and Deindustrialization: A City Abandoned,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 10 No.1 (1996): 175–191. 21. Steven P. Dandaneau, A Town Abandoned: Flint, Michigan, Confronts Deindustrialization (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996).

Demobilization, Dezoning, and Disurbanization

An evacuated area of Ward 3 in the former steel city of Youngstown, Ohio. The decentralized pattern results from subtracted layers of infrastructureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;including buildings, lamp standards, power lines, sewer connections, sidewalks, and entire streetsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which have been removed as a result of property abandonment, bankruptcies, foreclosures, and other fiscal burdens. In exchange for back taxes, land stewardship and property upkeep is provided by neighbouring residents. Overall,

the 45 to 75% reduction in stormwater runoff and sewage loading, coupled with the increase in permeable surfaces, results in a significantly lower infrastructure maintenance portfolio for the Department of Public Works. The area was formerly zoned as R1.0-1.5 and currently being rezoned for a range of more productive land uses. Detail on following page. Photo: Digital Globe, 2008. Diagram: OPSYS/Hoda Matar

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274

at which the city fails. The failure of sharply with the case of

22. Regionalism in the Great Lakes has also underpinned work by the Toronto Region Conservation Authority created after Hurricane Hazel in 1954. In the early 1990s, David Crombie, now president of the Canadian Urban Institute, proposed a landscape system for cities within the Lake Ontario watershed by simply delineating major biophysical zones for nondevelopment and other urban areas for redevelopment. Rather than control growth, the system privileged—much like Olmsted’s planning of the Mont-Royal in Montréal and MacKaye’s Appalachian trail system—the preemptive and proactive conservation of large biophysical features such as the Oak Ridges Moraine and the Niagara Escarpment as an infrastructure. See David Crombie, Watershed: Interim Report (Toronto, ON: Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront, 1990).

ism22 of or of lost more than half of its 170,000 residents in the past twenty years because of countless plant -

2006, there were some 12,000 commercial and -

from fully abandoned tracts of land. Vacant 23

23. Permitted on residential lots larger than 3 acres are agrarian land uses (such as produce fields, horse ranches, and cow pastures), which are spreading quickly. See Associated Press, “Youngstown planners turn shrinking population into positive” (June 19, 2007), www.youngstown2010.com/news_information/national/ap%20story.pdf.

24. Roads are often an untouched or undisputed aspect of urban plans, since they are seen as the exclusive purview of transportation engineers. Albeit counter-intuitive, the fact that the City of Youngstown is removing roads to reduce maintenance of this inherited infrastructure, and to make way for new land uses, illustrates the emergence of new spatial conditions where urban development can occur without roads.

roads accomthe urban landscape.24

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and uses can be swiftly superimposed. The tra-

sewer of the

ture.25

teenth century,

25. City of Youngstown and Youngstown State University, The Youngstown 2010 Citywide Plan (2005) www.youngstown2010.com/plan/plan. htm.

26. See “Regionalization” in this volume.

land un-incorporation will ultimately reduce the under-utilized public spaces to become a cultur-

27. See Belinda Lanks, “Creative Shrinkage,” The New York Times (December 10, 2006).

deindustrialization has been the -

276

28. See Robert Bruegmann’s Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 2005).

Benton Jay Wil-

bio-industries, and waste economies. The shift tries of mass production to a decentralized patand

29. Richard T.T. Forman, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Emergence of Landscape Ecology,â&#x20AC;? in Landscape Ecology, ed. Richard T.T. Forman and Michel Godron (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1986).

has contributed to a

effects of industrialization and urbanization on -

now be better understood both at the macroand micro-scale. Whether they are -

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Great Lakes Watershed

The 43 Areas of Concern (AOCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s) in the watershed region of the Great Lakes, jointly designated by the USCanada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (Annex 2 of the 1987 Protocol). These areas are defined by the International Joint Commission as â&#x20AC;&#x153;severely degraded geographic areas that fail to meet the general 278

or specific objectives of the agreement where such failures have caused or are likely to cause impairment of beneficial use of the areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to support aquatic life.â&#x20AC;? The U.S. and Canadian governments have identified 43 areas; 26 in U.S. waters, 17 in Canadian waters and 5 are shared between the US and Canada on connecting river systems. Diagram: OPSYS/Dave Christensen Landscape as Infrastructure

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near-water industries and upstream urban ac-

30. In his controversial article, “Brave New Ecology” Landscape Architecture (February 2006): 46–48, Peter Del Tredici discusses the culturally flawed distinction between native and exotic species and claims that it has overlooked the importance of invasive species in cities. The use of the terms endogenous and exogenous systems are legitimate and more-objective substitutes to the native-exotic dialectic. 31. The International Joint Commission is an independent, binational organization established by the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty to strategically control the amount of water that could be diverted from the Niagara Falls and to prevent further diversion of waters from the Great Lakes basin.

the Great Lakes addressed by the commission.32

polluted sediment from decades of industrial

priority areas of concern. The transboundary crosssites,

mostly

harbors,

across

to the for decentralized

costs.33,34

280

shorelines. surfaces

systems

for

stormwater

32. The Sierra Legal Defence Fund estimated in 2006 that 24 billion gallons of municipal sewage were dumped into the Great Lakes. Known as combined sewer overflow, the problem stems from conventional, centralized systems of pipes and gutters that combine sewage and stormwater during peak periods of rainfall. In addition to fertilizer-based phosphorus inputs from farmland, overloaded systems flow out into open bodies of water, spilling sewage before finally flowing into lakes and rivers, leading to the closures of beaches, unsightly algae, and poor fish habitat. See US, Canadian cities fouling the Great Lakes with raw sewage—Report card reveals Great Lakes cities not making the grade. (2006), http://www.ecojustice.ca/publications/ reports/the-great-lakes-sewage-report-card. 33. The Center for Watershed Protection in the United States provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date information on measures for water conservation design and stormwater economies (www.cwp.org/). Another equally important study is ECONorthwest’s The Economics of Low Impact Development: A Literature Review http://www.econw.com/reports/ECONorthwest_ Low-Impact-Development-Economics-LiteratureReview.pdf. 34. The transformation of urban ecologies relies on a sound scientific understanding of topography and vegetal systems with water dynamics—quantitatively and qualitatively—as the underlying superstructure at the regional watershed scale. The tectonic value of landforms and bio-economic characteristics of vegetal systems are best expressed in the writings of Clemens Steenbergen, a landscape architect from the Technical University of Delft who was one of the first and few European practitioners to underscore the relationship between topography and urbanism: “Modern architecture experimented [in the middle of the past century] with disconnecting topography and form. The landscape became a neutral tableau, reduced to its monumental aspects. The plan was projected onto this as an autonomous intervention. The city of today is becoming a tapestry of fragments. [Today] we can try to expose once again the landscape origins of the city […] through a reformulation of [its] topography by reorganizing the urban fragments in the context of landscape.” See “TEATRO RUSTICO: The formal strategy and grammar of landscape architecture” in Modern Park Design: Recent Trends, ed. Andreu Arriola and Bernard Huet (Amsterdan, NL: Thoth, 1993): 123.

Landscape of Disassembly

The sorting, shredding, bundling, and melting operations at Triple M Metal in Brampton, Ontario, one of North America’s largest, most modern recyclers of ferrous and non-ferrous metals. The ISO 9001/14001-certified facility handles more than 2.5 million tons of scrap every year, reprocessed for mills and foundries on the international commodity exchange markets. Recycled material currently accounts for about 40 percent of the world’s steel production. It requires 75 percent less energy than the processing of iron ore and its waste emissions are nearly 90 percent lower. Photo: Pierre Bélanger and Jacqueline Urbano Landscape as Infrastructure

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Greenhouse Effect

Aerial view of Leamington, Ontario, the greenhouse capital of North America. Due to highly fertile soils, increasingly warm temperatures, and abundance of freshwater, the region has the highest rate of greenhouse start-ups in Canada, almost doubling their production annually. Located on the 42nd Parallel, tender fruits, vine-ripened vegetables, and specialty flowers are cultivated in controlled hydroponic conditions limiting pesticide inputs and runoff into nearby Lake Erie. Representing $1 billion in farm gate value, Leamingtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greenhouse acreage is larger than the entire U.S. greenhouse industry combined. Photo: Google Earth, Image ÂŠ2014 DigitalGlobe obe

contemporary practice will necessarily become dynamics, downstream effects, and subsurface

with the rapid depletion of freshwater supplies

35. For more information on the imminent conflict of boundary waters, see Peter Annin’s The Great Lakes Water Wars (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006).

sources in the past decade, the

50 billion dollars a year for cut

36. Agricultural Economics Research Institute (AERI), “Floriculture Worldwide: Trade And Consumption Patterns–The Netherlands,” (2007), www.agrsci.unibo.it/wchr/wc1/degroot.html. 37. Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993). 38. Henry Ford, as quoted in the Christian Science Monitor during a trip to Sudbury (Ontario), reported in The New York Times, “Ford predicts fuel from vegetation” (September 19, 1925): 24. 39. Vegetal fuel sources such as hemp, soy, or corn were widely publicized by Henry Ford and Rudolf Diesel before the advent of alcohol prohibition and well before the supremacy of southern U.S. oil barons. See Greg Pahl, Biodiesel: Growing a New Energy Economy (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2005).

since the early 1990s.36

what they make, and what they waste.37 These

The fruit like that sumach out by the road, or Landscape as Infrastructure

283

from apples, weeds, sawdust—almost any-

40. According to Ontario Flower Growers Incorporated, “there are more than 250 commercial greenhouses in the Niagara region and 126 hectares (310 acres) protected under glass or plastic. The industry employs about 3,000 people in the Niagara region, generating approximately $250 million in annual sales with agri-tourism that also provides a substantial economic source for the Niagara Region” (www.ontarioflowers.com/potted_ plants/location.htm).

alcohol on one’s year yield of an acre of po38

between 2000 and 2005;40 the construction of the Hamilton Harbor in 2005; and the construc-

by economies formerly based on the import of 41

Waste Economies 42

born from mid-twentieth century industrialized ity of urban waste streams.43 44 terial loop where it matters most; at the source of waste, in urban areas. 45

ity in the Hamilton Harbor, contaminated with -

284

41. Bio-industries will have a significant impact on the future of energy generation in big cities. Copenhagen, for example, produces 97 percent of its heating needs by burning its own garbage, and at other times, by burning straw bale—two infinitely renewable fuel sources. 42. Over the past decade, an unprecedented reorganization of the municipal solid waste industry has taken place in the Great Lakes region as a result of the closure of the world’s largest landfill, Fresh Kills Landfill in New York City, and from the tightening of environmental controls by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. While the number of small landfills has actually decreased throughout the United States and Canada, the rate of landfilling has dramatically increased during the past 10 years, resulting in the creation of megasize landfills (1 square mile, 200–300 feet in height) whose operations are essentially aimed at achieving greater economies of scale. At the center of this extraordinary transformation is the State of Michigan, the third largest importer of trash in the US (next to Pennsylvania and Virginia) and home to the largest waste disposal sites in the Great Lakes region. Heightened by cross-border movements of solid waste between Canada and the United States, the sheer magnitude of operations is staggering, receiving approximately a 40-ton truck and trailer every three minutes. For a greater discussion of the transboundary movement of waste in the Great Lakes, see Pierre Bélanger’s “Airspace: The Operational Ecologies & Geopolitics of Landfilling in Michigan,” in TRASH (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006): 132–155, and Benjamin Miller’s Fat of the Land: The Garbage of New York (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000). 43. According to the U.S. EPA’s Office of Solid Waste (2007), commercial waste from the construction and demolition industry represent almost twice as much as the municipal sector (400 versus 235 million tons), a figure dwarfed by waste streams in the mining industry that represent five times more every year (2–3 billion tons). 44. Material loops refer to the circulation of materials in contemporary manufacturing processes viewed as systems. In production loops (instead of production lines), material inputs (resources) are treated just as equally as material outputs (wastes). See “Ecologies of Disassembly” in this volume.

Carbohydrate Matter

Fresh sludge delivered from a wastewater treatment plant in Niagara, temporarily placed for storage prior to the de-watering and de-nitrification processes. The resulting carbohydrate-and protein-rich matter is reused as organic fertilizer for farm fields and an organic additive for composting facilities. As the single most important contributor to nutrient overloading in the waters of the Great Lakes, more than 90 billion liters of combined sewer overflow is discharged from urban, suburban, and rural areas into the Great Lakes every year. Photo: Pierre BĂŠlanger

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Diversion Pathway

Hamilton milton Harbour H arbour 1

M a c Ca s sa Ba y

14 5 8

Hamilton Harbour Priority Remediation ediation Sitess & Brownfields B

(Active & Abandoned) doned) 1. Contaminated ed Disposal Facility Faccility tine Maintenance Maintenancce Dredging Dre edging Site 2. Pier 25 Routine 3. Stelco Steel Mill idor 4. GO Transit Lakeshore Westt Corri Corridor 5. Barton & Crooks ooks Street 6. Windermere Basin dens 7. Queens Gardens 8. LIUNA Station on eek Village 9. Spencer Creek 10. Glanbrook Industrial Park 11. Airport Business iness Park (Capped d) 12. Taro West Landfill (Capped) 13. Taro East Landfill ef 14. Randal Reef 15. Pier 15 Soill Remediation & Bio-Degradation tion Facility (Proposed) (Pro opose ed)

11 13

5 km 4 mii A

Patterns of Diversion

Flows of contaminated soils from brownfields and organic solids from landfills in Hamilton, Ontario, redirected to new soil remediation and composting facilities. Formerly the largest processor of steel and iron in Canada and one of the most heavily polluted inland ports in North America, the 2,150-hectare embayment of the Hamilton Harbour is now the site of a major remediation action plan under pressure of its rapidly diversifying economy to clean its polluted waters and contaminated sediments using new discharge management systems and sedimentation decontamination technologies. Diagram: OPSYS/Rick Hyppolite

286

45. The recent rise of turnkey enterprises are important because they can plan, design, operate, and manage. Their importance goes hand-in-hand with the emergence of total design service delivery firms. In the US, the recent acquisition of EDAW (the largest landscape architecture firm in the US) by AECOM (one of the largest engineering firms in North America), and in Canada, the recent acquisition of Hough-The Envision Group (Canada’s largest landscape architecture firm) by Dixon Consulting (one of the largest engineering offices in Canada) are two recent examples. See “Peering into the Future: An interview with Joe Brown, Landscape Architect and former President of EDAW, now Chief Innovation Officer for AECOM” (2009), http://dirt.asla. org/2009/12/07/peering-into-the-future-aninterview-with-joseph-e-brown-fasla/, and “On Planning, Preservation, Pedagogy And Public Works, an interview with Michael Hough” (2008), www.csla-aapc.ca/webfm_send/814. 46. The composting process, an inexpensive, endogenous biotechnology that decomposes organic materials from oxygen depletion and thermal convection, will revolutionize the industry of mass-recycling of organic waste in the twenty-first century, just like the Bessemer process was the first inexpensive method for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron in the 1940s. 47. The Taro East Landfill which services the Greater Hamilton Area is owned by Philip Services Corporation (PSC), a waste management giant struggling under a one-billion dollar debt load from environmental lawsuits. See Michael Marley, “Philip, subsidiaries pursue bankruptcy cover in Canada” American Metal Market (September 23, 2003). 48. See Brenda Platt, “The five most dangerous myths about recycling,” The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, www.grn.com/ library/5myths.html (2006). 49. See “The Economics of Recycling,” Keynote presented by Marian Chertow, at the Yale Center for Industrial Ecology’s By-Products Beneficial Use Summit, Philadelphia (2005). Chertow was President of the International Society for Industrial Ecology (2013–2015). 50. For a related discussion on the relevance of synergy, see Haken Hermann’s The Science of Structure: Synergetics (New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1981). The concept of synergies was popularized in the 1970s by Buckminster Fuller in two important volumes, Synergetics I-II (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1975/1979). 51. This program establishes policies and best practices for processing and diverting sewage and sludge from feedlots as fertilizer on farm fields to minimize water quality and public health impacts. See U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service, National Planning Procedures Handbook—Draft Comprehensive Nutrient Management Planning Technical Guidance (2008).

40-acre facility can process at full capacity up to million people.46 Built on the side of a former -

use, it is estimated that more than 100,000 new jobs could be created in this industry alone.48 -

This concept is echoed by the

with raw materials such as recycled newsprints, recycled cardboards, recycled plastics, and recysources.49 that waste will be the new food. 50

from contem-

resources. When compounded, these streams -

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and the

tween downstream and upland sites within re-

52. This program involves the decontamination and diversion of dredgeate from underwater lakebeds in harbors in combination with other industrial products (such as ash and biosolids) and upland sites and confined disposal facilities. See US Army Corps of Engineers, Dredge Material Management in the Great Lakes (2008) http://www.lrd.usace. army.mil/navigation/glnavigation/dredgedmaterialmanagement.

With more than 70 million tons of sediment the past thirty years, there is a considerable potential for landscape practitioners to

53. The sustainability of urban operations is evidenced by reclamation sites such as the Monte Testaccio in Rome (a clay pot dump in the second century AD), the Jardin des Tuileries in central Paris (a former industrial dump in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), the Buttes-Chaumont in peripheral Paris (a former quarry and tailings dump in the eighteenth century), or Flushing Meadows in New York (a former ash dump). 54. See Andrew S. Voros, “Dredged Materials in Abandoned Mine Reclamation: Applications for the Great Lakes Region,” in Water Environment Federation’s Innovative Uses of Biosolids & Animal and Industrial Residuals (West Hatfield, MA: 2005).

abandoned industrial sites.54,55

55. Great Lakes Commission (GLC), Dredged Material Management (2006) www.glc.org/ dredging/dmm.

these landscape operations are essential—they become infrastructural.56

ties of land transformation and infrastructure biophysical re57

around political and municipal jurisdictions, ture required to reach them.

Whereas in the past, industrial economies were 288

56. Urbanist Stan Allen asserted that, “beyond stylistic or formal issues, [...] infrastructure and urbanism offers a new model for practice and a renewed sense of architecture’s potential.” See Points and Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999): 140. 57. In relationship to the fields of architecture, landscape, and urban design, this finding echoes Kenneth Frampton’s observations: “landscaped form as the fundamental material of a fragmentary urbanism is of greater consequence than the freestanding, aestheticized object,” in “Toward an Urban Landscape,” Columbia Documents of Architecture and Theory (1995): 92. 58. These factors were adapted from McKinley Conway’s book Industrial Park Growth (Conway Data, 1979), which provides a quantitative analysis of the emergence and expansion of industrial parks that bloomed across America after World War II. The factors are also borrowed from geo-economics, a field that involves the research, planning, and development of land and industry to build strong economies and improve quality of life. The field of research was pioneered between the 1950s and '80s by Conway, an aeronautical engineer from the southern United States who founded the International Development Research Council and the World Development Federation in the 1980s. See Conway’s Geo-Economics: The Emerging Science, IDRC Research Report No.1 (May 1983).

Landscape of Logistics

CN intermodal shipping terminal showing the shipping yards of retail and automotive giant Canadian Tire, located on the outskirts of the Greater Toronto area, in Brampton, a major distribution location with access to highways 401 and 407 for eastbound and westbound, rail-to-truck feeder service between Toronto and Montreal. Photo: Pierre BĂŠlanger and Jacqueline Urbano Landscape as Infrastructure

289

pendent, the economy is now inseparable from —can be deduced from the historic and infrastructural bond between land transformation and urbanization: 58

Wasting is natural. There is a built-in process to the patterns of urbanization and modes of production The creation of circular economies that will handle the by-products of these proB. Urban economies are global.

the economy of urban infrastructures and Urban patterns are transboundary. industrial processes considerably impacts -

mined.59

Decentralization is inevitable. distribution networks instead of centers, sion or, the abandonment of urban–indusban systems in relationship with networks of mobility will dominate practice.60,61 E. Ecologies are constructed.62 biophysical systhat preconditions modes of production 290

59. Urbanization designates the propensity to increase, reduce, or stabilize the occupational carrying capacity and productivity of land. Urbanization can rely on density and expansion, or on longevity and performance as growth indicators. Conversely, deurbanization can also be understood as an important process of land reorganization and spatial restructuring evidenced by land rezoning, land abandonment, building mothballing, structural de-engineering, fiscal foreclosure, and population redistribution. The “Soviet Disurbanists” during Russia’s industrial revolution in the early twentieth century provide the earliest examples of the efficacies of deurbanization. See Nicolai Ouroussoff, “The Silent Radicals,” The New York Times (July 20, 2007). 60. As part of decentralization, sprawl signals the prevalence of a distinctive pattern of low-rise urbanization in North America, which is erroneously dismissed as unsustainable sprawl. See Robert Bruegmann, Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006). From a global perspective, decentralization is proving to be persistent, pervasive, and sustainable thanks to the rise of the middle class throughout the world. What is poorly understood is that urban decentralization and self-actualization stem from the leveling of global socioeconomic structures and the increase in world population—a process that has been under way for the past two thousand years. This process is rendered visible by the current shift of conventional, top-down economies of supply being supplanted by economies of demand. Supply economies find their origins in societal structures where large populations were governed by small circles of power such as royal monarchies, military dictatorships, or industrial monopolies. Extremely hierarchical, vertical, and autocratic, these structures account for a large percentage of the world’s history. More recently, however, we have witnessed the flattening or leveling of these hierarchical structures in favor of more-horizontal and evenly distributed socioeconomic organizations. This structural transformation has been enabled by several major changes in the twentieth century: 1) the democratic organization of large populations and large metropolitan regions made possible by urban decentralization; 2) the increase in individual purchasing power, individual housing, and individual mobility thanks to New World capitalism; 3) the birth of instant communication made possible by standardized technology systems, and 4) the availability of consumer goods throughout the world made possible by global transportation. As a result, large populations are now better informed and better organized to make decisions, instigate change, and place demands upon ruling government bodies. For two different views on this emerging socio-economic shift, see Thomas L. Friedman’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005) and Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York, NY: New American Library, 1966). 61. See Planet of Cities by Shlomo Angel (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2012).

62. The term ‘ecologies’ is used here to denote associations between constructed conditions and pre-existing biophysical environments/processes. It denotes the complexity of these associations, which is different than the use of the word “ecology” in the sciences, where it only refers to the relationship between living things. The sciences do not have exclusive authority over the use or the definition of the word “ecology” (thus, the pluralization of the word ecologies), in the same way that designers do not have exclusive authority over the use or the definition of the word “design” (thus, the related use of the word innovation); or in the same way that engineers do not have exclusive authority over the word “engineering” (engineers now use the word design as a more holistic characterization of their work); or in the same way that architects do not have the exclusive authority over the word “architecture” (systems architecture in IT is a good example). Thus, “ecologies” between constructed and natural conditions can be constructed, i.e., they can and should be designed, planned, engineered. 63. Using the bathtub analogy, the watershed is a simple, palpable way to conceive and think of the footprints and extents of urbanization. Watersheds are physically defined by ridges (divides) formed through topography creating water flows within regional basins. Watersheds are sometimes referred to as biotopes, ecoregions, and physiographic regions. Today, the watershed is redefining contemporary patterns of urbanization, whether it is at the micro-scale (permeable pavements to encourage groundwater replenishment), or at the macro-scale (in contrast to political boundaries). From the governmental to the cultural, examples include: EPA’s “Surf Your Watershed,” NOAA’s ‘Watershed Database and Mapping Project”, or Maya Lin’s “Confluence Project” in the Columbia River Basin. For more on the future of this watershed lens see Great Lakes Water Wars by Peter Annin (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006). 64. The all-encompassing influence of the discipline of civil engineering is largely overlooked in contemporary fields of design and planning. According to architects and other designers, engineers are not considered to be urbanists. Strong evidence to this effect is the complete lack of integration between engineering and design (landscape architecture, urban planning, architecture, geography, and ecology) in the US, Canada, and many parts of the industrialized world. These disciplines simply do not speak to each other, yet they are influenced by each other in ways that are critical to the future of design practices. Further, the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that “civil engineers design and supervise large construction projects, including roads, buildings, airports, tunnels, dams, bridges, and systems for water supply and sewage treatment.” (Source: www.bls. gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/civilengineers.htm and www.bls.gov/k12/build05. htm.) Furthermore, the American Society of Civil Engineers states: “Civil engineering is the design and maintenance of public works such as roads, bridges, water and energy systems

frastructure, the watershed is its most basic and irreducible structural element.63 64

frastructure.

transcends disciplinary boundaries, landscape practice65 -

and biomass as a system can be instrumental -

scales: short and immediate periods of time, ditions it, therefore becomes telescopic, capable where the spatial interacts with the temporal,

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renewal. These cooperations can usurp stylistic future transformation will be slow and subtle,

material between land uses, and reciprocities between

Old World pictorial, bucolic, and aesthetic tradi66

intrinsically bears as a practice that deals with the synthesis of urban operations—coupled with this contemporary landscape practice—one that urbanization and dis-urbanization in the Great

sites in the 6 quadrillion liters of fresh water in the Great

elucidate the more fundamental processes that

292

as well as public facilities like ports, railways and airports […] Civil engineers touch many aspects of our everyday lives. From the water you use to brush your teeth in the morning to the road you drive on to work and the school where you take your children to the power that charges your cell phone. […] Civil engineers design and build the systems that bring us water and power.” (Source: www.asce.org/ What-Is-Civil-Engineering-/) These statements reach out to younger people as well, as seen in “ASCEVILLE,” the public outreach campaign which illustrates the all-encompassing extent of work by civil engineers (www.asceville.org/civil_what.html). We could include several other subdisciplines; no one could argue that engineers are in charge (design, planning, and management) of these systems. The other important profession to consider is construction project managers. 65. The infrastructural understanding of urban landscapes exposes the limitations and inadequacies of branded canons of urban growth such as New Urbanism, smart growth and community planning. By dismissing and excluding lands for production, manufacturing, logistics, distribution, and their corollary relationship with regional biophysical systems, these ideologies fall short of resolving the economy–ecology conundrum facing big cities today. For a greater discussion on the shortcomings of the concept of these ideologies in America, see Richard Florida’s article “The New Megalopolis: Our Focus on Cities Is Wrong. Growth and Innovation Construct New Urban Corridors,” Newsweek (July 31, 2006), and McKinley Conway’s discussion on what he defines as the “supercity” in his article “The Great Cities of the Future,” The Futurist Vol.33 No.6 (June 1999): 28. 66. Heightened by the forces of global mobility, the decisive transition from centralized industrial states to decentralized urban economies at the turn of the twenty-first century has spawned a pool of landscape practices that have been focusing on the transformation of brownfields and the remediation of urban ecologies. See James Corner, “Not Unlike Life itself: Landscape Strategy Now” in Harvard Design Magazine 21 (Fall/Winter 2004): 32–34.

Originally published in Landscape Journal Volume 28 No.1 (Spring/Summer 2009): 79â&#x20AC;&#x201C;95. Landscape as Infrastructure

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294

295

“The Revolutionary Activities of the Refrigerator Car. Growing Importance of the ‘Icebox on Wheels’. No single event in the last century had more significance to the perishable food industry than the successful shipment under ice […] the successful combination of transportation and continuous refrigeration in the refrigerator outranks the importance of even such momentous discoveries of milk pasteurizing, the canning process, and large-scale cold storage warehousing.” Walter P. Hedden, How Great Cities are Fed, 1929

Foodshed.

298

Diagram: OPSYS/Angela Iarocci

The 2003 blackout in the US northeast and central Canada offered dramatic proof that many cities in the developed world carry no more than a three-day reserve of fresh food. As more and more of the 6.5 billion people who inhabit the planet move from the country into the cities, critical concerns are being raised about the fragility of our food systems and the dominance of mechanized cold chains. Global manufacturing industries and refrigeration companies, in response to the rising pressure of urbanization, have set up just-in-time delivery systems that are able to move enormous quantities of food to urban consumers. These industrial systems are in constant motion, transporting foodstuffs from mega-farms on different continents to city centers thousands of kilometers away. As public awareness of the globalization in the food supply system has increased, resistance is also on the rise. Activists campaign for greater reliance on local food sources, asking consumers to be mindful of food sustainability and to support regional farm economies. But these strategies are likely to have only marginal impact on our eating habits as long as the supersize discount outlets, with their economies of scale, are able to entice customers with lower prices. Retail giants such as Costco and Walmart dominate most suburban areas and are constantly extending their reach, creating nearly one new store every single day across the Americas. Referencing Walter P. Heddenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1929 milestone book, How Great Cities Are Fed, the following pages tell the story of the operative landscape of the Ontario Food Terminal to describe the magnitude of the urbanization of the food chain as well as the emergence of the foodshed, a term that designates the landscape of food production, distribution, and consumption across a regionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;towards better understanding a model of the flexible and resilient urban infrastructure that big cities will need if they are to achieve food security and intelligent production for the twenty-first century. Foodshed

299

Over the last half century, food delivery systems in large urban centers, although largely overlooked by planners, economists, and politicians, have undergone a critical transformation towards keeping the retail giants from gaining complete control of the food supply system. The changes began in the years right after World War II, when a sudden, A comprehensive reorganization of the food industry in North American cities was needed. During the 1940s and 1950s, Keynesian economic policies and Fordist modes of production were creating an entirely new urban infrastructure. The rapid expansion of North Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s highway system, combined with the advent of refrigeration, made mass-market food delivery systems possible. These systems required centralized transport and delivery hubs for the wholesale distribution of perishable fruits and vegetables, and the modern food terminal emerged to answer that need. These terminalsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;mostly centers, centralize exchanges between growers and buyers, institute food quality stan-

Terminal Congestion

Overflowing streets at the St. Lawrence Market in 1948, originally planned a century earlier for horse and wagon traffic. Photo courtesy of Ontario Food Terminal Archives, 2007 300

dards, and regulate pricesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;moderating the predatory business practices of the large,

have built food terminals. Each city operates at least one central facility, imposing quallevel for wholesalers. Since the advent of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, Canada has moved past Japan and Europe to become the United Statesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; number one trading partner in fruits and vegetables. This expanding cross-border trade, as well as another wave of immigration to the Great Lakes region over the past decade, has exerted new pressures on the continental food system. Ensuring sustainable, perpetual production and a stable, year-round supply of fresh produceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;everything that everywith each passing year.

Foodshed

Terminal Optimism

Sketch of the U-shaped terminal proposed in 1954 by architects Phillip Shore and Robert Moffat. Photo courtesy of Ontario Food Terminal Archives, 2007

Most manufacturing in the US and Canada has been in decline over the past few decades, but the food industry has been growing as fast as other sectors were collapsing: it is now the most important manufacturing sector in North America, second only to transportation. Including spin-offs in food handling, processing, and packaging, agricultural the North American population. At the center of this explosive growth, located in one of the fastest-growing metropolises in the Western world, is the wholesale distribution node for fresh food in Canada, and the third largest in North America, after those of Los Angeles and Chicago. Operating at a breakneck pace 365 days a year, the market has not shut down for a single day since its opening in 1954. Over a million tons of produce travel through it every year, making it one of the most important terminals in North Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a food commodities stock exchange that can never stand still. till.

The OFT was created in response to a crisis in Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wholesale market operations in the mid-1940s. The rapidly growing population of immigrants from Europe and China Market warehouses were bursting at the seams and transport vehicles had a hard time getting through the St. Lawrence Market had served the city well since its modest beginnings as a distribution center in 1803, the new larger delivery trucks had rendered streets impassable and the market had now clearly outgrown its footprint. The post-war economic boom had created an urgent need for modernization.

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Terminal Landscape, 1956 The site of the Ontario Food Terminal in 1954 located in Etobicoke, a suburb just west of the city center bordered by Park Lawn Road, the Canadian National Railway to the east. Photo: Copyright permission to use this image was received from the Archives of Ontario

On May 17, 1952, the Wholesale Fruit Market in downtown Toronto was destroyed by site or moving the market to a new location, the city opted to take the operation west. Provincial Minister of Agriculture coke swampland. Conveniently situated between two major roadways and a trunk line, the site had plenty of space, with room to expand. Building was temporarily set back by postwar steel shortages, but the wholesale food terminal of its kind on the continent. Farmers in Ontario now had a new home, allowing them to compete with the international distributors who trucked fresh farm produce into Toronto from as far away as California and Mexico. So successful were the operations of the terminal that less than a year later it had reached full capacity. On

The terminal works as a leveler. An armâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s-length governmental organization operating on the principle of just-in-time delivery, it ensures fair market competition. The termiproduce but limited storage and handling capacity. They need fast turnaround times and fresh goods daily. The terminal aggregates 3,100 independent grocery stores, 1,172 franchise stores, and over 600 growers and farmers in Southwestern Ontario. The site houses a farmersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; market with 550 stalls and a warehouse market with 7,500 square meters of cold storage and 1,400 square meters of dry storage. It is equipped with a 575car parking deck, two cafĂŠs, and a restaurant. Like a miniature city, it even has its own centralized garbage collection and police force. All of this production takes place in an to movement and every enclosed space to storage; nothing can afford to remain static. Foodshed

305

Restaurant Café

Farmers’ Market Ov ow Area

Temporary Parking Area

West Exit On-ramp to Gardiner Expressway towards Mississauga

306

Main Entrance

Canada Food Inspection A

Wholesale Buyers’ Storage North Wing

Cold Storag Warehous

Buyers’ Court Ripen Facil

Wholesale Buyers’ Storage South Wing

ng Bays

Circulation Landscape

The terminal in full operation on Thursday, June 30, 2005 at 7:35am. More than 1 million vehicles pass through the Terminal each year as a result of its design as an environment entirely dedicated to the circulation of goods. Diagram: OPSYS

Foodshed

Dia

Hamburg GrossMarkt Hamburg, Germany Size: 28.1 Ha [281,000 m2] C

Philadelphia Terminal Market Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Size: 9.71 Ha [ 97 100 m2]

Rungis Marche International Paris, France Size: 232 Ha [ 2,320,000 m2]

Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market Los Angeles, California Size: 7.7 Ha [77,000 m2]

Detroit Produce Terminal Detroit, Michigan Size: 6.0 Ha [60,000 m2]

308

Berli Ber Size: 33

1.0km

San Francisco Wholesale Produce Terminal San Francisco, California Size: 10.1 Ha [101 000 m2]

Chicago International Produce Market Chicago, Illinois Size: 10.5 Ha [105 000 m2]

Tsukiji Fish Market Tokyo, Japan Size: 14.1 Ha [141,800 m2] Hunts Point Food Distribution Terminal The Bronx, New York Size: 51 Ha [510,000 m2]

Ontario Food Terminal Toronto, Canada Size: 20 Ha [150,000 m2]

in GrossMarkt rlin, Germany Ha [330,000 m2]

Terminal Infrastructures

Comparison of the largest wholesale food terminals in the world, built after World War II. Diagram: OPSYS

Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer Aalsmeer, The Netherlands Size: 128 Ha [1 280,000 m2] Foodshed

309

dardized. The scalar breakdown of vehicle types and sizes provides evidence of their origin and their route: large eighteen-wheel transports bring produce from distant farms via transcontinental highways, one-ton cube vans belonging to large wholesalers come in on main expressways, and small mini-vans from mom-and-pop corner stores arrive immigrant pool in the Greater Toronto Area. These OFT employees are the critical link between buyer and seller, transporting goods around the terminal in motorized miniforklifts at speeds up to 40 km/hr. The terminalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s organization is like its architecture, essentialized and circular.

310

Traffic Architecture

A nearly perfect representation of the total scalar breakdown of vehicles and box sizes that maximize shipments according to transport routes, where even the color is fully standardized: tractor-trailers for long haul, five-ton trucks for regional distribution, one-ton cube van for inner city transport, half-ton panel van for restaurants, and the quarter-ton mini-van for mom-and-pop convenience stores. Photo: Pierre BĂŠlanger Foodsh Foo d ed dsh d

311 311

y(Napa) Cho Siu Bok Choy Choy Bok pa) y(Na Cho Siu

Belgian pecified Uns ecified p Uns elgian B

Californi a

d pecifie Uns ecified p Un s

Ontario

Chinese Vegetables

ed pecifi Uns

China Brazil

Belgium Florida New Jer s Ontario ey

d pecifie Uns ecified p Uns ecified p Uns

Endives

Eddoes

Chinese Vegetables

d pecifie Uns ecified p Uns ecified p Un s

Turkey Greece Brazil

Thailand China Brazil

Un s

Ginger Root

Figs

Jicama Root

Roy Gra al Ga nny la Sm it Ne Roy F h So w Z Gra al Ga uji nn la CĂ´ uth eala Pin y Sm A t k Ch e dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;I fric nd Gol Roya Lady ith de Ch ina voire a lG ile Gra n De ala nny licio Pi Sm us Ca Roy nk La ith lifo al G dy rn ala ia Red F Del uji i c Roy io al G us Br i t S a ish pa la C.A. Co Gold Bra rtan e e l um C.A. n Delic burn bi Roy iou a Wa al G s Gold sh ala ing en D F ton elic uji Gra nny iou s P Sm Red ink L ith Del ady i Roy ciou s a Cou l Gala r Cris tland pin On Golden Empir t ar e Deli io c Id iou Maci ared s ntos Qui h nte Red De Roya licious l Ga l a Spa rtan

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Texas

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Ginger Root

Figs

Endives

Eddoes

Californi a Texas

Red Un s

pecified

Kale Kale

Apples

Jumbo Topped

Florida Ontario

Un s

Kohlrabi

Corn

ed pecifi Uns ecified p Un s

New jer sey

pecified

Kohlrabi

Corn

G.H. Field Field

Californ ia British C olum bia

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Leeks

Cranberries

Leeks

Cranberries

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Grapes

Larry Friar Angelino Black Red Fortune no Angeli Red no Angeli Blues Black

Tomatoes Tomatoes

Ontario

Plums Plums

M ay

A June

July

3 2 31 312

Chile

Italy California

Fiel

Green Green Green Fava Green Ky d FlatYellow Yellow Green

Guatema la Hondura s Mexico

Florida Ontario

Beans Beans

pecified Uns cified pe Uns

China Italy

Chestnuts Chestnuts

pecified Uns ecified p Uns cified pe Un s

Tunisia Californi a Mexico

Dates Dates

pecified Uns cified pe Uns ecified p Uns hoice C

Argentin a Spain Californi a

Lemons Lemons

Spain Unspecified California Netherlands Yukon Gold Red White Russet

California

ed pecifi Uns ecified p Uns

Chile Californ ia Ontario

d pecifie Uns ecified p Uns ecified p Un s

Brazil Mexico

Globalization of the Apple

Lime

Peaches

Lime

Peaches

G.H.

Red British Columbi a Unspecified Washington Yukon Gold White Mexico Russet Red Texas Red ld Florida Yukon Go White Red Gold PriP ncueeErtdo waR Yukon rdicIo ed Florida sland e-Wash Whit White Russet Red nnn esta Russet MiO otraio White Red e-Russet Wisconsin Whit n Gold Quebec o k u Y White Ontario Russet Red ld on Go Yuk

Ontario

Rhubarb

ecified Unsp ecified Unsp cified e Unsp Root ecified Unsp fied eci Unsp

Potatoes

Rhubarb

California Texas Florida

Un s

Quebec Ontario

Un s

Celery

Tomatoes Potatoes

Texas New Jer s

Bchd pecified Bchd pecified Topped

Ontario

Beets Beets

Celery

Seasonal supply cycle and annual chart of apple varieties distributed by the Ontario Food Terminal according to their region of origin throughout the world. Diagram: OPSYS/Angela Iarocci and Hoda Matar

a Pakistan Minneol entine China Clem fied peci Uns entine Argent Clem tine Mor ina occo en Clem ntine Spain e Clem eola Cali fornia Minn e n menti Cle

p Peas Sna Snow Snow Snow

China

Pe r u Guatem ala

Peas

Mandarines

Waxed

Ontario

Rutabagas

Peas

Mandarins

Asian Packham Bartlett Bosc Bartlett Unspecified Asian Forrelle Packham D'Anjou Bosc Bartlett Fetel Abbate Packham Bosc Asian Bartlett Rosata e Fetel Abbat Rocha Cactus Bosc D’Anjou Bartlett Asian Bartlett Forelle D'Anjou tt . Bartle C.A Bosc D'Anjou Bosc Bartlett

Thailand South Africa Saudi Arabia China

Argentina

Chile

Italy Portugal California

Washingto

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-L en -Ja Field Fireild slaopen C d-m lle Cuban iel tan SFeFeiedldl-eSusns pson d GFllideo-lGdb-rReeeedn Re F-iCe ubm anelle d la e elF ReFdi Fielldeb-Gasnreseellen ee-dCu range ck SFieGld.H.-sOo ned B la CrimG.H-G.-rReen n AuFit.eHuld.-m Yellow lack PGe rlette ncord e Co Blu

Californ ia New Je rsey

Italy epublic Peru Costa Ric a Californ ia

Jamaica Texas

Florida

Georgia Ontario

Un s

Peppers

Spinach

pecified Uns cified pe Uns cified pe Uns ecified p Uns ecified p Un s

Distance from the Ontario Food Terminal

Mexico Ontario

h Marc

Octo ber

Washington

N ov em be r

Brazil

ed pecifi Uns ecified p Uns

Spinach

Brazil Spain Californ ia

Persimmons

Varieties Fe

Fuyu pecified Uns chiya Ha Fuyu

Persimmons

Blackberries

January

Chile

om Th

Mangoes

Chile Californ ia Mexico British Colm bia

Blackberries

Netherlands

California British Columb ia Mexico

ot Hs ers ingle -Fd lde iee son FSField-Jalapreeenno SugFriieeallddo--GYnele low F SugG.rHa.-oYenlloew

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d pecifie Uns ecified p Uns cified pe Uns ecified p Un s

Carrots

Thailand Spain

G.H.-Red G.H.-Yellow

Field-Green G.H.-Yellow G.H.-Red

mp Tho

Californi a Texas Florida Ontario

Carrots

Pears

Pusrpsle H.l-e G.d Red SeeG.H.-White

Mangoes

Mini Jumbo Bchd Bchd Bchd Jumbo Topped

Pears

Rutabagas

er Decemb

ecified Brazil Unsp cified Peru e Unsp cified Ec uad e Unsp fied Mex or ico eci Unsp tkins my A Tom Kent Haden Ataulfo d Belize pecifie Uns

British Co Ontario lumbia

ed pecifi

Ontario

Alfalfa Sprouts

Argentin a Chile

British Co Newfo lumbia u Florida ndland

Blueberries

Alfalfa Sprouts

Peppers

Blueberries

Fruit / Vegetable Species

Grapes Grapes

Sept

Apri

ember

Cycle of Availability

M ay

ug us

A June

July Shiitake Oyster bello Porto ter Oys White ke Shiita Button Brown

China British Co lumb ia Ontario d pecifie Uns olden G n Golde

C o s ta R ic a Hondur as

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specified el-Un Nav Unspecified iapecified enc Val vel-Uns Blood Na

Mexico

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Florida Ontario

South Afri c Argentina a Italy California

Florida

Uns

Mushrooms Mushrooms

Pineapples Pineapples

Squash

ied pecif

Oranges

Broccoli

Apricots

d pecifie Uns ecified p Uns ecified p Uns

Nectarines Necatrines

Un s

ed pecifi

Virginia

India Spain Californ i

Pomegranates Pomegranates

Un s

ed pecifi

Ontario

Pumpkins

Nuts

Field Field Field ed pecifi Uns

lon-Mini er m e Wat Honeydew Seedless elonterm Cantaloupes Wa ecified Unsp lon- oneydew me H s ter taloupe Wa Can eydew Ho n s taloupe Can edless Se lonedless me ter on-Se Wa rmel Honeydew ate edless W -Se lon me er at W

Californ ia Mexico Florida

Strawberries Strawberries

Un s

Pumpkins

Nuts

Ontario

Oranges Broccoli

Apricots

esh Chile ite Fl Wh ecified p Uns Flesh California ite Wh ecified p Uns ecified Ontario p Uns

Californi a

Crown Bchd Bchd Crown

Chile

Squash

ed pecifi

Sugar Cane Sugar Cane

G u a t e ma la Honduras Mexico

Texas

Melons Melons

Crimson tumn Black Au tte Perle Red Globe edless Black Se dless Red See Green Flame dless on See mps ugraone S Tho Sugraone su e Italia Tis ue iss Italia T Black Crimson Seedless pson d Globe om Re Th Flame Red less d e e ck S n Bla Crimso utumn ck A Bla Perlette ncord e Co Blu

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Panama Costa Rica California

d pecifie Uns ecified p Un s

Red Green Red Savoy Green

Italy Californ ia

Artichokes

Texas

Ontario

Cabbage

Artichokes

Cabbages

Chile

Brazil

Italy Pe r u Costa Ric a Californ ia

Mexico Ontario

Grapes Grapes

Green White pecified Uns Green Green

Per u

Carambola Carambola

Asparagus

The loop of the terminal is entirely closed. Nothing is wasted: any food unsold at the end of the day is donated to the city’s largest food banks, cardboard containers are recycled, California Field Honduras Field-Select Mexico Pickles d-Dill Fiel Field glish ong En G.H. elect Field-S Texas l Pickles d-Dil .H.-Dill Florid a Fiel G les ill Pick ld-D Field Fie Field Ontario -Mini G.H. h glis g En Lon H.G.

Malays ia Taiwan

Starfruit Starfruit

Washin gton Mexico

Asparagus

.-L G.H

d pecifie Uns ecified p Uns ecified p Uns

Hondura s Texas Florida

ed pecifi

Califor

nia

Quinces

Okra

Quinces

Okra

d pecifie Uns reen G

Un s

Californ ia

Olives Olives

d pecifie Uns ecified p Uns ecified p Uns

Costa R ic Hondur a as Jamaica

Sweet Potatoes Sweet Potatoes

Cucumber Cucumber

ecified Unsp Fuerte pecified

Un s

Brazil Mexico Florida

Avocados

Cauliflowers

part of the terminal’s operations that remains remarkably inelastic is its tenancy system: thirty-year leases held by the most powerful grocers in the city are renewable in perpetuity, privileging a small number of family-owned businesses that have kept a tight hold on their terminal rights for over three generations. The business is so robust, and the leases so sought after, that each one is estimated to be worth over a million dollars in annual economic returns. In its role as a regulator, the terminal has helped support the rise of local independent grocers and growers since the 1970s, even as the number of retail chains has decreased from 24 to 13. d pecifie Uns ecified p Uns ecified p Un s

Californ ia New J ers Ontario ey

Radishes Radishes

d pecifie Uns ecified p Uns ecified p Uns Honey ed pecifi Uns

pecified Uns olden G d pecifie Uns ecified p Uns ecified p Uns Golden

China Argentin a Brazil

Florida

Tangerines

New Ze alan d Chile

Italy Californ ia

Kiwi

Tangerines

Kiwi Fruits

ins Planta ins Planta pecified Uns tains Plan -Dole quita Chi Banacol -Dole quita Chi Banacol -Dole quita Chi Banacol

Californ ia Ontario

White White

Cauli owers

Avocados

South Af ri Suadi Ar ca ab Ecuador ia

Colomb ia

C osta R ica

Bananas Bananas

Costa

ed pe c i f i Un s

Rica

Chayotes Chayotes

Field

ed pecifi Uns ooking C

Brazil Belize

Papaya Papaya

Un s

ed pecifi

Californ

Un s

ed pecifi

Domin ic

an R epu b

Fie

e i

lic

Rapini

ed pecifi Un s

Chile

Cherries

Rapini

Cherries

Foodshed

313

Top of the Food Chain

The 50-year old perpetual leaseholders on the southern wing of the Terminal, most of which have been operating at the Terminal for three generations. Photo: Ontario Food Terminal Board/Pierre BĂŠlanger

314

Foodshed

315

The OFT has indirectly contributed to the growth of greenhouse operations throughout Ontario, which has the fastest-growing concentration of greenhouses in North America. Greenhouse operations in Leamington, Ontario are doubling their production every 5 years. The terminal also functions as a generator. Spin-off effects include more than 600 companies, ranging from food processors and packagers to customs brokers and freight forwarders that employ over 40,000 people. Fueled by diverse demand from Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 347 documented ethnicities, the OFT serves the largest, most important manufacturing sector in the city and has established a unique and irreversible connection with all levels of the food system: metropolitan, continental, and global. 31 316 3 16

Hydroponic Effect

According to Agriculture Canada, there are more than 600 hectares of commercial greenhouses in Ontario protected under glass or plastic, employing about 3,000 people and generating approximately $375 million in annual sales. The pattern of farms and greenhouses in the Southwestern Ontario endowed with more than 18 million acres of Class I arable land, the most fertile and productive region in the Great Lakes Region, explaining its supremacy in the agricultural food sector in Canada. Photo: Nature Fresh Farms (Leamington, Ontario)

Fo Fo Foo oo od dssh dsh shed he ed d

31 317 3 17 17

There is virtually no end to the operations and to the reach of the terminal. Highway geography, enabling the terminal to reach deep into the Southern United States and Mexico, making inversion, the map of global temperatures speaks more to the cyclical variation of goods than to the bio-climatic boundaries of natural systems.

Lake Huron

Lake Erie 318

OFT

Lake Ontario

Geo-Economics

The distribution of official growers and wholesale buyers in the Southwestern Ontario Region, according to soil types and regional climates. Diagram: OPSYS/ Angela Iarocci Foodshed

319

Urbanization of the Food Chain

Extents of the Terminalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s outsourcing network based on the North American highway network, reaching deep into the farms of Florida, California, Mexico, as well as Western Canada, and the foreign trade zones of Washington, New York, and New Jersey. Diagram: OPSYS/Angela Iarocci 320

OFT

As the critical infrastructure between buyers and sellers, the OFT supports more than 3,100 in-dependent grocery stores, 1,172 franchise stores, and over 600 growers and farmers in the Southwestern Ontario region. The OFT is at the nexus of a region with and productive region around the Great Lakes, supreme in the agricultural food sector in Canada, along the longest, most undisputed border in the world. So competitive and so robust is the structure of the terminal that even the retail food chains, which largely dominate other North American cities, supplement their distribution chains with produce from the OFT. Foodshed

321

Global Produce & Provenance

Map showing locations of origin for produce distributed by the Ontario Food Terminal (OFT) using the respective product lookup codes (PLU) of each commodity. Diagram: OPSYS/Angela Iarocci

322

Price Look-Up (PLU) PLUs are codes used to identify bulk and random/variable weight produce. PLU numbers are typically printed on a small label attached directly to individual produce items and consists of a four or five digit number. Conventionally grown Price Look-Up (PLU) produce stickers are four digits long and begin with the numbers 3 or 4, PLU stickPLUs are codes used to identify bulk and random/variable weight produce. ers on organically grown produce are five digits long and begin with the number 9. PLU numbers are typically printed on a small label attached directly to individual PLU codes for genetically modified produce are also five digits but begin with 8. produce items and consists of a four or five digit number. Conventionally grown http://www.cpma.ca/en_ind_plu.asp http://www.cpma.ca/en_ind_plu.asp

produce stickers are four digits long and begin with the numbers 3 or 4, PLU stickType are five digits long and begin with the number 9. ersFruit/Vegetable on organically grown produce PLU codes for genetically modified produce are also five digits but begin with 8. Grower/Association

Geographic Origin

http://www.cpma.ca/en_ind_plu.asp

Foodshed

323

Originally published as “Foodshed: the Global Infrastructure of the Ontario Food Terminal,” in Food ed. John Knechtel (MIT Press, 2008).

Iceland

Alberta

British Columbia

Manitoba Québec

Ontario Washington Oregon California

Minnesota Michigan Wisconsin

New Jersey

Colorado Arkansas

Arizona

North Carolina

Tennessee

Alabama

Texas

Louisiana

Portugal Spain

Delaware Maryland Virginia

Illinois

South Carolina

Georgia

Morocco

Florida Bahamas

Mexico

Cuba Jamaica Belize Guatemala Honduras El Salvador Nicaragua Costa Rica

Dominican Republic Puerto Rico

Antigua & Barbuda

Aruba

Columbia Ecuador

Peru

Brazil

Chile Uruguay Argentina

Fully extended, crossing over into any country at any time, the OFT’s elastic infrastructure upsets the classical Malthusian principle that food scarcity must result when population increases. The terminal’s most essential characteristic is its ability to expand and contract according to global seasons and market prices. Three cycles of distribution are made apparent by the map of global temperatures: during the summer, goods come from local sources in the southwestern Ontario region, during late fall and early spring from

324 4

Fra

Nova Scotia Massachusetts

OFT

Idaho

Newfoundland New Brunswick Prince Edward Island

Global Foodshed

Food sources and proportional flows of distribution according to global temperature variations. Diagram: OPSYS/Angela Iarocci

Netherlands Belgium

Switzerland ance Italy Greece Turkey

Korea

China Israel

Taiwan

Saudi Arabia

Thailand

Malaysia Kenya

Zimbabwe

Australia South Africa

continental sources in the southern United States and Mexico, and during the winter fromNew Zealand international sources as far away as Argentina, Australia and South Africa. Creating a global foodshed that is codependent on temperate and tropical produce, the Ontario Food Terminal is evidence of a robust, cosmopolitan trading system, strategically designed as one of the most sustainable networks of food distribution in the history of the New World.

Foodshed

325

5000 000 0B BC C

326

700 AD

476 6 AD D

27 BC

Agronomic Landscape

A brief 3,000-year history of soils & plants, techniques & technologies, crops & cultures, industries & ecologies, empires & urbanization. Diagram: OPSYS/Curtis Roth

327

172 17 1720 1 720 7 72 20 A 20 AD D

1710 AD

1700 AD

1100 AD D

700 AD

328

1790 79 AD D

17 78 AD 780 78

1770 0 AD AD

1760 760 0 AD AD

175 1750 75 AD 75 A

1740 740 4 A AD

1730 1730 173 17 73 7 3 AD A

329

1810 AD

1800 800 AD A

179 AD 1790

17 760 AD

1770 70 0A AD D

1760 60 0A AD D

1 17 1750 AD D

330

188 1880 880 88 80 AD AD

1870 87 A 870 87 AD D

1860 860 0 AD AD

1850 850 850 85 50 A AD D

1820 AD

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“The metabolic requirements of a city can be defined as all the materials and commodities needed to sustain the city’s inhabitants at home, at work and at play. Over a period of time these requirements include even the construction materials needed to build and rebuild the city itself. The metabolic cycle is not completed until the wastes and residues of daily life have been removed and disposed with a minimum of nuisance and hazards.” Abel Wolman, “The Metabolism of Cities,” 19651

“Circulation is as new and as fundamen-

tal an idea as gravitation, preservation of energy, evolution, or sexuality. But neither the radical newness of the idea of circulating “stuff” nor its impact on the constitution of modern space has been studied with the same attention that was given to Kepler’s laws or to the ideas of Newton, Helmholz, Darwin, or Freud.” Ivan Illich, H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness, 19862

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GLOBAL ATLAS OF EXCRETA, WASTEWATER SLUDGE, AND BIOSOLIDS MANAGEMENT: MOVING FORWARD THE SUSTAINABLE AND WELCOME USES OF A GLOBAL RESOURCE

Imagine the planet as a big brownfield. Consider it less as a virgin resource (to protect) or a sensitive system (to shield), but rather as a big ball of oscillating waste (that keeps moving and circulating), where everything—from the air of the atmosphere to the water of the oceans—has been used, abused, and reused; materials and fluids in different concentrations, whose varying distributions are in constant motion, powered by existing earth processes that are arrested, attenuated, and accelerated by methods of extraction and evolving technologies, adjusted, layered, and thickened by urban change. On this planetary surface, waste is the impetus for improved production, enhanced consumption, and intelligent exchange. Brown is the new green. If “the shift from one mode [of production] to another,” according to spatial theorist Henri Lefebvre, “must entail the production of a new space,”3 then the transition of industrial systems (closed, isolated, linear systems that produce commodities and wastes) toward urban economies (open, integrated, circular systems that cultivate commodities from wastes) should also produce new spaces, and generate new geographies. If waste is natural and necessary, how then do we design our future? Looking beyond the residual reclamation of industrial wastes as a catalyst for development, the profiling of emerging waste ecologies and processes of decarbonization trace the contours of contemporary urban geographies beyond cities, outlining a landscape of flows and fluids—from liquids to gases—that they engender and the bodies they shape. Through the characterization of urbanization as a field of flows where materials are like fluids with different concentrations and chemistries, volumes and viscosities, urbanization entails the design of the speeds, cycles, synergies, and synchronicities of these interconnections. As a revisited strategy, the metabolic representation of urbanization may advance the contemporary ecologic subject, whose premise lays in the perpetual circulation of materials, providing a path toward an endless loop of material resources through interactive spaces of exchange, responsive processes of production, regulatory flexibilities, and fluid geographies of cultivation. Metabolic Landscape

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The Metabolic Landscape Or, how a small Nordic nation is conquering the waste-water-energy conundrum

In an 1989 article of Scientific American, Robert Frosch and Nicholas Gallopoulos popularized the term “industrial ecology” from a groundbreaking network of recycling discovered in a small Danish town around the fjord of Kalundborg.4 Turning waste into energy, feeding on groundwater, the ecology of industries that emerged over three decades became an icon of post-modern industrialism recognized universally. Largely overlooked, however, decentralization underlies Danish policies of waste, water, and energy, and how urbanism has transformed its economy5 and ecology.

Decentralizing Denmark Maersk, LEGO, Novo Nordisk, and Arne Jacobsen are national emblems of Denmark’s economic fame in 1970, when it had the third largest GDP per capita in the world, second only to Sweden and the United States.6 From decades of relentless industrial expansion since World War II, Denmark’s economy overheated in the mid-1970s. With skyrocketing energy prices, depleting landfill space, and contaminated groundwater, a plethora of problems plagued the entire country. From the oil crisis, Denmark developed a national energy policy to decentralize its economy that was largely dependent on oil for electrical power, heat, and mobility.7 In tandem with the creation of the world’s first Ministry of the Environment, the country’s urban–industrial landscape was irreversibly transformed through a litany of legislation and a battery of tax strategies.8 Co-generation plants were set up across the country to turn waste into energy and by the early 1990s, the four largest cities (Copenhagen, Århus, Aalborg, and 338

Odense) were producing power and dollars annually sponsoring renewed heat from burning garbage.9 urban investment and infrastructural upgrades. Compounded, 600,000 Regional Kommune Structures cubic meters of water are saved anSince most Danes live on top of nually through the cascading and rethe water they drink, the problem use of wastewater effluents.11 of groundwater depletion and contamination was pressing. With lower Urbanizing Infrastructure underground reserves, the price of Home to a relatively small homogewater—for urban and industrial con- neous population of 5.5 million peosumption—was re-evaluated based ple spread across an area the size on the cost of full recovery instead of Maine, change in Denmark can of market prices. In contrast to cen- happen swiftly. Using energy indetralized systems worldwide, fourteen pendence as a national objective, the Danish counties, called Kommunes, double bind of economy and ecolgovern groundwater according to ogy is being solved through a diverse specific underground aquifer re- portfolio which includes garbage, gions. Contamination was addressed straw, wood, coal, gas, and wind. Not with a nationwide groundwater sur- surprisingly, Danish manufacturers vey. Since 1987, all 400,000 wells hold half of the world market in windhave been mapped and are moni- turbine manufacturing while the tored electronically around the clock. country has become a net exporter Although the average cost of house- of wind energy.12 Tight controls, prehold water supply in Denmark is ten cise metering, gradient taxation, and times more expensive than in the accurate pricing are starting to pay US, Danes consume five times less off. Recycling of wastewater and casbottled water than Americans, largely cading of energy flows is reaching because their tap water is safe and 100 percent for industries and 85 tastes great.10 percent for households. More than an isolated case of waste recycling, the Kalundborg prototype proves durable as a test bed for the limitless capacity of waste and energy synergies when factoring the primacy and longevity of groundwater resources. Referencing a historic discourse initiated by Abel Wolman’s 1965 “The Metabolism of Cities,” this text serves as a rethinking of urban sustainability that integrates urban flows and urban patterns across a broad The Kalundborg Prototype From the energy-waste-water co- range of different political dynamnundrum emerged a network of ics and material geographies. From waste recycling in Kalundborg, west self-heated cities to cycling indusof Copenhagen. In 1976, Novo Nordisk, the world’s largest insulin producer, began diverting 10,000 tons of sludge and surplus yeast from the municipality’s sewage plant to local farms as organic fertilizer. A decade later, the Asnæs Power Station began converting hot wastewater into high-pressure steam for residential heating, as well as fly ash for cement production and waste-gypsum for plasterboard manufacturing. Combined, the two plants produced massive gains from energy cascading, recovering almost 70 percent of the typical loss experienced by large power generators while reducing dependency on foreign fuel imports. The small, sleepy town of 15,000 people also saves about 15 million

tries, the regional decentralization of Denmark’s economic system makes the case for renewing the discourse on the landscape of Western industrial infrastructure and the roles that waste, water, and energy play in patterns of urbanization.

this brief article revisits the build-up of Denmark’s regional infrastructure and how the persistent decentralization of its landscape underpins this change.

As Denmark adopted the Nordic Model Welfare State in 1970, the World Bank announced that its smallest European country reached WATER, WASTE, AND WARS the third largest GDP per capita in the world, second to Sweden and the On January 21, 1968, at the height United States. of the Cold War, a B-52 bomber carrying four thermonuclear warheads crashed seven miles off the coast of Greenland in territorial waters of the Baffin Sea belonging to the Kingdom of Denmark. Triggering an era largely opposed to nuclear

Denmark’s prominent wealth was made visible internationally by Danish giants such as global shipping broker Maersk, universal toy producer LEGO, and modern architectural genius Arne Jacobsen.14 As the island of Vikings enjoyed the returns of postwar industrialization, its prosperity was overheating, and soon after challenged when petrol shortages hit the country in 1973 as a result of the Arab oil embargo.15 power, several nuclear accidents— including Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and Barsebäck in 1992—foreshadowed imminent dangers of radiation fallout at a time of heightened environmental awareness across the globe. An Emergency Preparedness Plan in the Event of Radioactive Fallout was the first national program rolled out across Denmark in 1970 by what is recognized today as the first-ever Ministry of the Environment in the world.13 Reactorfree as a result of the 1981 Nuclear Referendum, Denmark has since experienced ground-breaking transformation of its infrastructure, both economically and ecologically. Underlying this change is the synchronized management of energy, waste, and water systems that is largely preconditioned by its size, its resources, and its urbanization. Chronicling a series of largely overlooked events and conditions during the past years,

Fuels and Materials Scarcity bred ingenuity. By the late 1970s, Danes were seasoned to energy shortages for more than a century. Decades of scarcity—from fuel to space to water—were marking decisive shifts in the country’s ability for wholesale change. During World War II for example, Nazi occupation of Denmark cut off international supplies. The short 68-kilometer border entirely controlled by the German troops turned peninsular Denmark into an island. For almost five years, the entire population encountered a shortage of almost all imported goods.16 Fuel and rubber were the hardest hit. Short on any major reserves of fossil fuels, Denmark reenlisted two materials—lignite and peat—as substitutes for factory and household heating, while coal-fired gasworks provided, albeit intermittent, electric power. Despite their lower burning temperatures and faster combustion rates, both materials were available regionally and more importantly they were replenishable. Short on fuel, blocks of beechwood were burned to power ad-hoc generators mounted on specially modified transport trucks.

For several years, fuel supplies were rationed and food prices spiked. From November 25, 1973, to February 10, 1974, Sunday driving was banned altogether. The crisis re-ignited in 1979 with skyrocketing oil prices after the declaration of Iran as an independent Islamic republic. Almost entirely reliant on oil in the 1970s as the single source for its power for both heating and transportation, the Arab oil embargo affected every sector of Denmark’s post-war industrial economy. The few private vehicles that could afford to travel were busy negotiating congested streets of bicycles, the only affordable system of personal mobility available during the war. Everything had value; everything was self-powered. It was even outlawed to dump feces and excrement of any kind in the sea, since precious fertilizer for countryside farms was Metabolic Landscape

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Source: Billed-Bladet No.36 D.9, September 1941-45

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Scarcity Breeds Ingenuity Public propaganda pamphlet distributed by the Department of Labor explaining substitutes and techniques for countering the widespread shortage of materials, fuels, and jobs with scrap recycling, regional fuels, water conservation, food rationing, and bicycle transportation during wartime. A “Waste is Not Waste” campaign is developed by the Danish National Association for Combating Unemployment (LAB, Landsforeningen til Arbejdsløshedens Bekæmpelse) during World War II to create an industry and economy of trash materials.

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desperately needed for constant food production. The lack of diesel oil equally made it difficult to maintain heat supply during five cold Nordic winters from 1940 to 1945, forcing plant owners to establish back-up heating systems. Instead of individual heating units, resources were pooled and solid fuel boilers were established for district heating systems across the country.17 To extend existing fuel supplies, the first standardized bottle-return systems in the world were put into place between 1904 and 1920 by Carlsberg breweries, saving considerable energy and raw materials.18 With oil reserves eventually running dry, the use of refuse as a fuel became the natural panacea. By the turn of the century, this was nothing new. By 1903, the waste-to-heat conversion process was in fact, already in place. Just outside of Copenhagen, the first combined heat-and-power plant— early precursor to contemporary cogeneration systems—began receiving its first garbage loads as solid fuel at the Frederiksberg incinerator, the first of its kind in the country.19

buried waste repositories were scru- ing from centralized landfills, excess tinized by the Danish EPA. Coupled extraction, and chemical effluents with pesticides from large agricultural across the entire country.21 operations, plumes of leachate were dangerously spreading underground from unlined landfills. At the Grindsted and Vejen Landfills—the Love Canals of Denmark—drinking water was in considerable risk of contamination from heavy metals and hydrocarbons in leachate. The millenniumold practice of landfilling and open pit burning in Denmark reached an impasse.20

Brundtland’s Problématique

Surface and Subsurface Waters

Dumps and Fires While oil prices were skyrocketing in the mid-1970s, Denmark was also running out of landfilling space. Greatly reducing overall volumes, burning garbage was as widespread as it was imperative. The increasing shortage of landfill space was further exacerbated from the restructuring of the national waste administration. Compounding a critical situation, alarming concerns were raised over regional groundwater quality and looming threats of environmental hazard from unchecked waste management and agricultural runoff. In a nationwide hydrogeological study in 1987, more than 1,500 landfills and

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Groundwater depletion exacerbated the landfill imbalance. Used for industrial cooling, cleaning, and irrigation, groundwater was rapidly dropping. From the post-war boom in the 1950s to the 1970s, water extraction from mass-industrialization and mass-agriculture was occurring at an unchecked pace. Excess abstraction also stemmed from mass-urbanization. In the early 1980s, the Danish EPA found that the three largest cities (Copenhagen, Århus and Odense) were all withdrawing three times more groundwater than could be replenished. By the end of the 1980s, groundwater was under visible threat of leachate contamination originat-

From an economic perspective, Denmark’s sluggish economy simply compounded the country’s infrastructural challenges. Rising unemployment, plummeting exports, and rising inflation plagued a country that was facing an emerging trade bloc from the European Commission. By the early 1980s, Denmark was in deep trouble. Europe’s smallest nation was in a double bind: how to ensure the longevity of its groundwater resources and solve its growing waste problem, while expanding its industrial output to increase global competitiveness—all this, while becoming energy independent.

STRATEGIES, SYNERGIES, AND SYNCHRONICITIES During the 1970s and 1980s, a litany of legislation was tabled, irreversibly changing the course of the country’s urban–industrial landscape: the creation of the world’s first Ministry of Environment in 1971 (ironically at the precise moment that Copenhagen’s Christiania district declared itself a free state within Denmark), a National Energy Policy in 1976, the Chemical Waste Deposit Act in 1983, the Brundtland Report in 1987 dubbed “Our Common Future,” and the Environmental Protection Act in 1992.22 Regional decentralization—not liberalization—of its national infrastructure became de rigueur. Unlike bu-

reaucratic policies, these measures were designed as preemptive strategies and based on three simple, longterm principles: the replenishment of groundwater resources, the reduction of waste generation, and the development of energy independence. With a small, relatively homogeneous population that was rapidly urbanizing, Denmark’s culture of compliance was an asset, allowing change to roll out quickly. So, reformulating the energy-waste-water conundrum relied on three basic imperatives: quantifying water reserves, reordering waste streams, and rechanneling energy sources.23

that to this day is publicly accessible The late 1980s and 1990s became online, any time.24 an unprecedented era for environmental taxation and ecological tax Dating back to the world’s first Water reform in Denmark. Pricing and Supply Act in 1926, this decentralized taxation became a major strategic structure presents several advantag- instrument. Stemming from the cones: it contributes to good groundwa- tentious albeit successful introducter and drinking water quality across tion of the 180 percent car tax in the the country, and it allows consumers 1970s, new, graduated tax systems to keep an eye on the quality and to on CFC, waste, and packaging were identify possible solutions to pollu- introduced a decade later. Recycling tion threats. As a result of the tight suddenly became more profitable controls and precise metering of than landfillling, ranking higher in groundwater supplies, the price of the waste echelon (landfilling costs water in Denmark is based on the 5 to 10 times per ton more than in principle of full cost recovery as op- the US).26 According to Dansk Reposed to arbitrary market pricing, an tursystem, bottle recyclers in central unquestioned standard throughout Copenhagen today, can earn a higher the world. Notoriously high prices living wage than welfare recipients in and high taxes eventually pay off. Al- North America. though the average cost of household water supply in Denmark is consider- Pooling and Backfilling ably more than in the US ($3.50 vs. Hazardous materials operate on the $0.35 per cubic meter) according to same principle. Accounting for less the World Water Federation, Danes than 1 percent of the total waste consume five times less bottled wa- generated, hazmats are transported ter than the global average (22 liters to a central waste facility, the Komvs. an average of 65 liters in the US) munekemi in Nyborg. It is the first largely from the pure, great tasting, and only treatment plant of its kind tap water.25 built in 1971 by order of the Dan-

Metrics and Minimization Surveying the entire country’s groundwater resources was the first measure. Since Danes live on top of the water they drink, solving the ecology–economy juggernaut was critical and complex. Unlike most countries in the developed world, the 5.5 million people who inhabit a country the size of Maine or South Carolina, draw 99.7 percent of their drinking water directly from the ground. The Danish water system is entirely decentralized, with more than 3,000 waterworks and 400,000 wells (70,000 of which supply less than 10 households) that draw groundwater aquifers 20–200 meters below the surface. When the Danish EPA—prodigy of the Ministry of the Environment—undertook its nationwide groundwater survey in 1987, it provided real-time electronic information for all 325,000 groundwater wells throughout the country

Cycling and Banking To solve the landfill airspace snag, the second measure involved the reduction of waste through source separation and the optimization of recycling networks. A new, effective order was established. First, reuse what is recyclable. Second, burn what is combustible. Third and last, landfill the rest, as close as possible to the point of origin. But there is little or no centralized curbside recycling to speak of in comparison to the American model. Instead, individuals drop off used goods to material depots or recycling banks. Reducing the volume by more than 90 percent, landfills could now be reserved for non-toxic nonrecyclable residues which could not be burned. With the Waste Deposit Act in 1983, the waste industry was entirely restructured: national legislation was deregulated and municipalities now had to deal with their own waste streams and ensure their own landfill capacity. To divert waste away from valuable and expensive landfills, taxing of waste became necessary to create a market for waste recycling.

ish EPA. Organic chemicals, solvents, and oils are separated and burned in high-temperature incinerators; waste heat and emissions are recaptured, then reconverted into steam by a district heating plant.27 Generated steam is then re-distributed to 4,500 neighboring homes. Remaining hazardous waste is either exported as neutralizer for highly acidic landfills in western Norway or as backfill material for underground salt mines in northern Germany.28 EE Transportation Flow of Waste for Storage in Germany Rock Salt Mines

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Fjord Urbanism Aerial view of the Kalundborg fjord and the classic spatial distribution of farm fields, industrial areas, and small urban areas. Nestled in this small embayment are some of the country's largest manufacturers, plants, and refineries, including Novozymes (biotech), Asnæs (the country’s largest power plant), and Statoil (the country’s biggest refinery) that set up shop in Kalundborg during the 1960s and 1970s due to the excellent ocean access to the Baltic Sea, short trucking distance to the nation’s capital, cheap commercial-grade land, and abundance of fresh water for manufacturing. Due to stringent air, land, and water emissions restrictions, lands adjacent to heavy industry and power generation can be used for recreational and agricultural uses.

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Supplying one-third of the nation’s electricity, the Asnæs Power Plant was one of the first coal-fired power plants retrofitted and expanded to address the new waste-water-energy Condensing and Cascading agenda. Located eighty kilometers Closing the loop on waste produc- west of Copenhagen, the 1000-MW tion enabled the third measure to facility is also one of the biggest. Putachieve energy independence. En- ting out close to 6 terawatt hours of ergy cycling and diversification was the base. Denmark set the stage in 1992 when it became the first country to adopt explicit CO2 taxes on both household and business energy consumption. Energy suddenly became much more expensive but also more valuable.29 Danes are renowned for exorbitant electricity bills. Coming to the rescue, a loophole provided an alternative: since garbage is exempt from taxation when used as a solid fuel (it becomes almost CO2 neutral), why not burn it to produce steam and electrical power for the population power?30 of Zealand, including inhabitants as far away as Copenhagen, the plant also produces more than 500 megajoules per second of waste heat in REGIONAL ECOLOGIES AND the form of steam, generated by the ECONOMIC EFFECTS water cooling of power generators. In The century-old practice of the 1960s into the 1970s, it relied on turning crud into candlepower was seawater and groundwater in the fjord legitimized on January 1, 1997 of Kalundborg, and more recently on onward when Denmark became surface water from Lake Tissø, some the first country in the world to ban 34 kilometers away, as an industrial the landfilling of incinerable waste. coolant supply. In response to naBreaking new ground on combined tional groundwater concerns in the heat-and-power production, biofuels mid-1980s, the power plant began (straw bale, sludge, wood chips) now using large quantities of waste water took precedence over fossil-fuel fuels from nearby Statoil Refinery in order (coal, oil, natural gas) for combined to cool down its towers. heat-and-power production. Its waste-to-energy policy, adopting EU landfill directives in 1999, was straightforward: it already surpassed European standards by avoiding the problem of landfilling altogether. Coupled with sophisticated emissions recovery systems, the waste incineration option posed a much lesser threat to the groundwater.

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dependent from imported oil and its derivatives, while rolling out known optimization techniques of waste recycling and energy cascading.31

quirements. Capitalizing on an existing pipeline network, excess steam was then piped to nearly 5000 homes in residential neighborhoods spread out across Kalundborg,32 a small town recognized for being Denmark’s deepest harbor. Its intermodal infrastructure (sophisticated bulk cargo shipping, extensive stevedoring, trucking logistics and brokers) provides excellent access to the Baltic Sea for industrial companies and its fast ferry service to Århus and Samsø makes Kalundborg an internationally significant industrial node. Coupled with abundant groundwater and affordable land within the vicinity of Copenhagen, Kalundborg has become a privileged location for the establishment of biotech companies located one hour from Copenhagen.

Solids & Aggregates Once headquartered in Copenhagen, the Novo Group set up shop there in 1968 for the above reasons. Due to the large quantity of waste liquids generated in enzyme production by its child company Novozymes, the broth of microorganisms, potato starch, and sugar is dewatered and reprocessed into 250,000 cubic meters of dry and liquid biomass, redistributed annually to 600 local farmers as organic fertilizer on fields. As a result of the triple bottom line, Novo reduces reliance on commercial pesticides and diverts sludge from waste treatment. With transformative legislation, additional waste products from the Asnæs power plant, such as waste gypsum, is reused for plaster-

board manufacturing at nearby Gyproc, fly ash for concrete production at Unicon, and bottom ash for road construction in the region, due to its naturally low aggregate availability. Even the local BMX track is built with dewatered sludge from the local wastewater treatment plant. Organic sludge from the local waste water treatment plant is now diverted to the nearby RGS90 soil remediation facility (one of the world’s most sophisticated soil remediation facilities) for bio-piling and conversion into sandblasting materials for building restoration. Geo-remediated sludge is also diverted to a local fish farmer as fertilizer, at the base of the Asnæs power plant.

With droves of visiting consultants and academics every year, the small town is ironically better known for the contemporary landscape of emerging industrial synergies than for the twelfth-century architecture of the Vor Frue Kirke cathedral it has maintained for eight hundred years. Today, the industrial systems implemented throughout the country also explain the prominence of Danish manufacturing companies on the world stage today. Denmark’s dynamic duo, Novozymes, the world’s largest producer of industrial enzymes located in Kalundborg, and Vestas, the leading wind-turbine producer in the world whose facilities dot almost every medium-sized town across the entire country from Lem to Ringkøbing. Pioneers in their respective fields of renewable resources, both companies are currently listed on stock exchanges worlwide.

Living on Landfills From a landmark agreement between five city mayors dating back to 1984, waste steam from electricity production that was traditionally released in the harbor is now recaptured and channeled back 1,300 kilometers through pipelines directly into homes across the city and its surrounding suburbs. In one large pool-operated system, a total of four combined heat-and-power plants, four waste incinerators, and more than fifty peakload boiler plants with more than twenty distribution companies, total heat generation capacity from waste hovers around 30,000 terajoules. According to the Danish Energy Authority, the system shaves 1,400 Euros off from annual household bills, roughly translating into a bulk savings for the city of 200,000 tons of oil every year. Today, Copenhagen is the only city in the world to be almost entirely heated from the waste it generates.34

Ecology of Scale

Biologicals and Biofuels During the past thirty years, this network has effectively resulted in measurable effects and spin-offs: more than 50 percent of industrial waste has been diverted from regional landfills and treatment plants; urban energy demands have been reduced by 25 percent; and regional dependency on foreign material imports has substantially decreased; and there has been a net reduction of 3 million liters of freshwater use and replenishment of groundwater supplies. In total, 15 million euros are saved every year, totaling more than 80 million over the past few years. With its tight industrial waste recycling network and new land use synergies, Kalundborg is recognized as the first prototype of industrial networks worldwide.

The prototypical waste-water-energy strategy has proven to be scalable. The largest of the power plants in Denmark is the Avedøre power plant, which runs on a cocktail of different fuels, including coal, natural gas, and oil, but is largely fueled by renewable biomass including straw bale and waste wood. Combined with heat generated from refuse incineration plants, waste steam now supplies 97 percent of the city’s heating supply needs. Waste steam from the plant is combined with waste heat to keep 1.2 million houses in Greater Copenhagen warm during the winter.33

With the projected relocation of the central harbor to the reclaimed lands of Nordhavn, Copenhagen is planning for future growth while synchronizing its development. Two hundred hectares will be reclaimed from the Øresund, with 46 million cubic meters of materials excavated from the construction of the new city metro line and topped off with recycled demolition debris. Heralded as the Paris of Scandinavia, Copenhagen in the future will look more today like a carefully crafted landfill than a pristinely preserved city. Decentralization in the future, both as a strategy of urban decongestion and ecological reclamation, therefore seems necessary and inevitable.35 Metabolic Landscape

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Fluid Urbanism (Field Work) Landscape of pipelines, designated corridors, and distribution rightof- ways around the Kalundborg fjord, where waste steam from the main power plant is redistributed to heat local plants and nearby residential homes. Due to stringent air, land, and water emissions, lands adjacent to heavy industry and power generation can be used for public and agricultural uses. Conservation of resources is less of a matter of preservation or protection as it is about conversion and continuous flow.

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Distributed Design and Regional Engineering The 44-meter, fiberglass blade from a Vestas V90 3-megawatt wind turbine fabricated and stored on the site of a former landfill used for coastal dredge disposal in Nakskov, Denmark. Once the John Deere of Denmark, the small engine manufacturer and agricultural equipment supplier from the small town of Lem in western Denmark is now the leading manufacturer and erecter of wind turbines in the world, thanks to partnerships with energy giant NEG Micons. Once named Vestjysk StĂĽlteknik A/S in 1928, the structure of the Vestas company is entirely decentralized: towers are built in Nyborg; blades are made in Nakskov, Lem, and Skjern. Control systems are built in while research and development is funded at the RISĂ&#x2DC; Laboratory in RĂ¸skilde. Diagram: OPSYS

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Recovery and Recirculation Current statistics are promising. Today, Denmark recycles 100 percent of the steel slag, bottom ash, fly ash, asphalt and practically all of its concrete from industrial, construction and demolition processes. Thanks to the non-profit bottle return agency, Dansk Retursystem, it has a 100% return rate on its reusable glass bottles, with an average thirty-three reuses.36 As of 2002, the thirty-one Danish incineration plants treat almost 3 million tons of waste annually, corresponding to around 600 kilograms per capita, third only to Switzerland and Japan for incinerating the most waste per capita. Reciprocally, there has been a sharp drop in the demand for more landfill airspace from the existing 134 landfills across the country.

supplies 21 percent of their energy supplemented by a circle of energy co-dependency with its neighbors, including Norway, Sweden, and Germany.37

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252

Oil Products

Opportunistically, Denmark sells wind power during peaks, and buys hydropower during lulls. From this, it has become a net exporter of wind energy. Spin-offs from the wind industry alone amount to 20,000 jobs for a country with half the population of the State of Maine. And now the government is putting up $1 billion to develop and integrate solar, tidal, and fuel-cell technology.38

406 248

Dis trict Heating

R efineries

Production Platforms in the North S ea

201

0 1

335

Town Gas

319 73

333 16 246

Los s es

R enewables

27 8 0 3

6 0 1

27 15

Gasworks

Autoproducers

S mall-s cale 16 Central Heating Plants

Large Power Stations

115

Coal and Coke

Dis trict Heating Plants

183

Trans formation

26 38

Natural Gas

172

162 96

All figures are in Peta Joule (PJ)

32 121

55 76

318 1

223

43 26 0 22

39 3 10 0 3

7 0 2 2

170

257

404

195

Trans port

18 8

Deliveries

224

Final Cons umption 669

Hous eholds

Commerce and Public S ervices

Indus try and Agriculture 158

S tocks 11

Non-Energy Us e

880

E x s ports Incl. International Marine B unkers

Los s es 195

Decentralizing Denmark With the national Energy Plan in 1976, the country’s energy mix is now the most diverse in the world: it relies on 20 percent coal-fired power plants for electricity, and almost entirely on waste to energy plants through combined power systems for its heat. Renewables, in the form of wind and biomass, are the largest power provider. Thanks to leastcost zoning, the largest percentage comes from the burning of waste. Unlike most of its European Union neighbors, there are no nuclear power plants in Denmark. Wind now

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Not surprisingly, Danish wind-turbine companies hold a solid share in half the world market, generating 3 billion euros out of a world total of 6 billion.39 More than just a series of isolated experiments in urban recycling or industrial ecology, the entire landscape of Denmark—both on land and offshore—is proving durable as a test bed for the limitless capacity of waste synergies and energy synchronicities latent in the recirculation of by-products and rechanneling of heat sources. From the construction of the first military forts using waste materials during the Middle Ages to the conversion of sludge into fertilizers in the twentieth century to the generation of power from garbage in 2008, the ecology of waste—the irreversible by-product of industrial and urban operations—appears to be one of the most sustainable economies in the history of the Old World. In other words, shit, the excreta of urbanization, is the new fuel, food, and feedstock.

Originally presented at the Ecological Urbanism Conference chaired by Mohsen Mostafavi in March 2008 at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

This text is not a history of the concept of metabolism, nor is it a history of the case of Kalundborg. Instead, it is an application of the historical concept of metabolism to Kalundborg, in order to urbanize the concept through the notion of a “metabolic landscape” and propose a discussion that moves us from speaking exclusively about “industrial ecology” toward the more encompassing and integrative notion of “urban ecology.”

the 1970s. In it, he states that “for the first time, industry is going beyond life-cycle analysis methodology and applying the concept of an ecosystem, to the whole of an industrial operation, linking the metabolism of one company with that of others. The prototype of industrial ecology and cooperation is Kalundborg, Denmark.” See Paul Hawken’s chapter “Parking Lots and Potato Heads” in The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993): 73. 1. Abel Wolman, “The Metabolism of Cities,” Scientific American 213, Special 5. Jerzy Regulski, Decentralization and Issue “Cities” (September 1965): 179. Local Government: A Danish-Polish Comparative Study in Political System The contemporary relevance of Wol(Roskilde, DK: Roskilde University man's view on metabolism is outlined in In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Press, 1988). Regulski makes several important distinctions between the Ecology and the Politics of Urban Mesociopolitical dimensions of regulatory tabolism, ed. Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika, decentralization and the territorial dyand Erik Swyngedouw (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005). The edited contents namics of spatial deconcentration. See also “Strategies for Decentralization include important contributions by and Local Government Autonomy—An Matthew Gandy, Neil Smith, Stephen Assessment of a Danish Initiative” by Graham, and Roger Keil, to name a David Etherington, Public Money & few. Management 16 No.1 (1996): 45–50. 2. Ivan Illich, H2O and the Waters of 6. Caspar Jørgensen and Morten PedForgetfulness (London: Marion Boyars, ersen, eds., Modernism And Rationaliza1986): 40. tion (Aalborg, DK: Museum of Northern 3. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Jutland and The Heritage Agency of Space, trans. by Donald NicholsonDenmark, 2006). Smith, 1991 (Paris, FR: Éditions 7. Ingrid Henriksen, “An Economic Anthropos, 1974/1984): 46. 4. In their 1989 article, Frosch and Gal- History of Denmark,” Economic History lopoulos proposed that “the traditional Association Encyclopedia, ed. Robert Whaples (October 6, 2006), http:// model of industrial activity in which eh.net/encyclopedia/article/henriksen. individual manufacturing processes denmark. take in raw materials and generate 8. Ellen Margrethe Basse and Erik products to be sold plus waste to be Werlauff, Environmental Law in Denmark disposed of, should be transformed (New York, NY: Kluwer Law Internainto a more integrated model: an industrial ecosystem. In such a system tional, 2000). the consumption of energy and materi- 9. Babcock Heron Kleis, Wilcox Vølund, als is optimized, waste generation is and Rambøll Søren Dalager, 100 Years minimized and the effluents of one of Waste Incineration in Denmark: From process whether they are spent cataRefuse Destruction Plants to Highlysts from petroleum refining, fly and technology Energy Works (Esbjerg, DK: bottom ash from electric-power genBabcock & Wilcox Vølund ApS, 2004). eration or discarded plastic containers 10. Berit Hasler et al., “Economic from consumer products, serve as the Assessment of the Value of Drinking raw material for another process.” See Water Management in Denmark by Robert A. Frosch and Nicholas E. Gallo- Groundwater Protection and Puripoulos, “Strategies for Manufacturing,” fication of Polluted Groundwater” Scientific American 261 No.3 (Septem- (Discussion paper for the Seminar on ber 1989): 94. Although the original Environmental Services and Financing title of the article—“Manufacturing: for the Protection and Sustainable Use The Industrial Ecosystem View”—did of Ecosystems, Geneva, October 10not feature their notion of industrial 11, 2005); GEUS - Geological Survey ecology as they intended, Paul Hawken of Denmark and Greenland, Annual was one of the first authors to make a Report, 2001. As the major contributor direct connection in the early 1990s to groundwater pollution, the flow of between the emerging notion of indus- nitrogen and nitrates from agriculture trial ecology and industrial ecosystem runoff is under severe restriction and that they presented in their 1989 policy; see “Implementation of the article, with the Kalundborg network of Nitrates Directive in Denmark” by the waste recycling and material symbiosis Danish Ministry of The Environment that was well under development in - Environmental Protection Agency

(2011), www.mst.dk/English/Agriculture/nitrates_directive/implementation_in_denmark/. 11. For a comprehensive outline of the origins of the Kalundborg network, see the complete chapter by Hennig Grann on the “Industrial Symbiosis at Kalundborg,” in The Industrial Green Game: Implications for Environmental Design and Management (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1997): 117–123. 12. Jens Vestergaard, Lotte Brandstrup, and Robert D. Goddard III, “A Brief History of the Wind Turbine Industries in Denmark and the United States” (Academy of International Business/ Southeast USA Chapter Conference Proceedings, November 2004): 322–327. See also Per Dannemand Andersen, “Review of Historical and Modern Utilization of Wind Power” (Roskilde, DK: Risø Laboratory Publication, Denmark Technical University, 1999). 13. Henry Nielsen, Keld Nielsen, Flemming Petersen, and Hans Siggaard Jensen, Forty Years of Research in a Changing Society (Roskilde, DK: Risø National Laboratory, 1998). The popular reaction of Danish and Swedish society to nuclear energy in the early 1980s cannot be understated. For example, the Swedish anti-nuclear movement (Folkkampanjen mot Kärnkraft och Kärnvapen) formed in 1979 to organize opposition for the March 23, 1980 Nuclear Referendum in Sweden (folkkampanjen.se), a year before the Danish Referendum. See also Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin & William Barr, “Where They Were (United States Secretly Deployed Nuclear Bombs In 27 Countries and Territories During Cold War),” companion page to The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (November/December 1999): 26; Henry Nielsen and Henrik Knudsen, “The Troublesome Life of Peaceful Atoms in Denmark,” History and Technology 26 No.2 (June 2010): 91–118. 14. Justin Fox, “Why Denmark Loves Globalization,” TIME Magazine (November 15, 2007), www.time.com/time/ magazine/article/0,9171,1684528,00. html. 15. Surprisingly, for a country so well respected for its investment in renewable technologies, namely wind-power generation, there is very little critical scholarship on the subject of the history or theory of energy from within Danish academic discourse. Most literature on energy in Denmark is somewhat positivistic, originating from mainly two sources: public information pamphlets or technical references from government sources, or labora-

Metabolic Landscape

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tory organizations (e.g. the Danish Energy Policy, 1970-2010, published by the Danish Energy Agency, www.ens. dk/en-US/Info/news/Factsheet/Documents/DKEpol.pdf%20engelsk%20 til%20web.pdf) or techno-promotional reports from energy corporations (e.g., Waste-to-energy in Denmark published in 2010 by Rambøll for industry representative RenoSam, www.ramboll. com/news/themes/waste-to-energy) promoting the added value of incinerators through new, novel architecture. Nevertheless, a larger spectrum of perspectives are available internationally: Thomas L. Friedman, “Flush With Energy,” The New York Times Op-Ed (August 9, 2008): wk11, and Bryan Walsh, “Denmark’s Wind of Change,” TIME Magazine (March 16, 2009). Finally, for greater detail on the effect of the 1973 oil embargo on energy, see Foreign & Commonwealth Office, The Year of Europe: America, Europe and the Energy Crisis, 1972-1974 (London, UK: Documents on British Policy Overseas Series III, 2001). 16. See the National Ration & Employment Program Pamphlet, 1940-45 (Billed-Bladet No.36 D.9, September 1941): Udenrigsministeriet - Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark Digital Archive: www.befrielsen1945.dk/. In contrast to contemporary resource conservation which hinges on virtual behavioral change, wartime material rationing should be critically differentiated and understood as collective, patriotic, government-induced behaviors within the political, social, and material contexts of real, live material scarcities and existential threats during periods of conflict or occupation, such as during World War I and II. 17. Danish Board of District Heating, “The Development in Denmark and Introduction of Heat Planning,” www. dbdh.dk/artikel.asp?id=463&mid=24; Danish Energy Agency, “Heat Supply in Denmark,” http://193.88.185.141/ Graphics/Publikationer/Forsyning_ UK/Heat_supply_in_Denmark/index. htm. 18. For a discussion on the Danish bottle return system, see “Trade and Environment: Some Lessons from Castlemaine Tooheys (Australia) and Danish Bottles (European Community)” by Damien Geradin and Raoul Stewardson, The International and Comparative Law Quarterly Vol. 44 No.1 (January 1995): 41–71; Nina Joshi, “Danish Beer Bottles,” American University TED Case Studies Vol.1 No.1 (September 1992); and Matthew Bettelheim, “Americans could learn a lot about recycling from the descendants of the Vikings,” http://earthisland.

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org/journal/index.php/eij/article/ the_great_danes/. 19. See Heron Kleis and Søren Dalager, 100 Years of Waste Incineration in Denmark (Esbjerg, DK: Babcock & Wilcox Vølund and Rambøll, 2004): 4-15. 20. Colin C. Ferguson, “Land Contamination and Reclamation: Assessing Risks from Contaminated Sites: Policy and Practice in 16 European Countries,” Land Contamination & Reclamation 7 No.2 (1999): 36. 21. Berit Hasler et al., “Valuation of groundwater protection versus water treatment in Denmark by Choice: Experiments and Contingent Valuation,” NERI Technical Report No.543 (2005): 16-17. 22. The Environmental Protection Act was first drafted in 1971, then ratified in the 1980s, and consolidated in 1998. See Ellen Margrethe Basse & Erik Werlauff, Environmental law in Denmark (New York, NY: Kluwer Law International, 2000). Directly referencing the characterization of “urbanization” as the “global problématique,” an expression popularized by the Club of Rome after 1972, in “Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Predicament of Humankind,” UN Secretary General and club member Gro Brundtland distinctively uses the same appellation “global problématique” in the introductory addendum to the UN Assembly presented in 1987 in the form of the final report “Our Common Future,” Report of the World Commission on Environment & Development 18467 - Addendum to the General Report (Geneva: United Nations, 1987). The report makes very little contribution to the issue of urban conditions, dedicating only fifteen pages of the total 374 pages to the urban question, further conflating the notions of the “urban” and “crisis,” especially in reference to Third World cities, and their perceived poverty, amidst so-called uncontrollable growth and illegal slum development. 23. For an official discussion of these shifts, see the governmental report by Danish Environmental Protection Agency (DEPA), “Economic Instruments in Environmental Protection in Denmark” (Copenhagen: Ministry of Environment and Energy, 1999): 55–57, 93–96, 150. 24. See The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), Groundwater Monitoring, www.geus.dk/ publications/grundvandsovervaagning/ grundvandsovervaagning-uk.htm. For the online system of groundwater monitoring wells, including water quality and levels per Kommune, see the DATA-GEUS-Jupiter system: http://data.

geus.dk/JupiterWWW/waterlist.jsp?virk somhedstype=VV&navn=&vandvaerksi d=0&adresse=&maengdemin=0&mae ngdemax=2147483647&kommune20 07vandindvind=326&submit=Vis+liste +med+vandforsyningsanl%E6g. 25. See Anker/Andersen, "Deposit System Law—Denmark," http://ankerandersen.dk/deposit-laws/denmark. aspx. 26. The Ecological Council, Environmental Taxation in Denmark Changes since 2009, http://www.ecocouncil.dk/ documents/artikler/1321-130720-environmental-taxation-in-denmark. 27. Kleis, 100 Years of Waste Incineration in Denmark, 30-31. 28. See “Reverse Mining—The Development of Deep Geologic Isolation of Hazardous (Chemotoxic) Waste in Germany and its International Prospects” by Hartmut W.J. Schade, Reviews in Engineering Geology 19 (2008): 23–30. 29. Kleis, 100 Years of Waste Incineration, 38–39. 30. See Mikael S. Andersen, “Denmark’s Waste Tax,” Environment 40 No.4 (1998): 11–15, 38–41. 31. Kleis, 100 Years of Waste Incineration, 30-31. 32. The historic and factual account of the Kalundborg case presented here is based on three successive trips to the region in 2000, 2003, and 2008. Interviews and personal conversations were conducted with company managers, business owners, local mayors, farmers, and local inhabitants, enabled by the guidance of the director of the Kalundborg Symbiosis Institute, Noel Brings Jacobsen. Additional factual information is drawn from company documents, brochures, and unpublished reports, updating information from the initial 1997 account of Henning in The Industrial Green Game. In the understanding of the Kalundborg model as a prototype in industrial cooperation, there is an important and deep-seeded history of cooperative enterprises across Denmark dating back centuries. As a model of effective decentralization, the cooperative history of the Danish dairy industry, for which the country is known for internationally, is especially well-documented in the self-published 1939 pamphlet titled The Cooperative Primer (Viroqua, WI) by Richard Anderson Power. 33. DBDH, “District Heating in Copenhagen” (Copenhagen Energy, 2009), and Jan Elleriis, “Metropolitan Copenhagen Heating Transmission Company” (Copenhagen: CDK, 2010). 34. Ibid. 35. See the complete project history and profile of Nordhavn on the devel-

opment website: www.nordhavnen.dk/ OplevNordhavnen/Historie.aspx. 36. See Danish Deposit and Recycling System, http://www.dansk-retursystem. dk/om-dansk-retursystem/reguleretaf-loven/. 37. Kleis, 100 Years of Waste Incineration, 42; The Future Energy System– Distributed Production and Use (Risø Energy Report 4), ed. Hans Larsen and Leif Sønderberg Petersen (Roskilde, DK: Risø National Laboratory, October 2005). 38. See European Commission on Energy Policy, “Denmark – Energy Mix Fact Sheet” (January 2007), http:// ec.europa.eu/energy/energy_policy/ doc/factsheets/mix/mix_dk_en.pdf. The ongoing development of these intelligent energy systems and processes of decarbonization rely on material flows and landscape infrastructure management produce that are regionally planned and designed. See Smart Grid in Denmark, by the Danish Energy Association and Energinet, http://kom. aau.dk/project/edge/repository/02_literature/PowerSystem/Smart_Grid_ Denmark.pdf. 39. ECUP, “Denmark – Energy Mix Fact Sheet,” 2.

FIGURES P. 338–339 Scientific American, ed. William C. Clark (Special Issue), “Managing Planet Earth” (September 1989), cover. Reproduced with permission ©1989 Scientific American, Inc. all rights reserved Dr. Robert Frosch (frontal): NASA, 1977–1981 Kalundborg Symbiosis, diagram: National Academy of Engineering, The Industrial Green Game: Implications for Environmental Design and Management (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1997): 119. Reprinted with permission from Deanna J. Richards, Courtesy of the National Academies Press, Washington, DC Abel Wolman, “The Metabolism of Cities,” Scientific American 213 (Special Issue) “Cities” (September 1965): Cover, 179, 180. Reproduced with permission. ©1965 Scientific American, Inc. all rights reserved Abel Wolman (frontal): U.S. National Library of Medecine 101441880 Thule Air Force Base, aerial view, 1989: TSGT Lee E. Schading, www.defenseimagery.mil, VIRIN DF-ST-90-10597 Stratofortress Thule Mission: Bobby D. Brewer, www.thuleforum.com/broken_arrow.htm Post-War new world map, 1941: Maurice Gomberg, Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Washington, DC

German occupation of Denmark, 8 September 1942, National Museum, Denmark, Severin Hansen (photographer), Film–ID:FHM-14555, File 23F0302049 Peat as wartime fuel: Stabling af tørv. 1942, National Museum, Denmark, Ella Haahr (photographer), København V., Film-ID:FHM-14582, File 25M0201003 P. 340–41 Wartime techniques of conservation & recycling: Nakskov Landsforeningen til Arbejdsløshedens Bekæmpelse, protokol 1940-1950 http://www.lokalekilder. dk/dagligliv/landsforeningen-tilarbejdsloeshedens-bekaempelse/ P. 342–343 Open landfill burning: DDBH, Danish Board of District Heating, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1976–73. www.dbdh.dk Groundwater resources map: a report published by the Commission of the European Communities, cover + Structural Geology Map, 1982 (EUR 7941) as integral part of “A Digital Dataset of European Groundwater Resources at 1:500,000. (V. 1.0)”, data from a project by the European Crop Protection Association, based on data originating from a study performed by the European Commission (1982, EUR 7940 EN), available from the European Soil Data Centre (http://eusoils.jrc. ec.europa.eu/ESDB_Archive/groundwater/ gw.html) UN Report: Gro Harlem Brundtland–UN Secretary General, “Our Common Future,” Report of the World Commission on Environment & Development 18467–Addendum to the General Report (Geneva, CH: United Nations, 1987): 1. Denmark groundwater map: Geological Survey of Denmark, under contract by the Commission of the European Communities–Directorate General for the Environment, Consumer Protection and Nuclear Safety, EUR 7883, 1982; available from European Soil Data Centre http://eusoils. jrc.ec.europa.eu/ESDB_Archive/GroundWater/overview.html 1-km grid cell groundwater monitoring map: adaptation of original figure by Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). “Water Resources in Denmark,” in GEOLOGI - NYT FRA GEUS (October 1997): 7 (figure 10) Green beer bottle, 1960: Carlsberg Breweries, Copenhagen, Denmark, Original Beer Importing & Distributing Co. (NY), Tavern Trove

Kalundborg Port, aerial view: Google Earth ©2014 Aerodata International Surveys Kalundborg waste flows, 2008: Pierre Bélanger Sludge truck transport, Kalundborg, 2005: Pierre Bélanger Fly ash dust into drywall gyproc, Kalundborg, DK: Pierre Bélanger, 2005. Soil remediation plant, Kalundborg, aerial view: Google Earth ©2014 Aerodata International Surveys Kalundborg city emblem: Kalundborg Kommune, www.kalundborg.dk/ Novo Nordisk logo: Novo Nordisk A/S Vestas logo: Courtesy of Vestas Wind Systems A/S District heat zoning: “Heat Supply in Denmark,” Danish Board of District Heating (Copenhagen, Denmark) www.dbdh.dk Vestfor incinerator plant, Copenhagen, aerial view: ©Google Earth Copenhagen, Nordhavn, and MiddelGrungen Wind Park, aerial view: ©Google Earth P. 348–349 Protoecology, diagram of waste flows and material transfers, 2008: Pierre Bélanger P. 350–351 Fluid urbanism, field work and site photographs of Kalundborg Industrial Region: all ground-level photos by Pierre Bélanger, 2008, aerial photos: Google Earth, Image NASA - Image ©2014 Aerodata International Surveys Image ©2014 DigitalGlobe; microscopic imaging (soil bacteria micrograph, Pseudomonas aeruginosa): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Image Library, #232, Janice Haney Carr; historic Danish landfills, Kleis, 100 Years of Waste

Incineration, 8, 18 Map of Kalundborg, 1787: Peder Paludan, Beskrivelse af Staden Callundborg– Kbh. 1788, scanned by the Danish Center for Urban History Aerial picture of Vindø Brickwork (1948), Kastrup Luftfoto courtesy of Jan Rømsgaard LEGO and the LEGO logo are trademarks of the LEGO Group. ©2008 The LEGO Group, used with permission. VESTAS is a trademark of VESTAS WIND SYSTEMS A/S. 360skylens.co.uk

European hazardous waste flows and Germany’s underground mines, 2008: map by OPSYS/Pierre Bélanger

P. 352–353 Distributed design and regional engineering, 2010: Pierre Bélanger

Deep underground waste repository, 2008: K+S Entsorgung GmbH

P. 354–355 National energy flows, Sankey diagram: Danish Energy Agency, 2005

P. 344–345 Kalundborg DK, coastal aerial view: Google Earth, NASA ©2014 Aerodata International Surveys, ©2014 DigitalGlobe P. 346–347 Interior, Vestforbrænding (Copenhagen): Danish Ministry of the Environment (EPA)

Horns Rev 1, Offshore Wind Field: ELSAM A/S - Vattenfall, 2008 P. 358–359 Decentralizing Denmark, map of different energy systems and distribution networks in Denmark and Nordic region. Diagram: OPSYS Metabolic Landscape

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“In its recognition of the region as a basic configuration in human life; in its acceptance of natural diversities as well as natural associations and uniformities; in its recognition of the region as a permanent shore of cultural influences and as a center of economic activities, as well as an implicit geographic fact—here lies the vital common element in the regionalist movement. So far from being archaic and reactionary, regionalism belongs to the future.” Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities, 19381

“The Great Lakes, with the immense resources and communication which make them a Nearctic Mediterranean, have a future, which its exponents claim may became world-metropolitan in its magnitude.” Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution, 19152

“The Chicago press now urges that the depth of water in the [Great] lakes and the lake harbors should be regulated and maintained by a series of great dams. ‘What is needed,’ says the Chicago Tribune, ‘is to impound the water of the lakes by a dam in the Niagara River below Buffalo, which will throw back the water of Lake Erie four or five feet, and by wing dams above Detroit, which would have a similar effect upon Lakes Huron and Michigan.’ Something of this kind may be required if to natural causes which reduce the depth of water as to be added an outflow of 600,000 cubic feet per minute for the removal of Chicago’s sewage and the promotion of commerce on a ship canal through the State of Illinois. The public should understand what the situation is, for we shall hear more about these projects by and by, and Canada, as well as this country, has a considerable interest in them.” The New York Times, 18973

Regionalization.

More than 30 million people live within the watershed region of the Great Lakes in North America, the largest body of freshwater on the planet. During the past two centuries, the region has been given a series of idiosyncratic designations such as the Great Cutover, the Manufacturing Belt, the Rust Belt, the Great Lakes Megalopolis, and the Megaregion by well-known urbanists from Patrick Geddes to Jean Gottmann. Emblematic of different processes of colonization, industrialization, and urbanization, these historical characterizations reveal a landscape of geo-economic and biophysical significance beyond the conventional limits of the city while testifying to a deeper ontology of regionalist canons whose focus is the hydrophysical system of the Great Lakes. Referencing a series of overlooked plans, projects, and processes, this essay demonstrates how the Great Lakes region is a macrocosm of change, a case study in the urban transformation of the continent with relevance to other parts of the industrialized world such as France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Russia, Japan, and Australia. As a revival of the revolutionary rĂŠgionalisme of Jean Charles-Brun in late nineteenth-century France and as a challenge to the pervasiveness of globalization identified by Saskia Sassen at the end of the twentieth century, this essay proposes that the extra-national regionalization of spatial, ecological, economic, and political conditions is of crucial significance to the revision of the global discourse on urbanization. 362

Reg R Re eg e gio io ion on n na alililizza al a attiion on

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<< 1. Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1938): 306. 2. Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to The Town Planning Movement and to The Study of Civics (London: Williams & Norgate, 1915): 49. 3. “Chicago’s Canal and the Lakes,” The New York Times (January 3, 1897). <

The Region and The Globe

Satellite view of the Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario) and the Atlantic coast (Boston and New York City in far background) seen from the International Space Station. Source: NASA provided by the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/ Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE 4. As in the case of Chicago, the development of geographic shortcuts between water bodies and across regional divides explains the birth of several cities throughout the Great Lakes. The city of Toronto, for example, whose name is derived from the Huron/Iroquois passage or portage, was a shortcut from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron, making it a strategic regional outpost for trade and transportation. 5. The annual death rate from diphtheria, cholera, and typhoid fever ranged between 500 and 2,000 for most of the nineteenth century. Typhoid fever was virtually eliminated by 1917 with chlorination of the water supply. Chicago Department of Health, General and Chronological Summary of Vital Statistics, Annual Report 1911–1918, Reprint Series No.16 (Chicago, IL: The Department of Health, 1919): 1424. 6. Ibid.

On January 2, 1900, a dam was unlocked on the southwest shore of Lake Michigan with only a few, anxious trustees to christen waterflow from the Chicago River, the first water course ever to be reversed in North America. Planned and built in ten years, the project was the golden child of two previous parent projects. The Chicago Portage in 1673 and the Illinois and Michigan Canal in 1845 had already set the precedent for geographic shortcuts across the continental divide.4 The third and final diversion was the Sanitary and Ship Canal, a 28mile long, 24-foot deep, 160-foot wide trench completed seven years after Chicago marked the 400th anniversary of the New World during the World Fair. Responding to typhoid and cholera epidemics,5 the objective of the reversal was to divert sewage away from drinking water intakes located offshore in Lake Michigan for an exploding urban population. Technologically, the Chicago Canal was an engineering marvel in size and scale. Through chlorination of the water supply and a comprehensive sewer separation, typhoid fever was virtually eliminated by 1917.6 If railroads were the transcontinental infrastructure that secured Chicago’s future as the main portal to westbound–eastbound commerce, then it was the former Illinois and Michigan Canal which provided the navigable coastal infrastructure which linked two of America’s largest trading centers, New York and New Orleans, via Chicago. With the railways and canal locks, the mid-continental and intercoastal divides were well-conquered by the nineteenth century. Expanding upon this infrastructural legacy, the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal provided a vital infrastructural link that was essential to the growth of the city, as part of a process that required the development of water supply infrastructures well beyond the footprint of city boundaries at the beginning of the twentieth century. Reversal of the Chicago River precipitated another effect. Channeled away from the lake, sewage poured into the Illinois River on its way to the Mississippi by way of St. Louis. Locally, complaints from downstream residents in southwest Chicago ignited almost immediately. As the sewage moved further downstream across state lines, so did the backlash. Regionally, St. Louis engaged in a bitter legal battle

Divide, Divert, and Conquer

1847 map of the planned Illinois and Michigan Canal running 96 miles (155 kilometers) that opened boat transportation from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. Source: Chicago Historical Society Regionalization

365

Cordon Sanitaire

The 28-mile, 200-foot-wide 20-feet-deep Sanitary and Ship Canal that effectively reversed the Chicago River, diverting sewage away from Lake Michigan. Source: Chicago History Museum, ICHi-39314 366

well before construction started in 1892. While sewage overloading played a role, the major case focused on the overexertion of shipping traffic from Chicago to the Mississippi, originating from a city outside the river basin. Geopolitically, the reversal of the river imposed external effects on residents in the valley of the Illinois River. Although injunctions submitted by the State of Missouri to halt the reversal were rejected by the Supreme Court, limits on water diversions were eventually enacted by 1925.7 In the decade-long process, the proceedings made visible the downstream effects of upstream urbanization. Geopolitically, it could be deduced that the effects of cities lie well beyond the governing limits of the city itself, and that the source of historical conflicts often flows from the discrepancies, or differentials, between biophysical systems and across human-created political boundaries.

7. Missouri’s 1905 suit against Illinois to end the diversion was unsuccessful, but the Supreme Court placed limits of water diversion starting in 1925. See Stanley A. Changnon and Mary E. Harper, “History of the Chicago Diversion,” in The Lake Michigan Diversion at Chicago and Urban Drought, ed. Stanley A. Changnon (Mahomet, IL: NOAA Contract 50WCNR306047, 1994): 16B38.

Less than a quarter century after its construction, the Chicago diversion had other, major cascading effects: water levels across the Great Lakes dropped at visible rates. International conflict was imminent. Ten thousand cubic feet of water per second was being diverted every second from Lake Michigan, triggering alarming concerns from Ontario, the Canadian neighbor to the north who long opposed any freshwater diversions from the Great Lakes. Bordering on four of the five Great Lakes, the Province of Ontario was losing more than 300,000 cubic feet of water per minute from the diversion, a significant loss for the hydroelectric dam at Niagara Falls. Two more diversions and two more reversals would be constructed in less than a quarter century. Chicago was heading into a hundred-year-long battle over water rights. The State of Missouri joined forces with Wisconsin, Michigan, and New York in a coalition to put an end to the diversions. The diversion focused a wide and contentious lens on the urban pressures, the physiographic magnitudes, the hydrologic complexities, and the jurisdictional constituencies of the region. The conflicts, confrontations, and crises that originated with the Sanitary and Ship Canal also laid the groundwork for a history of other water diversions, extractions, and abstractions up to the present day. Predated by water works Regionalization

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8. From a hydrological perspective, the canal is extremely important as an emerging political and ecological issue of the future. The article by Jerry L. Rasmussen et al., “Dividing the Waters: The Case for Hydrologic Separation of the North American Great Lakes and Mississippi River Basins” speaks to that emerging reality. See Journal of Great Lakes Research 37 No.3 (September 2011): 588–592. 9. See American Public Works Association (APWA), Top Ten Public Works Projects of the Century 1900–2000, www.apwa.net/ About/Awards/TopTenCentury.

10. See “Interbasin Water Diversions: a Canadian perspective” by F. Quinn, Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 42 No.6 (1998): 389–393.

11. See Empire and Communications by Harold T. Innis (Cambridge, UK: Oxford University Press, 1950).

across the Great Lakes such as the Erie Canal and Ohio Canal systems in the nineteenth century, followed by other mega-projects like the Niagara Falls hydroelectric dam and the St. Lawrence Seaway in the twentieth century, the reversal of the Chicago River can be interpreted as a turning point in cross-boundary water management, regionally and internationally.8 Technologically, the diversion displayed the prowess of civil engineering in one of the most important public works projects of the twentieth century.9 Leading to the formation of the Chicago School of Earthmoving, it set the precedent for other construction projects such as the Panama Canal. The reversal of the Chicago River also marks a major moment in the regionalization—an operative term that designates the geographic, economic, and ecological process of characterizing and forming regions according to overlapping geopolitical and biophysical boundaries—of the Great Lakes. Whereas in the past each lake was perceived as one of a series of loosely connected water bodies, a major change occurred in the understanding of their interconnectedness. The politics of the diversion later resulted in the milestone enactment of the Boundary Waters Treaty in 1909,10 soon followed by the inception of the International Joint Commission (IJC), a cross-border organization exclusively mandated to help resolve disputes and to prevent future ones, primarily those concerning water quantity and water quality along the boundary between Canada and the United States.11 More than a century later, the IJC has grown in size and influence to become a model of transnational cooperation and watershed governance, recognized worldwide. Paradoxically, the making of a simple water channel revealed the preeminence of the region and how it functions as an essential urban infrastructure that binds cities to their watersheds. As the largest body of freshwater remaining on the planet, the Great Lakes region has simultaneously become home to more than 40 million people living within its watershed. Testifying to the robustness of water systems underlying urbanization, the current renaissance of turn-of-the-century regionalist tendencies is the contemporary manifestation of a richer,

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Transboundary Governance

The first major report by the Canada-U.S. International Joint Commission outlining major concerns, causes, and effects of urban pollution for the boundary waters shared between the United States and Canada, specifically focusing on water quality and water levels of the Great Lakes. Source: IJC, 1918 Regionalization

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Landscape of Heat

Logging blocks for timber and fuel in northern Wisconsin in the region which later became known as the Great Cutover during the late nineteenth, and early twentieth century. Photo: Taylor Brothers. Source: Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-1939 370

deeper ontology of regional characterizations over the past two hundred years whose fulcrum is the watershed of the Great Lakes. Sourcing the work of public intellectuals, scholars, and industrialists, the region has respectively garnered idiomatic designations such as the Great Cutover, the Rust Belt, the Great Lakes Megalopolis, and more recently, the Megaregion. Emblematic of different phases of colonization, immigration, industrialization, reclamation, and urbanization, the characterizations of this landscape have also championed, when considered retroactively, some of the most important regionalist canons in North America. This essay traces a cross-section of overlooked yet influential plans, projects, and practitioners during the past two centuries in an attempt to chart the emergence and transformation of the regional paradigm to reveal its contemporary significance to the global discourse on urbanization.

THE GREAT CUTOVER AND THE CONTOURS OF CONSERVATION

Like the construction of the CalumetSaganashkee and North Shore channels a few years later, the reversal of the Chicago River was undertaken in response to an unforeseen population explosion in the Great Lakes cities, a transit node between the urban markets on the Atlantic coast and the Grain Belt of the Prairies; lucrative logging and mining industries attracted European immigrants to Chicago as they sought to escape food shortages, oppressive taxes, and war. Revolutionary farm tools such as the McCormick mechanical reaper, the Baker wind engine, and the John Deere steel plough12 were invented throughout the Midwest in what became a golden age of agricultural innovation. But immigrants soon encountered a reoccurrence of their European plight of density and disease. With the rise of steam navigation, canal construction, rail transport, and crosscontinental mobility, the birth of the pre-Civil War commercial metropolis and the rise of the nineteenth-century industrial factory town led to an explosion of urban population followed by a concurrent rural vacuum. Chicagoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population, for example, jumped from 5,000 in 1840 to more than 1.5 million in

12. See David R. Collins, Pioneer Plowmaker: A Story about John Deere (Minneapolis, MN: Carolrhoda Books, 1990), and Kimberley A. McGrath, World of Invention: Historyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Most Significant Inventions and the People Behind Them (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Research Group, 1990).

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13. See The Making of Urban America by Raymond A. Mohl (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, 1997): 93. 14. Ibid, 7.

15. The term super-urbanization stems from the use of the term “super-urban” and “super-city” in reference to fringes between city and suburban areas originally used by Benton MacKaye almost a century ago in The New Exploration: A Philosophy of Regional Planning (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1928): 67, 69.

1900.13,14 In the absence of an integrated water supply infrastructure, sewage disposal in Lake Michigan polluted fresh water supplies. The diversion of sewage away from the Lake through the Sanitary & Ship Canal was the simplest and most logical solution. With a battery of concurrent farm drainage programs and land reclamation acts in outlying areas, superurbanization15 became a trope for profitable, renegade trade generated from the industries of mass-logging and mass-mining. From mass-industrialization across the region there emerged a series of proto-conservation groups who would shape the future of urbanization. Harvest and Heist A massive reclamation project took place following the clear-cut logging and slash fires in the virgin forest regions of the midwestern United States and central Canada. From northern Michigan to southwestern Ontario, rampant clear-cutting of hardwoods (oaks, maples, and birches) and softwoods (like the white pines and spruces) stripped bare more than 65 percent of 40 million northern acres of choice timber in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, New York, and Minnesota between 1890 and 1920. Historically recognized as the Great Lakes Cutover, the region served as the hinterland of modern commercial centers such as Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington. Without any formal plans for reforestation, the devastation of forests resulted in the ongoing westward march in the late nineteenth century that left in its wake a landscape of stumps, swamps, and scoured fields. With land rendered useless from a logging perspective, a group of conservationists, planners, and industrialists emerged to develop strategies for the re-utilization of these razed areas.

16. See Paul Sutter, “A Retreat from Profit: Colonization, the Appalachian Trail, and the Social Roots of Benton MacKaye’s Wilderness Advocacy,” Environmental History 4 No.4 (1999): 553–557.

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One of the most notable proponents of land reclamation and regional planning was Benton MacKaye.16 Recognized for his conception of the Appalachian Trail on the East coast, MacKaye drew up reclamation plans for the Department of Labor and the Forest Service in the early decades of the twentieth century. He was exploring new regional economic geographies in Minnesota and Wisconsin bordering Lake Superior. Influenced by Gifford Pinchot from the U.S. Forest Service and Michigan

Regional Flows and Material Sheds

1928 map produced by Benton MacKaye showing material sheds from the Great Lakes region to the distribution hubs and centers of power on the East coast such as Boston, New York, and Washington, Source: ÂŠ1928 The New Exploration Regionalization

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17. One of P.S. Lovejoy’s most important contributions was a short, sweeping survey of the Cutover titled “Michigan’s Millions of Idle Acres” written for the The Detroit Free News, collected in P.S. Lovejoy and Fred E. Janette, Michigan’s Millions of Idle Acres—A Series of Articles Published in the Detroit News, May 24–June 4 (Detroit, MI: The Detroit News, 1920): 3-11. 18. See James Kates, Planning a Wilderness: Regenerating the Great Lakes Cutover Region (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001).

19. Benton MacKaye, Colonization of Timberlands – Synopsis (Washington, DC: U.S. Forest Service, 1917) (Dartmouth College Library, The Papers of Benton MacKaye, Box 181, Folder 31): 3.

20. Early twentieth-century reclamation strategies echoed eighteenth-century colonization programs like the “Come to Detroit” campaign employed in the 1750s by the governor general of New France, who provided free incentives such as a spade, axe, sow, plough, seed stock, wagon, and a cow to attract newcomers to the swamplands in Michigan, lands that were unsuitable for cultivation by decades of rampant clear-cutting.

conservationist P.S. Lovejoy, MacKaye deplored the idle, non-productive waste of the more than 10 million acres of cutover lands in Michigan. As observed by Lovejoy in his critical survey of the Cutover Michigan’s Millions of Idle Acres, the crisis was essentially agricultural.17 Soils were either too wet or too infertile to turn a profit with crop farming. Clear cut logging also led to a rising water table and swampy agricultural conditions.18 Once a great timber producer, the Great Lakes state became a net importer. Homegrown hemlock was outcompeted by fir from the West, hickory from the East, and oak from the South: “Michigan-grown hemlock, shipped 200 miles, sells at the same price in Detroit as does fir grown on the Pacific Coast, and shipped 2,000 miles. The hickory for the wheels of Michigan automobiles is coming from Arkansas and Mississippi. The oak for Grand Rapids furniture is being cut in Louisiana and Tennessee. Michigan does not even supply itself with enough telephone poles or railroad ties, but imports poles from Idaho and ties from Virginia.”19 MacKaye’s strategies reconceived the landscape of the failed agricultural experiments of the northern Wisconsin region and several other cutover regions in the northwest United States. Borrowing from the prototypes of woodland settlements published by the Canadian Commission on Conservation, MacKaye and Lovejoy foresaw imminent urbanization by sketching out regional reclamation diagrams that coupled reforestation with repopulation across the landscape.20 As a countermeasure to careless, frontier land development in the nineteenth century, their work pioneered renewable economies of conservation areas, selective logging zones, and village settlements. As early-century rebuilders, MacKaye and Lovejoy promoted long term, collective land management which would upset conventional paradigms of Promethean development which predominated the nineteenth century: “These are the principles of the highest use of land; of the free soil basis of

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Regional Pre-Planning

1911 resettlement diagrams of cutover lands drawn (above) and collected (following page) by Benton MacKaye for the U.S. Forest Service of the northern portion of Minnesota and Wisconsin. To different extents and scales, each one is marked by the presence of regional resources, forest configurations, infrastructure networks, and water bodies. Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library, MacKaye Family Papers Regionalization

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21. Ibid, 3.

homesteading, efficient reclamation and State aid to self help; of community cooperation as against Robinson Crusoe independence; of forestry as against timber mining; of permanent employment for the lumberjack; and of the forest community as against the hobo logging camp.”21 Reclamation and Reconstruction With the groundwork laid by MacKaye and Lovejoy, developments in land planning evolved into the research of Richard T. Ely, a German-trained reform economist from the University of Wisconsin. With his large-scale perspective on the challenges of land settlements, Ely proposed and later developed a new field of effective land utilization based on regional forest economics, arguing for a more-consolidated understanding of the cutover region. Disfavoring the uncoordinated efforts of the greedy land hustler or the uninformed reckless farmer, Ely theorized strategies that synthesized the imperatives of land conditions and urban economies. Those innovations later took shape in 1940 in a book titled Land Economics. Leading to the birth of a new field, this publication exhaustively articulated an alternative approach to the development of land.

22. Different from land planning or real estate development, land economics is a hybrid discipline crossbred from the fields of economics, politics, and agriculture. Land economics is based on a regional perspective for the effective reorganization and reuse of land over long periods of time, rooted in the preexistence of resources and the future of urban settlements.

Relying on the empirical understanding of biophysical resources, Ely’s work was premised on bringing long-term economic recovery to the failure of short-term agriculture across the emergent swamplands of the cutover region.22 Using a regional lens, Ely established the foundations for the reorganization of land, showing where a new geoeconomic structure could be achieved through collective models of governance that privileged the integration of hydrological systems, forest resources, regional cooperation, and state legislation. At its base, Land Economics uniquely hinged on the empirical understanding of hydrological resources: “Percolating water found in the interstices between soil and rock particles constitutes a vast resource of water. It is estimated that if [groundwater in the United States] were brought to the surface it would form a lake from 500 to 1000 feet deep. […] The rights to underground wa-

ents

Economic Geographies

Map of productive regions of the United States and Canada as a synthesis of agricultural and political divisions in North America. Source: ÂŠ1940 Land Economics Richard Ely Regionalization

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Agrarian Urbanization

Layout view of Frank Lloyd Wright’s 12’ x12’ model of Broadacre City, representing a decentralized Midwestern structure of urban land settlement in the 1940s. Source: Broadacre City Model photograph from the 1958 The Living City Copyright ©1958 The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona 380

ter are even more complicated than the rights to surface water because the supply is invisible and the volume and direction of flow are usually unknown.”23 Landscape Economics Founder of the American Economic Association and bullish proponent of labor organizations and the public management of resources, Ely premised on the understanding that groundwater resources and surface watersheds offered replenishable capital.24 In the cutover region, Ely promoted the de-privatization of the land—rather than the settling of it—taking it out of agricultural use for public forestry practices. Ely mapped out land uses as directly generated from soil types, micro-climates, and water resources that were primarily agrarian. In his view, collective farsighted reclamation of land had to supplant the nearsighted renegade efforts of private landowners or land hustlers. It was no coincidence then, that in the 1940s, Frank Lloyd Wright—a Prairie School architect from the Midwest—would unveil almost simultaneously an intricately detailed scale model representing a hypothetical 4-square-mile community proposal for the denuded landscape of rural Illinois. Aptly titled Broadacre City, the model experimented with a unique Midwestern structure where hydrology and topography prefigured as primary infrastructures amidst an expansive field of agriculture, housing, and civic services.25 Conceived at his Taliesin studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin, 150 miles west from Chicago, Wright’s urban–agrarian proposal was largely an antithesis of the European concept of the centralized industrial city.26 Almost two decades later, parallel to the land policy objectives of Richard T. Ely and the regional strategies of Benton MacKaye, Wright as an architect/urbanist distilled the essence of the land settlement challenge in the Midwest with his 1958 manifesto Living City, proclaiming, “We should have a system of economics that is structure […] that is organic tools.”27 Looking beyond the city, they all sought to escape conventional forms of conservation without reverting to pro-rural isolationism or anti-urban pastoralism. While their work remained reactive to existing conditions, they opened a broader prospect of the region as a design territory, capable of engaging more-diversified processes

23. See Richard T. Ely and George S. Wehrwein, Land Economics (New York, NY: The MacMillan Company, 1940): 382–383.

24. Alan Rabinowitz, Urban Economics and Land Use in America: The Transformation of Cities in the Twentieth Century (New York, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004): 109.

25. The Broadacre City project was incubated at Taliesin during the 1930s and 1940s. Built in 1911, Taliesin was one of Wright’s studios located in Spring Green, Wisconsin, more than 150 miles away from Chicago. In the context of the agricultural crisis and increasing industrialization of the Chicago region, Taliesin was a reaction to and a rejection of the industrial city. For a more-detailed analysis of Wright’s urban–agrarian counterproposals, see Giorgio Cucci’s “The City in Agrarian Ideology and Frank Lloyd Wright,” in The American City: From the Civil War and the New Deal, ed. Giorgio Cucci, Francesco Dal Co, Mario Manieri-Elia, and Manfredo Tafuri (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979): 143–292. 26. Despite his aversion to the centralized development of the industrial city, Wright maintained faith in its future potential. See Frank Lloyd Wright, The Living City (New York, NY: Horizon Press, 1958) and Sydney K. Robinson’s “Does Frank Lloyd Wright Belong in Chicago’s Architectural History? in Chicago Architecture: Histories, Revisions, Alternatives, ed. Charles Waldheim and Katerina Rüedi (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 27. Wright, The Living City, 162.

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> Rise and Fall of a Great American City

Dubbed the “Machine Shop of the World,” Milwaukee owed its rise to industries of machinery, meats, and malts which flourished after the Civil War but later declined after the Great Depression. 1901 Poster: Courtesy City of Milwaukee, Department of City Development

28. David R. Meyer discusses this phenomenon with greater depth in “Emergence of the American Manufacturing Belt: An interpretation,” Journal of Historical Geography 9 No.2 (1983): 145–174.

29. See W. Bruce Bowlus, Iron Ore Transport on the Great Lakes: The Development of a Delivery System to Feed American Industry (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010).

30. For events in the region revolving around the discovery of cheap taconite processing, see “Taconite Boom,” TIME Magazine (April 28, 1952): 92-94.

31. For more information on the rise of Milwaukee, see Trading Post to Metropolis: Milwaukee County’s First 150 Years, ed. Ralph M. Aderman (Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee County Historical Society, 1987).

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at larger scales, across longer periods of time. For them, in practice and in theory, the region was becoming the medium. GLOBALIZATION AND THE CORROSION OF THE MANUFACTURING BELT

Before and during the two world wars, the Great Lakes states underwent a considerable rate of growth in the areas of weapons production, chemical processing, and automotive manufacturing. The abundance of iron ore, coal, and electricity along with vast fresh water resources and navigable waterways fed the development of large factory towns in the region of the Great Lakes and industrial metropolises of the northeastern seaboard. With an abundance of farm and factory labor, the region of the Great Lakes, especially near the Midwest, became a frontier of boomtowns.28 Large, centralized, heavy-industry facilities developed at a rapid pace to secure the region’s international reputation as the Manufacturing Belt. Where timber and transportation had dominated the previous century, the discovery of taconite in Minnesota’s Mesabi Range fueled the industrial engine of the Manufacturing Belt.29 By World War I, Minnesota was meeting two-thirds of US demand for iron ore. Vast supplies of ore could be shipped by rail or by ship from Duluth at the western extremity of Lake Superior and moved eastward to steel mills in the lower Great Lakes located near vast supplies of Appalachian coal. Finally, long and flat steel for product manufacturing or construction projects made its way by rail to growing urban centers on the Atlantic coast.30 From this geographic network rose an industrial shed that was underpinned by the geophysical landscape of the Great Lakes. City appellations signified their might: Pittsburg the Steel City, Sudbury the Nickel City, Hamilton the Steel Town, Sarnia the Chemical Valley, Detroit the Motor City, Cleveland the Bridge City, Toledo the Glass City, Buffalo the City of Light, Milwaukee Supplier to the World.31

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Sub- or Super-Nation?

Map of the manufacturing region of the Great Lakes with the consumer centers of the East Coast, depicted as one of nine “nations” across North America by geographer Joel Garreau. Source: 1981 The Nine Nations of North America © Joel Garreau 384

Deindustrialization and Decentralization A few decades after a relatively short-lived peak of production during and immediately following the world wars, the rate of transformation plummeted. The U.S. steel industry workforce fell from 509,000 workers in 1973 to 240,000 in 1983. Outsourced production, rising energy prices, and increasing trade deficits all contributed to manufacturing’s demise and the abandonment of heavy industry. From Wisconsin to upstate New York, the widespread pattern of deindustrialization had incendiary effects, including the decentralization of city centers. In his 1981 book, The Nine Nations of North America, East Coast journalist Joel Garreau aptly summed up the situation characterized as The Foundry: “Tough is what defines North America’s nation of northeastern gritty cities in a multitude of ways. Gary. South Bend. Detroit. Flint. Toledo. Cleveland. Akron. Canton. Youngstown. Wheeling. Milwaukee. Sudbury. London. Hamilton. Buffalo. Syracuse. Schenectady. Pittsburgh. Bethlehem. Harrisburg. Wilkes Barre. Wilmington. Camden. Trenton. Newark. […] The litany of names brings clear associations even to the most insulated residents of other regions. These names mean one thing: heavy work with heavy machines. Hard work for those with jobs; hard times for those without. […] When columnists speak of managing decline, this is the region they mean. When they speak of the seminal battles of trade unionism, they place their markers here. When they write of the disappearing Democratic city political juggernauts, not for nothing do they call them machines, for this is where they hummed, then rusted.”32 What was once admired worldwide as the U.S. Manufacturing Belt became universally known as the Rust Belt.33 Burdened by large, overbuilt structures and public works disinvestment, this massive transition simultaneously paralleled the erosion of public infrastructures. America’s public facilities were wearing out faster than they were being replaced.34 From decaying sewers to bridge collapses, incidents across the region were indicative of aggressive deregulation

32. Joel Garreau, The Nine Nations of North America (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981): 69. 33. By the late 1950s, decline was prevalent. Jane Jacobs identified early on the transformations occurring in cities across North America in Life and Death of Great American Cities (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1961), and subsequently in her follow-up The Economy of Cities (New York, NY: Random House Books, 1969). 34. See Pat Choate and Susan Walter, America in Ruins: The Decaying Infrastructure (Durham, NC: Duke Press, 1983).

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programs that deferred maintenance and cancelled construction which exacerbated urban disaggregation and the hollowing-out of inner city cores. The decline of the Rust Belt in the second half of the twentieth century mainly stemmed from four factors: the global mobility of corporations, the attrition of innovation; the inflexible demands of labor associations; the displacement of workers to new sectors of defense, oil, and aerospace in the Sun Belt; and an aging workforce. Policies for the globalization of the region and deregulation of national trade began with the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade in 1946, grew with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, and matured with the formation of the World Trade Organization in 1995. Transnational trading policies opened international borders southward and westward, where labor and raw materials were cheaper and environmental laws less stringent. This structural industrial change may have been inevitable according to regional industrialist Henry Ford:

35. Henry Ford (in collaboration with Samuel Crowther), My Life and Work (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922): 192.

36. See Roland Jones, “As Detroit falters, Asian makers pick up speed: Toyota likely to surpass GM as world’s top carmaker; China lurks in wings,” www.msnbc.msn. com/id/10532121/.

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“The belief that an industrial country has to concentrate its industries is not, in my opinion, well-founded. That is only a stage in industrial development. […] Industry will decentralize. There is no city that would be rebuilt as it is, were it destroyed—which fact is in itself a confession of our real estimate of our cities.”35 As a result of industrial deconcentration in the Northeast, boomtowns became ghost towns. While abroad, relocated industries found surrogate cities: Bangkok supplanted Detroit, Shanghai supplanted Cleveland, Taipei supplanted Toledo, and Mexico City supplanted Milwaukee.36 Disurbanism and Disassembly The economic fallout further precipitated the population vacuums of inner cities and former boomtowns in the Rust Belt from the 1950s onward, largely leaving them victims of decaying oversized infrastructure, contaminated vacant land, heavy tax burdens, and social attrition. Copious amounts of money were poured into urban renewal projects—new

Aquatic Bio-Indicator

Brown bullhead from Wisconsinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fox River with lip tumors, demonstrating the presence of aromatic hydrocarbons used for dyes, pharmaceuticals, and agro-chemicals which are known carcinogens. Courtesy of Dr. Paul C. Baumann, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Regionalization

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37. Edward L. Glaeser, “Can Buffalo Ever Come Back?” City Journal 17 No.4 (autumn 2007): 94–99. 38. Jerry Slaske, “Choosing Milwaukee’s next top cop: Roughed-up Milwaukee needs results from its next chief,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (August 19, 2007).

39. See Charlie LeDuff, “To Urban Hunter, Next Meal is Scampering By,” The Detroit News (April 2, 2009), www.detnews.com/ article/20090402/METRO08/904020395.

stadiums or convention centers—in Detroit, Flint, Milwaukee, and Buffalo. However, despite good intentions, little has improved economic situations.37 Milwaukee for example now has twice as many murders as Los Angeles; Buffalo has twice the taxes of New York City; and Flint has the third highest crime rate in the nation.38 General Motors (GM) CEO Roger Smith closed down all the assembly plants in Flint, Michigan, leaving more than 40,000 people jobless and the entire city virtually bankrupt in the 1980s. Since then, mayors have toyed with tourism as a substitute for urban economic regeneration and environmental reconstruction, with very little, or no success. Despite its level of vacancy and abandonment, these landscapes of decline and neglect—disurbanization—have become progenitors of ecological regeneration, displaying the latency of biophysical dynamics that existed before industrialization.39

URBANIZATION AND THE SYSTEMIC RECLAMATION OF THE GREAT LAKES WATERSHED

40. During the 1960s and 1970s, several newspaper headlines read that Lake Erie was “dead” when, according to the U.S. EPA, the lake was actually more alive than ever. In fact, it was undergoing cultural eutrophication, an accelerated aging process by a large influx of nutrients (phosphorus) due to agricultural runoff and untreated wastewater effluent, mainly from industrial and household detergents. Evidenced in satellite aerial photographs, blue-green algae (Anabaena, Aphanizomenon, Microcystis, Cladophora) was blooming profusely in the western basin. See Larry Bentley, Environmental Education for Ohio, Biosphere 2000 Project, Environmental Science in Action: Lake Erie (EPA, August 2006).

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Although deindustrialization and decentralization are dominant motifs of the Rust Belt, what is often marginalized is the long-term legacy of industrial economies. The depletion of cheap resources, the depopulation of factory towns, the decrease of tax revenues, and the failure of urban infrastructure epitomize that legacy. Most notorious are environmental after-effects across the region, including oil fires on urban rivers in Cleveland, Toronto, and Chicago; overfertilization and sewage discharge of Lake Ontario and Lake Michigan; algal blooms from eutrophication in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario;40 and the mercury contaminations from industrial discharge that closed fisheries on Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and Lake Huron in the 1980s. The total impact of industrial effluents, chemical dumps, and urban floods was largely invisible until a quarter-century after the Manufacturing Belt passed its peak. Three events within seventeen years defined the ecological enlightenment amidst the fallout of mass-industrialization: Hurricane Hazel in 1954, the Milwaukee

Open, Complex Systems

Map depicting the systemic representation of the Great Lakes region following the 1978 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement that was signed by Canada and the United States to â&#x20AC;&#x153;restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the waters of the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem.â&#x20AC;? Source: Ngs Labs/National Geographic Creative, Image ID: 23260 Regionalization

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Crisis as Catalyst

Aerial view of the Humber River in Woodbridge during Hurricane Hazel in November 1954, subsequently leading to the Conservation Authorities Act. Source: Photography from the archives of Toronto and Region Conservation, 1954 390

River point-source discharges in 1967, and the Love Canal Incident in 1971. With the respective efforts, activists across the region like landscape architect Michael Hough, the Milwaukee Sentinel daily newspaper, and the Love Canal’s Lois Marie Gibbs, a series of milestone legislative actions ensued: the Conservation Authorities Act in 1946, the Environmental Protection Agency of 1971, the Superfund Bill of 1980, and the Clean Water Act of 1977. Point-source separation of industrial effluents, encapsulation of chemical dumps, and planning of urban floodplains soon became underlying principles in the replanning of cities. Noncompliance and lack of enforcement threatens this ambitious objective,41 but the Clean Water Act has managed to cast light on a dark industrial age when Americans could no longer swim in major rivers like the Mississippi, the Potomac, or the Hudson.42 Reconsidered historically, ground and water contamination could no longer be ignored nor treated separately as it was before. It was now being understood regionally as a new systemic understanding of the effects of industrialization emerged. De-Engineering and Replanning One of the most influential organizations to emerge from Hazel’s aftermath is the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA). Founded on the urban ecological tenets of landscape architect Michael Hough in the late '50s,43 the TRCA has grown over the past fifty years to become an influential think-tank-action-group whose name is synonymous with watershed management, ecological planning, habitat restoration, business financing, and urban development. This nonprofit, quasi-governmental organization now mandates five major watersheds draining into Lake Ontario which support the 5.5 million people of the Greater Toronto area, while innovating strategies of stormwater management and watershed based conservation.44 With the abundance of available permeable surface area and green-leaf coverage in suburban areas, as well as their suitability for change, the ultimate aim is to reduce loads on stormwater systems while contributing to groundwater recharge. From the continuous flood events in Ontario to the ongoing flooding of the Farnsworth house in Illinois, the challenge of urban flooding has yet to be resolved in any

41. For a thorough discussion of water policies in the Great Lakes over the past three decades, see John A. Hoornbeek’s “The Promises and Pitfalls of Devolution: Water Pollution Policies in the American States,” Publius 35, No.1 (Winter 2005): 87–114, and Jo Sandin, “30 Years Later, Water Cleanup Continues to Fight Current in Milwaukee Area,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (2001). 42. Discharges and diversions are now regulated by the 1985 Great Lakes Charter and the subsequent 2005 Amendment.

43. In an article titled “The Urban Landscape–The Hidden Frontier,” Michael Hough outlined how urban infrastructure could be conceived regionally and designed ecologically. See Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology 15 No.4 “Landscape Preservation” (1983): 9–14.

44. According to the Center for Watershed Protection, the full lifecycle cost of decentralized systems of urban water management is estimated to be three to five times less than conventional buried systems that are often found in inner cities. See Whitney Brown and Thomas Schueler, The Economics of Stormwater BMPs in the Mid-Atlantic Region—Final Report: an Examination of the Real Cost of Providing Stormwater Control (Ellicott City, MD: Center for Watershed Protection, 1997).

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Landscape as Megastructure

Plan and detail of the 300-kilometer Greenway Strategy on the northern shore of Lake Ontario by David Crombie and Suzanne Barrett. The project was conceived in response to growing urbanization across the lake and in relation to distinctive patterns of ravines, watersheds, glacial geology, and groundwater resources. Source: Waterfront Regeneration Trust, 1995 (below), OPSYS adapted from Municipal Affairs & Housing 2008 (left)

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comprehensive way and will persist. Larger and larger urban agglomerations, aging sanitary sewers, leaking water supply lines, and the increasing frequency of rainstorms will need to be addressed using integrated management measures that closely correlate urban patterns with the dynamics of hydrological systems.

45. The third most important contributor to lake water pollution is nitrogen and phosphorus overloading from fertilizer and pesticide runoff. See US, Canadian cities

fouling the Great Lakes with raw sewage—Report card reveals Great Lakes cities not making the grade. (2006), http://www.ecojustice.ca/ publications/reports/the-great-lakes-sewagereport-card.

46. See “Natural Capital and Ecological Goods & Services,” Ducks Unlimited Canada, www.ducks.ca/conserve/wetland_ values/conserve.html.

47. See Environment Canada, The State of Municipal Wastewater Effluents in Canada (Ottawa, ON: Queen’s Printer, 1999).

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Reclamation and Remediation Addressing the divide between economy and ecology, a massive remediation program in the Great Lakes region was spearheaded by the International Joint Commission (IJC) in the late 1980s, addressing the impacts of discharges and diversions, floods and droughts, and contamination and cleaning. With its mandate to advise on the use and quality of boundary waters in Canada and the United States, the commission addressed three of the most pressing challenges in the Great Lakes: combined sewer overflow, nutrient overloading, and sediment contamination. Redressing the historical legacy of shoreline industries, the purpose is to reclaim the “chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the waters of the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem.”45 As the principal source of contamination in Great Lakes rivers and harbors, polluted sediment created by decades of industrial and municipal discharges historically limited remediation and redevelopment efforts by virtue of its geographic magnitude.46 The IJC has since initiated remedial action plans for forty-three priority sites throughout the region. The binational program uses multilateral funding and cross-border legislation to accelerate cleanup and redevelopment of the most contaminated sites, mostly harbors, in the downstream region.47 Since bioremediation alone cannot solve the challenge of brownfield redevelopment, the effect of new, integrated regional economies offers a significant model for the reuse of land. At this scale, remediation costs can be offset by overall returns from productive land redevelopment across multiple sites. For the first time in the history of the Great Lakes, the collective objective of an economy based on clean freshwater has become a public regional imperative. At the turn of the twenty-first century there is a contemporary urbanization of waterfronts in the Great Lakes and cities such as Chicago, Toronto, Hamilton, Sudbury, and Detroit are in the vanguard. Public works projects by Kath-

Regional Register

Icon of modernism, the Farnsworth House designed by Mies van der Rohe and built in 1951, succumbs to a record-breaking flood from the Fox River but survives as a geo-physical registration of perennial rain levels in the region. Source: ÂŠ2008 Landmarks Illinois, National Trust for Historic Preservation Regionalization

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Infrastructural Coupling View of stormwater interceptor tank doubling as public space promenade on the edge of Lake Ontario, on Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waterfront. Source: West 8/Adriaan Geuze, 2010

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ryn Gustafson and Piet Oudolf in Chicago or by Field Operations, West 8, and MVVA in Toronto can be seen as the inception of a systemic, regional reclamation project in its infancy.48 Its economy is its ecology. SUB-URBANIZATION AND SUPER-URBANIZATION

Horizontal spread and peripheral expansion remain the predominant forces that restructure towns and cities across the Great Lakes, but citing depopulation and outmigration from city centers as the only causes of economic decline during the second half of the twentieth century is flawed. Nationally, population statistics show that while the population of the US was increasing, the Great Lakes region remained nearly constant, with just 1 percent growth.49 What really occurred was regional population dispersal through inner city exodus. Culturally and economically diverse, metropolitan areas such as Chicago and Toronto kept growing, but mostly on their peripheries. Access to a multitude of urban, public, and high-quality services—education, mass transit, and health care—supported by essential infrastructures of waste, water, food, transport, and energy made them particularly attractive to a younger, knowledge-oriented generation. The transition from an industrial economy to an urban economy also involved a shift from massproduction and heavy equipment to light manufacturing and to just-in-time logistics.50 Large centralized industries of macro-production made way for a decentralized regional pattern of micro-production, requiring new land uses and public services.

48. This systems-based strategy has more recently been harnessed by Alan Berger toward more substantive, complex, and proactive engagement of the natural and built systems, which is leading to the formulation of more intelligent design scenarios at larger scales. See Alan Berger, Systemic Design Can Change the World (Amsterdam: Sun Publishers, 2009).

49. See Great Lakes Information Network, “Demographics in the Great Lakes Region,” www.great-lakes.net/econ/refs/demog. html.

50. See Charles Waldheim and Alan Berger “Logistics Landscape,” Landscape Journal 27 No.2 (2009): 219–246.

The only logical course of action for nearby factory towns was to downsize. Regionalizing their services, distributing densities, and tapping larger urban economies became possible. Mayor Jay Williams has been testing the potential outcome of downsizing in Youngstown, Ohio. With plant shutdowns by Republic Steel and Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company over the past twenty years, the city is facing major fiscal deficits inherited from oversized infrastructure, abandoned properties, and countRegionalization

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51. See Associated Press, “Youngstown Planners Turn Shrinking Population into Positive” (June 19, 2007), www. youngstown2010.com/news_information/ national/ap%20story.pdf.

52. City of Youngstown and Youngstown State University, The Youngstown 2010 Citywide Plan (2005), www.youngstown2010. com/plan/plan.htm.

53. For more information on Williams’ ground-breaking work, see Belinda Lanks, “The Incredible Shrinking City–Facing steep population decline, Youngstown, Ohio, is repositioning itself,” Metropolis Magazine (May 2006), http://www.metropolismag.com/May-2006/The-IncredibleShrinking-City.

less miles of asphalt roads to maintain. Derelict buildings are being razed, underground utilities cutoff, lands banked, and industrial districts rezoned; back taxes are exchanged for land stewardship and roads are ripped up or blocked out. Remaining lands are amalgamated for urban agrarian use, parkland, or water uses.51 Former industrial land uses are overlaid with new productive functions, bypassing the traditional rezoning process. Counter-strategies are modest but effective. The Mahoning River was once the sewer of Youngstown’s steel mills; now it serves as the backbone of an emerging corridor of light- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises.52 Echoing Ely’s approach to land economics, Williams’s decommissioning strategy suggests a general process of de-urbanization, where industrial un-development and land unincorporation will ultimately reduce the tax burden on citizens and maintenance burden on the public works department. “Instead of capturing its industrial past, Youngstown hopes to capitalize on its high vacancy rates and underused public spaces to become a thriving bedroom community serving Cleveland and Pittsburg both of which are 70 miles away.”53 Suburbanization may be Youngstown’s imperative. Beyond the City Paramount to the understanding of this geographic phenomenon is the reconsideration of the Old World notion of the city as the locust of urban activity. Whereas the categorically European notion of the city relies on theories of smallness, compactness, proximity, and density, the North American logic of urbanization relies upon the exigencies of scale, distance, logistics, openness, and horizontality. This counter-intuitive view was explored in greater depth by French geographer Jean Gottmann in the late 1950s. Studying the logic of a rapidly spreading pattern of urbanization across the northeastern region, Gottmann later collected his findings in a book originally titled Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States, in which he called for the rethinking of the Old World notion of the city altogether:

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Post–Fordist Landscape

Demolition of “Buick City” in Flint, Michigan, one of the largest automotive manufacturing complexes in the world, originally built in 1904, bought by General Motors, and shut down in 1999. Source: Leonard Thygesen, 1993/2002 Regionalization

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New World Jean Gottmannâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s map of the northeastern megalopolis, representing a thoroughly new and unprecedented pattern of urbanization, in complete contrast to the centric, compact configuration of the European city. Source: American Geographical Society (Dr. Herman Friis) ÂŠ1961 in Jean Gottmann, Megalopolis (New York, NY: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961) 400

“[W]e must abandon the idea of the city as a tightly settled and organized unit in which people, activities, and riches are crowded into a very small area clearly separated from its non-urban surroundings. Every city in this region spreads out far and wide around its original nucleus; it grows amidst an irregularly colloidal mixture of rural and suburban landscapes; it melts on broad fronts with other mixtures, of somewhat similar though different texture, belonging to the suburban neighborhoods of other cities.”54 Grounded in geography and economics, Gottmann’s observations characterized the Northeastern Seaboard of America from Boston to Washington as an urban landscape with a decisively distributed, horizontal structure. Anticipating Gottmann’s future work, Geddes observed in 1915: “That the expectation is not absurd that the not very distant future will see practically one vast city-line along the Atlantic Coast for five hundred miles, […] the great lakes, with the immense resources and communication which make then a Nearctic Mediterranean, have a future, which its exponents claim may became world-metropolitan in its magnitude.”55 These findings proved useful a decade later when the Greek architect and planner Constantinos Doxiadis attempted to map out the future of the Great Lakes region. Prefiguring centrally in his diagrams, the basin of the Great Lakes could be understood as an urban megastructure.56 Commissioned by the private regional electrical utility Detroit Edison Company, the project involved a three-year study on the pattern of urbanization of Great Lakes cities. Despite Doxiadis’s firm commitment to ekistics, the study of human settlements, his exclusive focus on the urban Detroit area overlooked the fate of the region. Based on double-digit growth from postwar projections, the study assumed a steady and ambitious growth for Detroit, the region, and the continent.57 Exacerbated by a worldview which characterized urbanization as a universal crisis,

54. Jean Gottmann, Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States (New York, NY: Twentieth Century Fund, 1957): 5.

55. Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to The Study of Civics (London: Williams & Norgate, 1915): 49.

56. See Constantinos A. Doxiadis, Emergence and Growth of an Urban Region: The Developing Urban Detroit Area Vol.1 (Analysis), Vol.2 (Future Alternatives), and Vol.3 (A Concept for Future Development) (Detroit, MI: Detroit Edison Company, 1967, 1970): 3–5.

57. Doxiadis, Emergence and Growth Vol. 1, 75–81.

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58. Doxiadis, Emergence and Growth Vol. 2, 91.

the results of Doxiadis’s three-volume study were skewed: downward economic trends were overlooked, sociopolitical events such as labor disputes and union riots were ignored, and the Canadian side of the Great Lakes was sometimes left blank. His plans overemphasized centralized development. For example, the 1965 plans projected populations of 15 million for Detroit, 75 million for the Great Lakes area, and 400 million for North America by the year 2000.58 Overestimates would have boded well for the electricity authority since they fed the illusion of increasing demand for electrical energy and distribution infrastructure. Reliant upon conventional measures of city census and data inventories, Doxiadis’s plan turned out to be a false positive, both regionally and nationally. Revisiting his precedent setting analysis of the northeast megalopolis, Gottmann updated his findings with startling results:

59. Jean Gottmann & Robert A. Harper ed., “Megapolitan systems around the world” in Since Megalopolis: The Urban Writings of Jean Gottmann (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990): 162–171. The discourse on regional characterization was the subject of a heated debate during a symposium in 1976 held at the City Hall of Toronto in Ontario. See Leman Group (ed.), Great Lakes Megalopolis: From Civilization to Ecumenization [Symposium Proceedings] (Ottawa, ON: Canada Ministry of State–Urban Affairs, 1976). Other noteworthy studies on the characterization of the region include Richard Florida, Tim Gulden, and Charlotta Mellander, The Rise of the Mega Region (Toronto, ON: The Martin Prosperity Institute, 2007) and Richard T.T. Forman, “Ecology of Regions,” in Land Mosaics: The Ecology of Landscapes and Regions (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 22–28.

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“Twenty years ago, the patterns of urbanization along the Great Lakes did not seem to be truly comparable in density and function with the Northeastern Seaboard megalopolis. A vast chain of metropolitan regions was forming there, especially on the American side of the lakes […] but with a looser structure and specialization in manufacturing production rather than in quaternary activities. Now a rapid evolution has taken place modifying the picture, and I am much inclined, even in my strict interpretation of the megapolitan concept, to recognize its rise here. The Canadian sector of the Great Lakes Megalopolis is probably, in the present circumstances, the most megapolitan indeed by its rapid development of transactional activities, and by its national and international role as a hinge and as an incubator. […] The Great Lakes Megalopolis is probably the largest in area of the present megapolitan systems, […] envisaged as extending from the city of Quebec, in the East to the metropolitan area of Milwaukee in the West, including along that axis such great agglomerations as Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Chicago […]

Doxiadisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dream The speculative boundaries of the growing Great Lakes megalopolis from the hand of ekistics guru-cum-world-planner Constantinos A. Doxiadis. Source: Emergence and Growth of an Urban Region (vol. 1), 1970, p.109, Fig.63 ÂŠ Constantinos and Emma Doxiadis Foundation Regionalization

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comparable to other systems in the world including megalopolis of northwestern Europe (Amsterdam to the Ruhr), the Rio de Janeiro-São Paulo complex in Brazil and the urban constellation in Mainland China centered on Shanghai.”59 But he cautioned against facile, simplistic generalizations about urban regions:60 “The megaregion, as it is becoming today, is not a larger, or bigger city. Nor is it merely an amalgamation of cities and metropolises growing together […] [this emerging pattern] is not simply urban growth on a bigger scale; it is rather a new order in the organization of space and in the division of labor within society, a more diversified and complex order, allowing for more variety and freedom.”61 GEOGRAPHIC URBANIZATION Numerous gains can be made in the collective characterization of cities as urban regions.62 Although the urbanized region of the Great Lakes might appear today as an unplanned collection of large, industrial metropolises sprawling haphazardly out of control, there is a prevailing logic to its morphologies and patterns of change. In the context of the often-discussed pattern of urban sprawl across the Great Lakes, the region has seen a net population growth as a whole, even as many Rust Belt cities have dramatically declined in size. Conditioned by a complex hydrology, this landscape of urbanization is best understood as an unfinished process, an incomplete region.63 Indicative of this nascent process are three notable structural transformations that provide evidence of ongoing spatial change: land banking, energy harvesting, and greenhouse growing. Land Banking There are between 30,000 and 50,000 brownfield sites across the Great Lakes states that pose obstacles to urban redevelopment and threats to groundwater resources. So far, local governments have been unable to manage

60. The Greek term “megalopolis” is misleading. By definition, it connotes a very large city or the simple outpour of a small city. This conceptual definition relies on the core-periphery model of urbanization, an Old World perspective that implies centralization, containment, and compactness: tenets of the Athenian Oath. For a comparison on the use of the term, see Elizabeth Baigent, “Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford and Jean Gottmann: Divisions over ‘Megalopolis,’” Progress in Human Geography 28 No.6 (2004): 687–700. 61. Jean Gottmann, “Megapolitan Systems around the World,” Ekistics 243 (February 1973): 113.

62. The exclusive economic or statistical characterization of the Great Lakes region is limiting and reductive. Saskia Sassen discusses the limitations of national-level indicators, data sets, and policies as well as the conventional categories of metropolitan centers such as housing, transportation, and population to explore the broad range of goods and services provided by the size of the megaregion: “a megaregion may well turn out to be a sufficiently large scale to optimize the benefits of containing multiple and interacting local economies.” Implied in Sassen’s statement are economic as well as ecological advantages. See “Megaregions: Benefits beyond Sharing Trains and Parking Lots?” in The Economic Geography of Megaregions, ed. Keith S. Goldfield (Princeton, NJ: Policy Research Institute for the Region, 2007). The limitations of quantitative analysis of such large-scale urbanization can be seen in the conventional planning tools used by the University of Michigan in Methods for Planning the Great Lakes MegaRegion (Ann Arbor, MI: Urban and Regional Planning Program University of Michigan, April 2006) by Elizabeth Delgado, David Epstein, Yoohyung Joo, Raju Mann, Sarah Moon, Cheryl Raleigh, Erin Rhodes, and Daniel Rutzick.

< Banking on Land

Satellite image of Flint, Michigan, home to the former “Vehicle City” and now the seat of the first land-bank authority in the state reorganizing abandoned, contaminated land with new fiscal and ecological measures associated with the Flint River watershed (running through center of the image, through the city) and Genesee County. Source: Landsat GeoCover 2008, data courtesy USGS

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63. In the absence of urban models that explain patterns of wide-spread, lowdensity development in the Greta Lakes (and beyond, for that matter), scientific literature during the past three decades has consistently referred to sprawl as the dominant spatial pattern of growth, from NASA, “Urban Sprawl in the Great Lakes Region, USA – May 31st, 2013” (www. eosnap.com/image-of-the-day/urbansprawl-in-the-great-lakes-region-usa/) to the Great Lakes Information Network, “Urban Sprawl” (www.great-lakes.net/ teach/pollution/sprawl/). Concurrently, the practice of regional planning in the second half of the twentieth century (RPAA) has historically hinged on the delineation of new political boundaries around cities to control growth. For lack of being able to direct growth or redefine regions, in lieu of their processes, the objective of the RPAA has essentially failed. Conversely, to avoid the constant and incessant need of relying on compact growth or smart growth in the wake of low-density patterns of urban development, economist Paul Krugman confirms that the rhetoric on globalization may have be overstated in “We are Not The World,” The New York Times (February 13, 1997). Here, the regionalization of urban conditions can thus be seen as a form of counter-globalization, or de-globalization as Walden Bello outlines this regional revisionism in Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy (London: Zed Books, 2005). 64. Bryan Taylor, “On the Rise: Signs of a Healthier Manufacturing Sector are Being Seen in Increased Demand and Pricing for Ferrous Scrap,” Recycling Today (May 1, 2002). 65. Joan I. Nassauer & Rebekah VanWieren, Vacant Property Now & Tomorrow; Building enduring Values with Natural Assets (Ann Arbor, MI: Sea Grant, Michigan, Genesee Institute, Genesee County Land Bank, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Michigan, 2008). 66. Ibid.

67. In Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), Deborah Fitzgerald speaks to the agricultural crisis in the Midwest during the 1980s, and the uneven pace of agricultural industrialization, agricultural farm policies, and rise of factory farms. bid.

brownfield sites or prevent blight due to the accumulated effects of subsurface contamination, outdated fiscal legislation, inflexible zoning policy, and financial accountability. Michigan is an exception and an experiment. The state has recently enacted new legislation with revisions to the 2004 Brownfield Redevelopment Financing Act and created the Genesee County Land Bank Authority to address the erosion of property values throughout the Saginaw Bay watershed in northern Michigan. Land banking involves the acquisition of abandoned and foreclosed properties through a series of unique measures: vacant lot aggregations, surface maintenance regimes, land management strategies, demolitions, reconstructions, sales, property transfers, foreclosure prevention, and alternative zoning mechanisms. Land banking along the Flint River in northern Michigan is achieving several objectives. First, it effectively reclaims isolated watershed lands and forms a hydrological network. Second, it reduces loads on existing systems and builds up the capacity for self-sustenance. Third, it elicits contemporary forms of development, stimulating emerging light industries such as mini-mills, mini-smelters, mini-farms, or micro-breweries.64 In turn, fiscal benefits are passed down from county, to municipality, to taxpayer. Today, the Land Bank Authority manages more than 4,000 properties and its flagship is the City of Flint, ironically the graveyard of General Motors and United Auto Workers.65 As the envy of real estate property management, Flint is becoming a prototypical model for land banking and of regional land reclamation across the US.66 Farming Energy Deregulation during the agricultural bubble in the 1980s led to an unusually high concentration of large agri-businesses in the region. Vertically integrated corporations took over major segments of the foodshed, across regions of production within fifteen years, ploughing half a million small independent farmers and ranchers under and emptying rural communities.67 Destroying regional economies, the predatory incorporation of the industry took over major sectors of production and distribution, from seedlings to supermarkets. Corporate dominance, which relies on economies of scale, is

Cash Crop

The Harvest Wind Farm in Bad Axe built by John Deere Energy Renewables on land leased from cooperative sugar beet farmers, the first commercial-scale public-utility wind field in Michigan. Source: ÂŠ2008 Don Coles, Great Lakes Aerial Photography Regionalization

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Under Glass

The fast-paced growth of the LeamingtonRuthven- Kingsville greenhouse region of Ontario. Photo couresy of GITC Agro 408

now being put to the real test. The rise of oil and gas prices in the 1970s, the aging of nuclear power plants and coal-fired power plants in the 1980s, and the rising of commodity prices in the 1990s are now casting doubt upon the reliance on the importation of what used to be cheap oil resources from the Middle East or polluting coal from the Appalachian range. From this shift, hybrid agrarian patterns of development are capitalizing on idle farmland to combine energy generation with crop cultivation. Sprouting from Michigan’s farmland are crops of wind turbines in rural areas on the southern shoreline of Lake Huron, with its high winds and low densities.68 Using a loophole in fiscal policy for implementation, John Deere Energy Renewables—the company that revolutionized farming in the late nineteenth century—is now building the first utility-scale wind farm in Bad Axe, Michigan.69 The 32-turbine, 52.8-megawatt commercial wind project spreads across five square miles of agricultural fields and produces enough power to supply 15,000 homes. The project is the result of a unique public–private partnership between John Deere, the Detroit Edison Company, and the county. However, the beauty of the project lies in the cooperation across this new agro-energy shed: farmers lease land to the power utility for the erection of towers, leaving the cropland of beets, beans, cereals, and grains undisturbed. In turn, counties collect revenues from building permits and turbine construction, and townships receive annual taxes. The anticipated long-term benefit is that the value of farmland will increase steadily. Another 280 wind turbines are now planned across the county over the next two decades and, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, the estimated potential of 100,000 wind turbines on the shorelines of the Great Lakes state could meet one-third of America’s power needs.70 Greenhouse Effects The most significant uses of fresh water in the Great Lakes are for power plants, drinking water, irrigation, and livestock.71 Including withdrawals for industrial production, water usage is increasing by 3 to 5 percent year-on-year due to global warming. From an agricultural perspective, however, the region is a winner in the climate change game and the Leamington-

68. Soji Adelaja and Charles McKeown, Michigan’s Offshore Wind Potential (Lansing, MI: MSU Land Policy Institute, 2008). 69. Several other aeolian developments are cropping up throughout the region. See Peter S. Goodman, “A Splash of Green for the Rust Belt,” The New York Times (November 1, 2008).

70. Texas is the lead wind energy-producing state, and California is second (Adelaja & McKeown, 2008). 71. Water used in the generation of power plants is considered as a withdrawal, even though water for turbines is returned to the basin, unlike irrigation or for livestock. Water uses and consumption vary greatly according to each lake, and state. This difference also illustrates the difference between point-source consumption (a specific power plant) and non-point source consumption (diffuse pattern of irrigation). See GLWI–Great Lakes Commission, ”Annual Report of the Great Lakes Regional Water Use Database: Representing 2011 Water Use Data,” http://glc.org/waterusedata/pdf/wateruserpt2011.pdf (accessed June 23, 2013).

> Estuarine Urbanism

A cross-sectional view of the Great Lakes displaying an urban agglomeration of cities from Duluth to Glace Bay, home to approximately 40 million people dependent on the 20 quadrillion liters of water flowing from Lake Superior to Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Source: Adapted with data from NASA–NOAA–United States Geological Survey - Statistics Canada–Geode– St. Lawrence Seaway System, 2009 Regionalization

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St St. Ma Mary's ry's River River

Michigan City

St. Joseph

Portage

Elmw wo ood Park Evanston Glenview Highland Park Des Plaines Benton Harbor North Chicago Northbrook Waukegan Libertyville Kenosha Beach Park M Pleasant Mt. Oak Creek wind Point Zion Racine Glenda ale e Shorewood Milwaukee Muskegon Port Wahsington Sheboygan Grafton Ludington Manitowoc Northbay Sturgeon Bay Green Bay Northport Suamico Oconoto Traverse City Sturgeon Bay Marquette Elk Rapids Marinette Munising Charlevoix Escanaba Manistique

Soo Locks

Mackinaw City Wawa Sault Ste Marie Saint Ignace

Waukegan

Lake Huron

229m deep 176.0m asl a

173.0m 173 0m asl

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Lake Ontario

74.0m 74 0m asl

244m deep

Cornwall

South Lancaster

International Rapids Section: Iroquois, Eisenhower, Snell Locks

Lake Erie

Ogdensburg Prescott Waddington Morrisburg Massena

Brockville

De Tour City Rogers City Posen Scotch Block Alpena Sauble Beach Ossineke Harrisville Au Gres South Bruce Peninsula East Towas Oscada Southampton Saugeen Shores Point Elgin Kincardine Point Clark Saginaw Bay City Goderich Port Austin Port Sanilac Caseville Lambton Shores Grand Bend Port Hope Harbor Beach Highland Glen St. Clair River Lexington Port Huron Sarnia Lake St. Clair Sterling Heights Grosse Poin nt Park Port Huron Detroit River Warren St. Clair Marine City Trenton Detroit Clinton Township C Harper Woods River Rouge Windsor Lincoln Park St. Cla airr Shores Ecorse Monroe Wyandott Toledo Port ClintonOregon Huron Avon Lake Sandusky Westlake Lorain Clevelamd Lakewood Blenheim Euclid Willowick Ridgetown Vermillion Mentor Madison Painesville Ashtabula Conneaut Girard Port Stanley Fairview Northeast Northwest Harbor Creek Erie Port Dover Nanticoke Westfield Fredonia Dunkirk Brocton Port Colborne Pineridge Silvercreek Hamburg Lackawanna Blasdell Buffalo Grand Island West Seneca Niagara Cheektowaga Niagara Falls Tonawanda Welland Canal Section Locks 1-8 Stoney Creek St. Catharines by Hamilton Grimsby Vineland Station n Brampton Oakville Burlington Vinemount Mississauga g Toronto Whitby Vaughan Ajax Pickering Clarington Markham Richmond Hill Oshawa Bowmanville Port Hope Coburg Irondequoit Rochester Webster Trenton Sodus Fair Haven Picton Oswego Amherst Island Kingston Howe Island Eastview Cape Vincent Gananoque Clayton Thousand Islands Section

Lake Superior

Gary Chesterton East Chicago Glenview Cicero Oak Park Oak Lawn Chicago

Calumet

Duluth

Arnold Riverview Superior Ashland Silver Bay Beaver Bay Bayfield Grand Maraiss Thunder Bay Two Harbors Beck Houghton New Buffalo

600 0.0

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St. Lewis

Cooks Harbor

Port-au-Choix

Côte-Nord-du-Golfe-du-Saint-Laurent Lark Harbor

Cap Saint-George

Glace Bay

Cheticamp

Morell Havre Boucher Inverness

North Rustico Mt. Stewart

Moisie Gaspé Percé Havre-Saint-Pierre Tignish Alberton

Sept-Îles Marsoui Mont-Saint-Pierre

Port-Cartier

Saint-Anne-des-Monts

Baie-Trinite Cap Chat

6.0m asl

Godbout

Montréal

Lachine Section: St. Lambert and Côte Ste. Catherine Locks

Saint Zotique Brossard Verdun Boucherville Longueuil St. Léonard Charlemagne Repentigny Berthierville Verchères Sorel Contrecoeur Lavaltrie Pierreville Louise-Ville Maskinongé Nicolet Port Saint-François Trois-Rivières St. Gregoire Bécancour Trois-Rivieres Ouest Cap-de-Madeleine Saint-Pierre-les-Becquets Portneuf Donnaconna Saint-Nicholas Neuville St. Rédempteur Sa Saint-Romuald L’Ancienne-Lorette Qu uébec City Charlesbourg Ile d’Orléans Lévis Sillery Ch hâteau Richer Sainte-Pétronille Les Eboulements La Pocatière Saint-Pascal Rivière-du-Loup Montmagny L’Isle Verte Trois-Pistoles Les Escoumins Portneuf-sur-mer Rimouski Pointe-aux-Outardes Baie Comeau

Saint Timothy Pointe-Claire Vaudreuil Dorion

Lake St. Francis Huntingdon South Soulanges Section Lower and Upper Beauhamois Locks

Salaberry-de-Valleyfield Lake St. Louis Châteauguay g Laval L’Île Perrôt

Estuarine Urbanization

Spanning more than 1,200 kilometers, the distribution of cities, towns, and communities across the five major water bodies of the Great Lakes with more than 30 million people who share the same water. Diagram: OPSYS

St. Lawrence River

89m deep 0.0 - 3.0m asl

Honguerdo Passage

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309m deep

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Laurentian Channel 180 - 550m deep

Cabot Strait 466m deep

6,492m deep

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PPLY TAPPING

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CATSKILL L AQUEDU AQ UCT U

Amounts of water transferred in billions of cubic mettres a year

ATLA A ANTIC IC OCEA EAN

Main canals and aquaducts Routes for main continental transfer projectss

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New Orleans ans

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< Pipe Dreams

Great Lakes water diversions in the context of current and future inter-basin projects across North America, the source of looming cross-regional politics along the longest, most undisputed border in the world. Source: Frédéric Lasserre, Continental massive water diversions. Present infrastructure (2007) and main projects, 1951-2001. Adapted by F. Lasserre from Frédéric Lasserre, Major Water Transfers: Tools of Development or Instruments of Power (University of Québec, 2005) and Monde Diplomatique (March 2005)

72. For a comprehensive regional analysis, see Planscape and Regional Analytics, Greenhouses Grow Ontario: An Economic Impact Study of the Greenhouse Industry in Ontario (Grimsby, ON: The Ontario Greenhouse Alliance, 2006).

73. Agricultural Economics Research Institute (AERI), Floriculture Worldwide: Trade and Consumption Patterns–The Netherlands (2007), www.agrsci.unibo.it/wchr/wc1/ degroot.html. 74. Slow and subtle shifts are implied in this systemic convergence, putting into question the hegemony of speed in modern industrial production. From mining to agriculture to construction, the acceleration of industrial processes essentially underpinned modernity in the twentieth century. The history of this invisible presence is being countered today by the combined paradigms of pace, synergy, and synchronicity that privilege cooperations and interrelationships, whose developments require the active and sustained engagement of long-term, opportunistic partnerships between private and public sectors. See Teresa Brennan, Exhausting Modernity: Grounds for a New Economy (London: Routledge, 2000). 75. The development of carbohydrate economies and the rise of renewable resource industries has its antecedents. Dating back to the turn of the nineteenth century, before the advent of alcohol prohibition and well before the supremacy of southern U.S. oil barons, vegetal fuel sources such as hemp, soy, or corn were widely publicized by Henry T. Ford and Rudolf Diesel. See Greg Pahl, Biodiesel: Growing a New Energy Economy (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2006). 414

Kingsville area is at the forefront. Located in Ontario, on the north shore of Lake Erie along the 42nd Parallel, the “Tomato Capital of Canada” is now the leading greenhouse region in North America with the highest rate of start-ups in Canada, doubling between 2000 and 2005 in the Niagara region alone. Growers of the principal crops of tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers are diversifying into tender fruits, vine-ripened vegetables, and specialty flowers cultivated in controlled hydroponic conditions which in turn limit pesticide inputs and runoff into nearby Lake Erie.72 Arable lands, increasingly warm weather, and an abundance of freshwater and sunlight are further contributing to the diversification of its cultures. With $1 billion in farm gate value, Leamington’s greenhouse acreage exceeds that of the entire U.S. greenhouse industry. This emergent agro-economy follows the blossoming of other bio-industries across the Great Lakes, including viticulture (wine-making and grapevine crops), silviculture (timberlands and dimensional lumber), and floriculture (greenhouses and nurseries). Bio-industries are extremely competitive in comparison to conventional heavy industry. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, floriculture—including plants for bioremediation and bioengineering—has been outpacing all other major commodity sectors in sales growth since the early 1990s.73 Watershed as Infrastructure The concurrent development of land banks, wind farms, and greenhouses demonstrate the potential of new strategies that engage the systemic integration of urban infrastructure with biophysical resources. As countermeasures to the predominant challenges of the Great Lakes region, including water pollution, land abandonment, and the farming slump, these strategies usher in an era of regional economic regeneration where large centralized massproduction industries are being supplanted by distributed, networked patterns of production, cultivation, and management.74 Although the long-term effects of this shift have yet to be understood, what remains clear is that the transition from a globally based carbon economy to a regionally-based carbohydrate ecology and economy is underway.75 Opening new territories for renewal and new surfaces

Bodies, Commons, Partitions

Geopolitical map of the international territorial waters layered with state-provincialcounty jurisdictions across the transnational watershed boundary of the Great Lakes region. Diagram: OPSYS adapted with data from International Joint Commission - United States Geological Surveyâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Environment Canada Regionalization

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for occupation across the region, these developments demonstrate the capability of regional landscape strategies to address several challenges of various complexities simultaneously. This is where design becomes instrumental, moving across varying scales of intervention from planning to engineering, transcending conventional boundaries of private and public interests. From this vantage point, the new design imperatives are found in the basic processes and essential services that support urbanization, including the integrated ecologies of water, energy, food, mobility, and waste, which have traditionally been treated as separate components or separate districts in municipal planning. Through the bundling of multiple ecological services, strategies can achieve greater economies and ecologies of scale.76,77 Forming a geographic field, these urban–regional strategies can be considered synergistic, self-perpetuating, and selfmaintaining. It is at this precise moment that the region becomes infrastructural.78

< Super-Regional Urbanization

Geospatial context of the Great Lakes with the concentrations and extents of urban patterns across the Americas. Diagram: OPSYS, with data from NASA–United States Geological Survey: 2008 76. See David C. Schneider, “The Rise of the Concept of Scale in Ecology,” BioScience 51 No.7 (2001): 545–553. 77. See Elmar Schlich and Ulla Fleissner, “The Ecology of Scale: Assessment of Regional Turnover and Comparison with Global Food,” The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 10 No.3 (2005), http://glc.org/waterusedata/pdf/wateruserpt2011.pdf. 78. See “Landscape as Infrastructure” in this volume.

Urban Region as Landscape Emerging from a long, dark history as the sewer of North America, the Great Lakes region may be understood as a macrocosm of change, a case study in the historical transformation of the continent. Land transformations during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries present compelling evidence that, as a large, complex, collective system of biophysical and hydrodynamic processes, the Great Lakes effectively preconditions industrial operations and sustains urban economies. Retroactively, the multiple characterizations of the Great Lakes as a region reveal an underlying landscape of persistent geoeconomic and biophysical significance that warrants more depth and greater consideration for the future. Economically, the region ranks second in the world with a $4.6-trillion gross regional product. It represents two-thirds of North America’s purchasing power, rivaled only by the United States as a whole and larger than the economies of Japan, China, Germany, and the UK.79 Demographically, the 45 million people who live and work in the region represent 30 percent of the combined Canadian-American population. Geographically, the population is urban and

79. Figures were reported by the Brookings Institution, originally compiled by World Business Chicago (2009): 2–11, whose comparative data is based on national GDP figures issued by the World Bank. See John C. Austin, Britany Affolter-Caine and Elaine Dezenski, The Vital Connection: Reclaiming Great Lakes Economic Leadership in the Binational U.S.-Canadian Region, March 2008 Report (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2008).

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decentralized, bordering a coastline of more than 15,000 kilometers. Politically, the region spans eight states and one province, including 447 counties located in two different countries sharing the longest, least-disputed border in the world. Hydrologically, the population draws on a nearly 500,000 square-kilometer watershed—ten times the size of the Netherlands or Belgium—as its sole source of fresh water. The urban economy of the Great Lakes is thus inseparable from its Nearctic ecology. 80. See Peter Annin, The Great Lakes Water Wars (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006).

81. See Great Lakes Water Institute, “Great Lakes Water Balance,” www.glwi.uwm.edu/ ourwaters/documents/GreatLakesWaterBalanceBWeb.pdf.

82. See Stephan Schmidt and Ralph Buehler, “The Planning Process in the US and Germany: A Comparative Analysis,” International Planning Studies 12 No.1 (2007): 55–75.

83. The failure of colonial-style eradication to subdue more than a hundred species of exotic plants, fish, and algae in the Great Lakes testifies to the persistence and sustainability of global trans-regional ecological flows. See David Shaper, “Asian Carp: Can't Beat Them? Eat Them.” National Public Radio (July 12, 2006).

84. According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and USGS which references Environment Canada, sea lamprey were first “observed” in Lake Ontario in the early 1800s to 1830s. When the Welland Canal at Niagara Falls was built in 1829, then expanded in 1919, a very important bypass was made for the “extension of the range” and upstream spread of lampreys. The USGS outlines this process of introduction in one of its fact sheets on Non-indigenous Aquatic Species, http://nas.er.usgs.gov/ queries/factsheet.aspx?SpeciesID=836.

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Notwithstanding the demand for staple resources of lumber, taconite, and aggregates, the projected 3 to 5 percent population increase is an indicator that the region will continue to attract considerable domestic and foreign interest in the form of immigration and investment. However, due to the scale of processes and range of operations that the region can support, its ecology will be, as it always has been, an ongoing setting for conflicts and contradictions.80 In contrast to the regionalism of the 1960s and 1970s which sought to reconcile differences and make cohesive what was inside the region, contemporary characterization of the process of regionalization provides room for complexity and contradiction, association and disconnection. With increased diversions and excess abstractions, reserves of fresh water will be under strain as consumption continues to exceed replenishment by a factor of 6 to 9;81 water politics will be at the epicenter of these challenges. Nevertheless, ideological debates will have to yield to a more factual and sophisticated discourse.82 Historical oppositions between basic concepts—city vs. country, low-density vs. highdensity, local vs. global, industry vs. agriculture, native vs. exotic—are quickly becoming obsolete in favor of new complexities, new formulations, and new synergies.83 Whether we refer to the spread of sea lampreys in the first half of the twentieth century84 or the annual restocking of 4 million fish in Lake Ontario or the more than one hundred introduced species found across the Great Lakes today, the transmutation of the ecology of the Great Lakes is anything but natural, nor can we revert to conventional means of natural resource conservation. Regionalization requires us to move beyond the conventions of conservation and preservation, which entail the

Brave New Ecology

A bighead carp caught in the upper reaches of the Mississippi River. Introduced to fish farms in America during the 1830s and migrating north to the Great Lakes, this vigorous species thrives in heavily polluted waters and can jump up to 10 feet out of the water. The species shown here, a bighead carp, weighed 92.5 pounds, was 62-inches-long and had a 30-inch girth, establishing a new world record. Source: Darin Opel, Illinois Bowfishers Club, 2008 Regionalization

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Extra-National Economy

Comparative view of the GDP (gross domestic product, USD billions) of the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence region in comparison to the top twenty economies across the world. Diagram: OPSYS adapted from World Bank–World Business Chicago– World Economic Forum, 2011 420

separation between development and resource areas, to focus on the expansion and prolongation of living systems as prime objectives of design in conjunction with extra-national forces.85 Whether by planning, policy, or engineering, this is the contemporary regional design imperative. The formation of environmental protection agencies, watershed conservation authorities, and remedial action plans, at the close of the twentieth century are some of the initial drivers of this current change, though considerable efforts are required to fully exploit this paradigm shift in the present century. The spaces and slippages between states and systems, between political units and hydrological basins, will necessarily have to yield and negotiate alternating conflicts at times, while learning to maximize and capitalize on shared zones. The de-territorialization of the state/system dichotomy thus opens a lens on urban regions that enters into contemporary society, no longer as subdivision, container, or “territory” as Mumford associated,86 but as landscape which “challenges the entrenched geographical assumptions of mainstream approaches to state space.”87 Simultaneously, it acknowledges the pervasiveness of globalization but recognizes its geopolitical unevenness, inequality, and incompleteness. As such, in this variegated geopolitical terrain, globalization may potentially be better understood as a “myth,” and that all “globalization is about regionalization,”88 constantly moving across seemingly fixed borders. The refocusing on new regions and new territorialities, therefore relies on the rescaling and redrawing of biophysical substructures in tandem with geoeconomic super-structures. As dynamic configurations and active morphologies, the boundaries of surface waters, the network of biotopes, the bathymetry of lake bottoms, the contours of cities, the attendant infrastructures, and the flow of resources around the Great Lakes are fundamental to this shifting optic. As measures of intelligence, the mapping of inter-regional flows and extra-political reciprocities provide a base to register and effect change over time. Instead of a single, bounded, closed, homogeneous environment,89 the regionalization of the Great Lakes can cast light on the network of endogenous (internal) and exogenous (external) processes at work.90 When

85. Regionalism should not and cannot be solely based on environmental determinism, nor on conventional conservatism. The comparison of three historical views on resource conservation is informative. On one level, there is a view sponsored by Garrett Hardin in his “Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (13 December 1968): 1243-1248, that calls for the public coordination and management of resources as a commonwealth. On another more controversial level, conservation and management of resources was put into question by Henry Ford who claimed that “conserving our natural resources by withdrawing them from use is not a service to the community. That is holding to the old theory that a thing is more important than a man. Our natural resources are ample for all our present needs. We do not have to bother about them as resources. What we have to bother about is the waste of human labour.” See Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther, Today and Tomorrow (London: William Heinemann, 1926): 90. On another more extreme level, Ayn Rand argued: “contrary to the 'argument from scarcity,' if you want to make a 'limited' resource available to the whole people, make it private property and throw it on a free, open market.” See Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York, NY: Signet. Rand, 1967): 134. 86. In total contrast to the use of territory and territories in the Old World (Europe), which speak to extra-state or non-state spaces geographies, the use of territory in the New World (Americas) carries the connotation of containment and control by a state or government. In The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts in America 1865-1895, Lewis Mumford makes this difference, while elucidating the urban undertone of landscape as a regional subject: “The settlement of America was a large-scale mushroom hunt: in the pursuit of a single object, urban sites, coal mines, gold, or oil, every other attribute of the landscape was neglected. Thoreau concentrated on the totality of the natural environment—which, one may say almost without paradox, was the part that his contemporaries had forgotten. […] In Thoreau, the landscape was at last entering into the American's consciousness no longer as potential quarter sections, no longer as 'territory': dedicated to a republican form of government, but as an inner treasure— one thing for the mountain man, and other for the river man, and third for the beach man.” See Mumford's “The Renewal of Landscape,” in The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts in America 1865-1895

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(New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1931): 67–69. 87. Neil Brenner, Bob Jessop, Martin Jones, and Gordon MacLeod, “Introduction: State Space in Question” in State/Space (London: Blackwell Publishers, 2003): 1. 88. Karl Moore and Alan Rugman in “Globalization is about Regionalization,” McGill International Review (Fall 2005): 27, 30. Credited with the popularization of the term “globalization,” economist Theodore Levitt, qualifies that, from an economic perspective, “the globalization of markets […] contains a good deal of exaggeration.” Globalization, in Levitt's view, has not resulted the irrevocable homogenization effect which it is often vilified for, but that any business must be thinking on a global scale in order to remain regionally competitive. See Theodore Levitt, “The Globalization of Markets,” Harvard Business Review (May/June 1983): 92. 89. Rarely, if ever, are the Great Lakes portrayed in connection with the St. Lawrence. One look at the U.S. EPA website shows this fact graphically: http://epa. gov/greatlakes/. This failure to recognize the system of the Great Lakes as interconnected, is attributable to the presence of the international border, since most of the St. Lawrence River lies on one side of the Canada/US border than the other. This is a small, clear, and obvious example of how political nation–state boundaries can affect and sometimes skew the perception of bodies of water at extremely large scales. So extensive are these misperceptions, they are often imperceptible and rarely detected. For example, the Great Lakes are seen historically as a navigation system, dedicated exclusively to shipping and movement. Industrial designations such as shipping canals, harbors, and turning basins, have created in the public imagination the notion of the Great Lakes as a navigation system, almost exclusively. Yet, physically, it may seem open to access and movement, but this historic, navigationally based view is closed-minded, which only illustrates one dimension of the Great Lakes, at the expense of many others. 90. Since $120 billion has been spent on management of invasive and alien species in the US alone, the understanding of endogenous and exogenous processes is critical. The concept of what is alien, invasive, or nonnative is entirely based on the strict definition of what is native and nonnative, within a closed-bounded system. By seeing the different regions, historic and

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viewed telescopically at different resolutions and scales, across different times, and multiple boundaries, the region can then be understood as a system of systems.91 In this expanded field, the regionalization of design practice can consequently transcend conventional spatial boundaries, disciplinary territories, and political ideologies. Design can be liberated from the straitjacket of shortsighted bureaucratic time scales and the confinement of jurisdictional site boundaries. Capitalizing on geopolitical cleavages, design can unearth and propose mutual, cooperative, interdependent, and synergistic strategies at large scales that spin off inter-regionally. Consequently, design can be informed by continental geography and global ecologies and by the superintendence of time. The physiographic and political regionalization of urban areas thus moves beyond that of mere background for planning or mere unit of development. As planning tactic and design strategy, regionalization becomes instrumental and infrastructural, setting the precedent for landscape reclamation and landscape urbanization across the continent and other industrialized regions of the world, from the Americas to Asia to Africa. From the 40 million acres of cutover land to the management of more than 20 quadrillion liters of fresh water in its watershed, the engagement of the Great Lakes as a complex landscape is pressing. If freshwater is the oil of the twenty-first century, then the agency of urban regions—as new geographies of contemporary urbanization where political states, technological infrastructures, and natural systems overlap—is and will continue to be of critical and contemporary significance, globally.

Originally published as “Regionalisation: Probing the urban landscape of the Great Lakes Region” in JoLA - Journal of Landscape Architecture (Fall 2010): 6–23.

contemporary, along with its many interpretations, discussions about keeping nonnative exotic species are unnecessary since history shows that biological invasions, from an urban perspective, are entirely natural. The failure is not recognizing them as such, and instead trying to fight them. What should be done is to consider that these processes, whether they are internal (native, endogenous) or external (exotic, nonnative, exogenous), should be designed as opposed to merely trying to abate them. 91. This statement is owed to American sociologist Howard W. Odum, one of the pioneers of twentieth-century regionalism in America: “The significance of regionalism as the key to equilibrium is reflected in an extraordinary range of situations, such as the conflict between nationalism and internationalism, between sectionalism and federalism, and the imbalance between agrarian and urban life, between agriculture and industry, between individuation and socialization in governmental trends, between a quantity of civilization of standardizing forces and a quality world, between machines and men.” See Howard W. Odum and Harry Estill Moore, American Regionalism (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1938): 5.

> Coastal Contraflow

Historic paths of hurricane and subtropical storms from 1857–2011, juxtaposed with stratregic patterns of evacuation from landfall regions along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico toward designated twin cities further inland. Diagram: OPSYS Regionalization

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Conclusion

Increasingly, the agency of ecology is coming into focus as a strategy and system in the design of urban infrastructures and performance of urban economies.1 This contemporary change is largely attributable to the massive transition from industrialization to urbanization worldwide in the past century, made visible by three cumulative shifts: the rise of environmental concerns since the 1970s, the crisis of public works planning in the 1980s, and the erosion of post-war engineered structures from the 1990s onward, whose legacy total more than 2.2 trillion dollars in urgently needed reinvestment.2,3 Contributing to the rising influence of the field of landscape, this transition is further amplified by the effects of population pressures such as regional dispersal, transnational migration, geopolitical borders, and capital flows, as well as from environmental pressures such as carbon consumption, atmospheric emissions, chemical effluents, groundwater quality, floods, droughts, sea level rise, soaring energy costs, and rising food prices. Although tremendous attention has been given to the magnitude of these challenges, the scale and frequency of infrastructural disasters and technological accidents continues to rise at an alarming rate. The upward sloping timeline of events in the past three decades is the most blatant indicator: sudden power outages in the Northeast, rolling blackouts in the Southwest, bridge collapses in the Midwest, as well as oil spills, hurricanes, and levee breaks along the Gulf Coast.4 Infrastructural Ecologies

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< Urban Hazards The devastating effects of Hurricane Ike on the shoreline of the Gulf Coast in 2008 near Houston-Galveston, Texas, the third most costly storm event in the history of the US. Source: Aerial photograph geo-C25883793 of Texas coast following landfall of Hurricane Ike. Texas, Galveston. September 14, 2008. Credit: NOAA/ NOS/National Geodetic Survey/Remote Sensing Division; NOAA/NOS/NGS

Hurricane Alley Historic paths of major storm events since 1851 forming across the Atlantic Ocean, a climatic pattern responsible for an average of thirteen hurricanes each year (including Katrina, Ike, and Andrew). Diagram: OPSYS

These growing incidences are exacerbated by outmoded patterns of land development upheld by the spread of standardized, end-of-pipe engineering; Euclidean land use zoning; and uncoordinated, reactionary planning. The industrial structure of cities today—vertical, centralized, and inflexible—further explains the unchecked and unseen dependence on centralized systems of water extraction, waste landfilling, oil import, food processing, soil depletion, and uniform transportation at the expense of pre-urban, pre-industrial endowments of biophysical resources.5 Consequently, we have recently begun to better understand how Fordist modes of production and Taylorist principles of scientific management have oversimplified the ecology of urban economies and underplayed the social role of urban infrastructures, by way of marginalizing and suppressing the living, biophysical systems. At the center of this ecological divide are the historic practices of engineering and planning that operated well into the twentieth century, under the tenets of efficiency and control through centralization. Often considered in isolation, the disparate and disastrous events that mark the end of the twentieth century index the inherent effects of ecological complexity of urbanization associated with contemporary technologies, biophysical systems, climate change, regulatory frameworks, public works management, and population dynamics. Yet, despite infrastructural overload and chronic underfunding, demand for mass-housing, mass-mobility, and mass-communications persists. Ironically, the horizontal spread of low-rise urban populations continues.6 Stemming from the overexertion of civil engineering7 and inertia of urban planning8 visà-vis the pace of urban change,9 and coupled with the exhaustion of the environmental lobby,10 there is an urgent need for the rethinking of current models of city building toward rd

Conclusion

contemporary patterns of spatial distribution that meet new and existing demands with current resources. Putting into question the conventional capacities of any single discipline to address the magnitude of urban challenges and ecological complexities today, this essay proposes the compound, collaborative formulation of landscape infrastructure as a contemporary field of practice that addresses the flows of urban economies and the dynamics of planetary ecologies. To accomplish this objective, this essay outlines prevailing paradigms in the scientific disciplines of engineering and planning, and how they conditioned cities as a socio-technological problem through measures of control and efficiency. A brief survey of shifts that occurred during the proto-urbanization of North America in the twentieth century is brought forth to redefine the conventional notion of urban infrastructure and expand it as a landscape of systems, services, scales, resources, flows, processes, and dynamics that support and cultivate urban economies. In light of the massive infrastructural transformation occurring worldwide, the essay concludes with a series of strategies and projections that reclaim the landscape of urban infrastructure along with pragmatic and immediate advantages for contemporary practice.11

MEASURES AND METRICS Infrastructure has grown in complexity vis-Ă -vis the current urbanization of the world. It is both a response to, and generator of horizontal forms of development, in part due to the transnational distribution of technologies and techniques of urban engineering. Although it is often relegated to mere background or unseen substructure of urban development, infrastructure is the interface by which we interact with the biological and technological world. However banal they are, taps, pipes, wires, sewers, sidewalks, curbs, roads, verges, ditches, Infrastructural Ecologies

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medians, spans, pylons, highways, landings, landfills, tunnels, power plants, treatment plants, and airports are the technological spacesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the hardwareâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that composes the urban world. Simultaneously, urban infrastructure is both site and system. It is designed, constructed, and continuously reconstructed. While we may argue on how it actually works, or sometimes how it works even too well, its influence has exerted itself most often to the point of invisibility, frequently obscuring the connection with the software of social environments and biophysical resources. Rarely do we actually see the entire watershed that supplies the water we drink and bathe in, nor do we see the subsurface soils that we walk on, underling roads and regions, nor do we see the power of a coal mine from a power plant that generates the electricity when we turn the lights on. Central to the reconsideration of urban infrastructure are the historic roles that civil engineering and urban planning have played as the most prominent city building professions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As twin disciplines, they have both exercised tremendous influence in the shape of cities and urban regions.12 To begin, a summary of baseline principles of urban planning and civil engineering is instructive: A. Standardization Defined as the singularity of infrastructure as a linear and closed system, designed exclusively on efficiency and economy. The normalization of dynamic systems and externalization of other organic systems are effectively reduced to use-value functions, utility efficiencies, and mechanical operations.13 Standards are therefore developed for purposes of maintenance and self-preservation as opposed to management, advancement, and modernization.14

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Conclusion

Horizontal Urbanization View of the expanding urban region of the Greater Toronto area showing the logistics zone for the Pearson International Airport lining Highway 40, with fog rising from the forest ravines of the Etobicoke-Mimico creeks watershed. Photo: Pierre BĂŠlanger

B. Monofunctionality The singularity of land uses leads to economic, ecological, and sometimes social segregation. Dynamic systems become parceled and closed off, externalizing the larger set of biophysical and socioeconomic services that intrinsically depend upon their interconnectivity to function. Excessive regulation of land use has further stifled economic development and, despite their original intention, contributed to patterns of low-density urban development.15 C. Permanence As well as they appear to work, standardized infrastructures and mono-functional land use zoning are relatively inflexible to change16 while demonstrating a considerable level of fragility toward unexpected hazards, accidents, and disasters. Through the illusion of safety and certainty created by specialization and standardization, centralized infrastructure and dense aggregations, such as the reliance on one specific type of energy source or a centralized water distribution system, for example, often exposes large populations to mass vulnerabilities or high risks.17 Notwithstanding the scale of their influence, civil engineering and urban planning have respectively formed the functional architecture and regulatory framework which underlies the legislative governance and physical construction of cities today. Yet, over time, the implementation of legal controls and standards of efficiency has gradually contributed to the rigid, inflexible, and detached nature of cities from greater landscape ecologies and regional climates. As Gene Moriarty discusses in The Engineering Project, â&#x20AC;&#x153;the modern engineering enterprise is primarily a colonizing project,â&#x20AC;? both self-aggrandizing and totalizing.18

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Infrastructural Squatting A 5-kilometer long, extra-legal settlement along the public right-of-way of Quezon Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Republic Avenue, within metropolitan Manila in the Philippines, where road development was formerly planned. Source: Google Earth, Image ÂŠ2014 DigitalGlobe

From Engineering to Design Through the hegemony of efficiency and scientific positivism,19 civil engineering has become central to the design of urban environments as the premier design service discipline.20 How it attained this unwavering status is remarkable, given how very little attention the profession or its parent associations have given to social conditions, political ideologies, or theoretical discourses. The relative absence of manifestos alone is both surprising and suspect. Compared to other fields of design such as architecture, urban design, the social sciences, and regional planning which are arguably overtheorized,21 civil engineering has made leaps and bounds by literally operating without theory. In the absence of critical discourse,22 quantitative logic and numerical precision have become the foundations for achieving accuracy, efficiency, and safety. Since the costs of civil engineering services represent less than 1 percent of the lifecycle cost of a project, it is rather difficult to contest the economic value of these services from an investment standpoint.23 However central this logic may be, its foundation also relies on the isolation of variables and the exclusion of less-quantifiable and more complex information through reductionism and externalization of dynamic forces. Postâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Taylorism The decontextualization of urban infrastructure is important and critical to recognize as an overlooked side effect of engineering techniques, and to a certain extent, planning policies. Underlying this condition are linear notions of utility and efficiency stemming from technological determinism and technocratic control. Hierarchical methods of management and vertically oriented administration, borne from the late nineteenth-century era of Taylorist industrial principles of scientific management,24 were premised on the improvement of labor production through rationality, numerical logic, and standardization of production processes and workflows. Central to industrial economies were notions of planning, predictability, cen434

Conclusion

tralization, and control; principles that influenced the development of factories, production processes, and even military strategies, during the rise of mechanization, automation, and Fordist methods of mass-production at the beginning of the twentieth century. While scientific, centralized approaches to management and manufacturing resulted in a series of short-term and direct economic gains, in the long term, it excluded other socioenvironmental factors that often predated and preconditioned industrial economies: the pre-industrial ecology of resources, the immediate impacts of large infrastructural networks, mixed cultures of labor organizations and family structures, soft social innovations, post-production wastes, regional economic change, and international outsourcing. This practice has more recently been challenged by the disastrous effects of maintenance deferrals, deregulatory frameworks, and growing risks made visible by bridge collapses, and major chemical spills. Events such as the sudden collapse of I-35W Bridge in 2007 on the Mississippi River or the fly ash slurry spill in 2008 at the Kingston Fossil Plant, have demonstrated the limits of engineered controls, and the shortcomings of rational efficiency. The consequences of its overexertion have now made apparent the impermanence and limited lifespan of infrastructure. In response to these externalities, a postâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Taylorist discourse has emerged in the past decades both as a critique of the tenets of efficiency and control, as well as catalyst for decentralized ecological strategies that move beyond engineering and planning. In an attempt to bridge the gap between economy and ecology, the potential for more networked patterns of spatial distribution and more decentralized methods of decision-making is radically changing the landscape of urban economies and production: more diverse and more flexible modes of production, higher quality services featuring just-in-time production, business process Infrastructural Ecologies

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re-engineering, call centers, simultaneous engineering, and asynchronous teamwork across different networks.25,26 Infrastructural Apartheid Towards the rereading of urban infrastructure and professional disciplines, common assumptions about sustainability need to be challenged. Principles of city building such as density and compactness,27 growth and permanence,28 and stability and security29 have been so far unchecked and should be rethought. Often carrying moralistic or ideological overtones, these notions are questionable in terms of their value as governing principles in design. At their core, these principles are rooted in traditions of military engineering and wartime planning.30 For example, it is crucial to understand that the discipline of civil engineering emerged from the glut of military engineers graduating from West Point during a prolonged period of peace at the end of the nineteenth century.31 In traditions of military engineering, defense imperatives led to the delineation of biophysical environments along clear divisions between dry and wet land or high and low ground. Traditions in water management, topographic earthworks, centralized fortifications, and flood control are some of the most important contributions passed down by French military to techniques of civil engineering, underpinning the work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.32 Although engineering practices may command a sense of military-like authority, the unwavering adherence to quantitative calculation and hierarchical control has its limitations. It overlooks the social and ecological dimensions that often lie outside the bounds, edges, scopes, and peripheries of its facilities. For all of its accuracy and precision, civil engineering is handicapped by an exclusive reliance on efficiency at the expense of other, equally important social, spatial, and ecological factors. The natural smoothness and seamlessness of Western infrastructureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;whether the expansion of a highway or the diversion of a riverâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;questions the neutrality of civil engineering. In several parts 436

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Infrastructural Apartheid Aerial view of the All-American Canal, the largest irrigation canal in the world, along the U.S.-Mexico border. The canal diverts water westward from the Colorado River towards California’s Imperial Valley, away from the Mexicali Valley and the Gulf of California. Source: ©2000 NASA/GSFC/ METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

of the world, infrastructures ranging from roads and bridges to airports and power plants are often implemented and strategically located to serve a small, powerful elite at the expense of a larger, often poorer majority.33 Effects of infrastructure works that divide as much as they connect are abound: the All-American Canal along the US-Mexico border, the Republic Avenue slums in Manila, the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos, the Johannesburg Ring Road that bypasses Black townships, and Route 443 in the Israeli West Bank closed off to Palestinians34 are a few samples of the physical divides created by urban infrastructures. Like the cordon sanitaire of French imperialism, the unintended consequences of these infrastructures of occupation or spaces of containment have resulted in forms of friction, spatial segregation, cultural apartheid, social marginalization, cultural repression35 as Marxist geographer David Harvey has termed, and in some cases, civil strife.

SHIFTS AND PROCESSES The historic lack of engagement of infrastructure as a territory of design—a culture that prides itself on novelty, exceptionalism, and idealism36—stems primarily from infrastructure's banality. Traditionally, urban design has concentrated on the design of streets, blocks, and buildings, as the locus of urban development while overlooking the potential of infrastructure as a great enabler, the glue of urbanization.37 Decentralization In the past century, increasing demands for urban services of transportation and mobility have originated from the expansion of cities on their periphery, where more than 60 percent of the European and more than 80 percent of the American population live today.38 Ever since the exhaustion of the City Beautiful Movement at the end of the nineteenth-century Infrastructural Ecologies

Ever

Dezoning Demolition of GM’s Fisher automotive body plant in Euclid, Ohio, to make way for new expanding institutional campuses and business parks in the suburbs of Cleveland in the vicinity of Lake Erie. Photo: ©2008 Pierre Bélanger

industrial revolution,39 the population explosion that soon followed—the urban bomb—radically transformed the making of cities. Planning in America emerged from an infrastructural boom during a period when cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York were doubling and tripling in population.40 Gangs were rampant; motorization was just on the horizon, but more importantly, the dramatic rise in urban populations during the 1920s marked a turning point. For the first time in America’s history, U.S. demographers recorded the official transition from rural to industrial to urban economies which occurred in less than a century.41 More than 50 percent of its population lived in urban areas. Notwithstanding crime and congestion, the concurrent demands for drinking water, waste management, energy generation, food distribution, and transportation corridors placed significant pressures upon the services of growing, congested cities. Control of these conditions seemed imperative, leading to the separation of urban services into distinct, more-manageable categories, divisible through the inception of public works departments. Upward sloping, double-digit growth from famine-era migration42 necessarily resulted in planning policies and zoning regulations premised on the control, containment, and constraint of urban growth. Height restrictions, density limits, and land use compatibilities were formalized as part of the specialization of a professional planning discipline. Steeped in a core-periphery understanding of cities, urban planning drew from its inheritance of Old World principles of centralized city development, as well as the legacy of prisons and hospitals (the earliest forms of public planning through architecture) as models of socio-spatial control.43 Master planning would consequently be predisposed as a social science. Usurping the goals of the American Civic Association and the grandeur of the City Beautiful Movement, the new planning institution saw the substitution of ground-level development

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with hierarchical control. It capitalized on the separation of government powers that form the backbone of the U.S. Constitution, to place authority in the hands of city governments. Although local governments were the largest stakeholders and beneficiaries of master planning, their objectives were soon subverted. The compound effect of squalid inner city conditions, individual mobility, cheap low-rise housing, and deindustrialization fueled processes of outbound horizontal growth of urban populations along transportation corridors and new lines of access. This sprawl leaped over so-called growth boundaries, flowing beyond city limits and threatening the imposed political boundaries that no longer contained horizontal urbanization. Seen as uncontrollable, growth became the new urban problem.44 The incapacities and inflexibilities of master planning were further demonstrated by the contradictory rise of population checks, excess condemnation, and police power. Unplanning: Zoning, after Euclid In the urban decentralization of cities, the task of planning relied on the neat separation of services with individual land use classifications. Faith in scientific planning and administrative control led to the establishment of basic single-use categories according to Euclidean planning principles: residential, commercial, and industrial. Cities took on new dimensions, raising more questions about the use of master plans as instruments of control and management reliant on use-values at the precise moment when, as John Kenneth Galbraith captured in The New Industrial State (1967), â&#x20AC;&#x153;capital [and power] became more important than land.â&#x20AC;?45 Dependent on jurisprudence, the planning discipline has irreversibly become entrenched in legislation, land use economics, and social sciences.46 Consequently, geography and ecology were divorced from the basis of planning for the future altogether.47 With rising preservation interests and constant indictments of suburban land development, this divide is growing wider. Planning methods have more recently failed to gain traction vis-Ă -vis the Infrastructural Ecologies

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speed of urban expansion, housing, and infrastructural developments or the environmental pressures taking place. Across this divide between the large scale legislation of planning and the small scale technocratization of engineering lies a vacuum of unaddressed urban challenges. Groundwater extraction in the Midwest states, river pollution of the Rio Grande, and sewage flows in the Great Lakes demonstrate the regional pressures resulting from urbanization beyond the ever-present divide of political jurisdictions, public works departments, and property boundaries.48 Twentieth-century planning has been, for the most part, relegated to a generation of lawyers and economists reliant on an overarching legal or economic world view. Not unlike engineers, planners too have failed to see the greater synergies made possible by a more ecological, more integrative lens that couples and synthesizes different spatial, biophysical conditions with social and economic concerns.49 From Plans to Processes As a landscape, the fragmented, diffuse, and often transboundary pattern of urbanization has further demonstrated the weakness of nation states in facing massive urban change. It also shows the fading power of the postwar welfare state to exercise influence or direct patterns of urban growth. Gradually, from the fading of federal power, the boundaries between public jurisdictions and private forces of development are dissolving when dealing with large-scale infrastructural projects. Physical boundaries of territories are often limited by state jurisdictions or federal agencies whose boundaries were established by wars or conflicts more than a century ago. Historically, resources such as rivers, coastlines, and water bodies served as military or geopolitical boundaries, or were marginalized as backwaters. This political preconditioning explains why water courses and water bodies have historically

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Farms, Factories, Workshops The pattern of subsistence farms in the contemporary logistics and manufacturing hub of Zhengzhou, China, where more than 30 percent of land within existing ring roads is under agricultural use due to food security policy. Source: Google Earth, Image ©2014 DigitalGlobe

been reduced to singular functions of sewage or navigation, contributing to the relative invisibility of biophysical resources, habitats, and ecotopes; systems that depend on systemic interconnectivity. As a result of these exclusions, biophysical systems are partitioned and parceled into defined areas, often categorized or restricted to bounded sites of conservation or recreation. The static boundaries of political jurisdictions now stand in sharp contrast to the fluid, dynamic patterns of urban growth whereby the flows of water, waste, energy, and food transcend geopolitical borders. From Sub-Urbanization to Super-Urbanization In parallel with the loosening of engineering’s grip on the complexity of urban conditions, the planning of cities is now falling short due to an outgrowth of regulatory boundaries, an inflexibility to adapt to rapid change, and an incapacity to maintain existing infrastructures. Most pronounced in “older” economies of the New World and “newer” economies of the developing world, the inertia of the planning profession is compromising the regulatory regimes of cities, with rising ecological intelligence and systems thinking making connections across the economic and legislative borders.50 What has been overlooked in the discourse on decentralization and urban dispersal, skewed by blanket dismissals of sprawl, is the general advantage afforded by the regionalization of urban conditions. In support of urban agglomerations in the early twentieth century, regional urbanist Howard W. Odum documented the characterization of overlapping ecological, economic, or social regions “as a technique of decentralization and redistribution of population, industry, wealth, capital, culture, and of bigness, complexity, and technology.”51 Often poorly understood, the global phenomenon of decentralization and the “flattening of the density gradient” stems from the leveling of socio-economic structures in the twentieth Infrastructural Ecologies

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Post-Fordist Infrastructure Aerial view of linear greenways and flood management zones of the Buffalo Bayou system, underlying the I-45 highway interchange in Houston, Texas, a project spearheaded by a public-private partnership of civic, environmental, governmental and business representatives. Source: Google Earth

century. It is a process occurring across “a more dispersed landscape [that] has afforded many people greater levels of mobility, privacy, choice.”52 The increase in individual purchasing power thanks to consumer credit and the birth of instant communication made possible by network technology systems53 have thus contributed to a horizontal pattern of urbanization that functions largely as an alternative to the “densely settled cities that were the norm at the end of the nineteenth century.”54 From this larger lens, the evolution of urban change is best understood as a transition—from former industrial economies of supply toward urban economies of demand—occurring in the past century. From this shift, we can propose that the current rise of urban economies is a reaction to the Fordist modes of production and Taylorist modes of management that have dominated the past century. As a natural response to these models of control and containment, the decentralization of cities and the expansion of urban economies at the regional scale provide major benefits, where super-urbanization opens new territories for occupation, renewal, and redistribution. From Control to Contingency The rethinking of efficiency (the basis of engineering) and of control (the historic focus of planning) is yielding more strategic and more contingent formats of design.55 Legal and regulatory frameworks are being counterbalanced by pressing concerns about the carbon footprint of cities and the limited lifespan of infrastructure. The view of cities as closed systems, composed of a few controllable variables, is succumbing to a growing body of knowledge and expertise on dynamic, distributed, ecological systems. The inability of planning to counteract or control the spread of urban form and capital at the onset of the twenty-first century56 provides the opportunity for planning tasks to merge 442

Conclusion

with the more-influential parent discipline of landscape architecture, further augmented by softer forms of civil engineering. From this position, zoning as well as dezoning may take on unprecedented roles in the design of regions at super-urban scales. They will transition from being tools of prevention to instruments of projection through forces that may eventually yield a richer, more productive set of ecologies.

FIELDS AND FLOWS As a result of the diversification of urban economies and decentralization of its service infrastructure, we have witnessed in the past three decades the decoupling of centralized planning from state authorities. Naturally, we are also witnessing the waning of national identities associated with great public works and engineering feats, such as the highway systems,57 followed by the decoupling of infrastructure from the exclusive domain of the practice of civil engineers. From this flattening of urban administration and engineered hierarchy, a set of new regionalized identities are emerging that privilege diversity and differentiation, evident in a more visible landscape of resources, cultures, territories, and innovations.58 How then can we rebundle and redesign essential urban servicesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;from water resources and waste cycling, energy generation and food cultivation, mass mobility and network communicationsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in order to initiate a more ecologically responsive, socially expedient, culturally relevant, and fiscally effective reorganization of urban lands as living landscapes that span the divide between economy and ecology facing contemporary cities?

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< Urban Footprints, Zones and Regions The fields of energy, waste, water. food, and mobility that service the New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;New Jersey region. Diagram courtesy Jonathan Scelsa, 2011

> Ecologic Striation Aerial view of Donau-Auen wetlands bordering the Danube, a riparian system that protects Vienna's city center, the Vienna International Airport, and the Schwechat vineyards from the perennial risk of 1- to 7-meter flood levels. Image: Google Earth, Image ÂŠ2014 DigitalGlobe

Regionalization From this re-questioning and re-reading of the dominant principles of the past two centuries, and from the disciplinary cleavage created by the complexity of current urban conditions, rises the field of landscape, a multi-disciplinary and cross-scalar horizon. This is the direct consequence of three convergences at the turn of the twenty-first century: the ecological with the economic, the social with the political, and the organic with the technological. Here, the horizontal nature of the field of landscape avoids disciplinary cul-de-sacs, rendering irrelevant the historic oppositions between concepts such as city and country, rural and urban, natural and human, modern and historic. By employing a wider view, we can expose how the landscape of urbanism lies beyond the gray matter of cities, operating dynamically across several overlapping regions. This vantage opens a wider and deeper view of urban economies and urban footprints. Resource flows from across watersheds, energy demands, and food provision from continental sources index the greater extents of urbanization. When viewed over time, this super-urban vantage sheds light on the interconnections of infrastructure, spatially and temporally. Largely perceived as smooth, seamless, and permanent, infrastructure networks are, in fact, extremely fragile and short-lived. Spatial conventions that are born from the techno-bureaucratic factions of public works departments (waste, water, energy, food, and transport agencies), inherited from classical, Old World notions of civil engineering, and from the sociopolitical mechanisms of legislative zoning and master planning, are deliberately put into question. So far, in the discourse of urban reform, considerable attention has been given to the hard systems of urban support such as roads, sewers, and bridges, evident in national investment policies59 and private investment in waste treatment and water delivery systems. A parallel

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discourse has emerged in design, planning, and engineering on the value of softer, leaner infrastructures premised on ecology as the catalyst of infrastructural reform and the driver of urban morphology.60 In the wake of ongoing restructuring of city centers toward more decentralized and dispersed spatial patterns, cultural thinker and theorist Sanford Kwinter projects that “we have no choice today but to deal with the new 'soft' infrastructures: of knowledge infrastructure, program infrastructure, cultural infrastructure, virtual infrastructure.”61 Risk and Complexity Often operating on extraordinary scales, and precipitated by the onslaught of global urbanization, the basic attributes of urban infrastructure and large-scale public works (roads, canals, bridges, and dams, for example) conjure a sense of plain and simple awe.62 By virtue of its bigness alone, as urbanist Rem Koolhaas observes, infrastructure “instigates a regime of complexity” that mobilizes the full intelligence of design, less dependent on “meticulous definition, the imposition of limits, but about expanding notions, denying boundaries.”63 Pragmatically, the field of landscape—both cross-collaborative and trans-scalar—provides the instrumental equipment to best handle the complexity precipitated by contemporary urbanization. In the high-risk technological landscape of the twenty-first century, however, it is ironically the unassuming attribute of dumbness—defined here as the relative ease of understanding and interpreting a strategy—which serves as design’s greatest asset in its accouplement with infrastructure.64 If civil engineering has worked in the past, it has achieved its status by simplicity and straightforwardness. In the current reallocation of public sector work to the private sector market and more-collaborative forms of project delivery, the advantage that infrastructure affords, both as a construction and as a concept, is that it further transcends Infrastructural Ecologies

the

the conventional boundaries associated with public works and private properties by referring to underlying conditions and challenges that are specific and common to both. This is the greatest service that infrastructure promises as an emergent design territory. Yet, in order to do so, design must be more opportunistic in its borrowings from predominant disciplines, and leverage disciplinary knowledge outside the formal limits of its own capacities while engaging more synergistic collaborations.65 Identified more than a decade ago by Gary L. Strang in a special edition of Places Journal, the advantage of appropriating infrastructure as landscape is heightened since: â&#x20AC;&#x153;The amount of funding for renovating public infrastructure is likely to far exceed the amount that will be available for buildings, parks and open space. Large budgets can be used to produce urban design that simultaneously solve utilitarian problems, and help repair cities and regional landscapes at a scale not dreamed of since the days of the great dams.â&#x20AC;?66 Circular Economies and Resource Flows Underlying this latent potential is the horizontal nature of landscape both as scale and system. The synthetic capacities of landscape conflates both infrastructure and ecological process, enabling the reclamation of formerly abandoned sites with the intensification of new ones. As a scale, the field moves from the biomolecular to the global geographic, by way of urban, ecological regions. It operates across the disciplines of engineering at the smallest level to policy planning at the highest level. As a system,67 the scale of landscape is operationalized through ecological intelligence. In contrast to closed, industrial systems of production from economies of mass-production, it is as an open system of exogenous and

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Farmland and Power The first commercial-scale public utility wind field in Michigan built by John Deere Energy Renewables on land leased from cooperative sugar beet farmers near Bad Axe. Photo: Don Coles, Great Lakes Aerial Photography, 2008

endogenous flows. Like an operating system, its software and hardware come in the form of points, patches, or planes of interventions or as networks and zones of influence, sometimes fluid and temporal, or sometimes fragmented. Surfaces of intervention are often unconstrained, climate works as a conditioner rather than a constraint. At its extreme, the field of landscape can potentially be subversive, where aesthetics are embedded through patterns and processes of latent biodynamics. Through connections, expansions, contractions, and projections, urban conditions become synonymous with constructed ecologies. Wastes and excesses, the surpluses of urbanization, become absorbed into a recirculating economy of secondary and tertiary materials, through downcycling and upcycling.

PROJECTIONS AND PROTOECOLOGIES From this horizon, we can begin to see how the processes of urban agglomeration and decentralization work as strategies of distribution and dispersal in response to the legacy of Old World models of urban centrality that failed to adapt to the rising demands of contemporary population pressures, modes of production, communication networks, and biophysical systems. The vertical growth that characterized much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is being eroded by the horizontal nature of income and population distribution across larger areas, and the inefficiencies and inequalities often associated with compact, exclusive, or unaffordable city centers. Here, the processes of decentralizationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;whether by strategies of distribution or dispersal68â&#x20AC;&#x201D;provide capabilities and opportunities to open a new territory of morphologies where patterns and processes drive new morphologies in the future.69

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Bioindication Relational diagram of contaminant-sensitive plant species as vegetal indices of bioavailability and hyperaccumulation. Diagram: OPSYS

Bioremediation Processes

Phytodegradation Phytovolatization The use of plants or algae to volatilize pollutants from contaminated soils and water through foliage

Duckweed Spirodela polyrrhiza

Buffalo Grass Buchloe dactyloides

Knotweed Polygonum hydropiper

The process of metabolically degrading organic pollutants through plants or algae

Phytoextraction Uptake and concentration of substances from the environment into the plant

Alpine Pennycress Miner’s Lettus Thlaspi Claytonia per- Water Sedge caerulescens Carex aquatilis foliata

Buck's Horn Groundsel Senecia glaucus

The pr uid co agent i metal s the pla

Garden Ora Atriplex horte

Tolerant & Emergent Species (Phytoremediators)

Biomarkers (Indicator Species)

Cyanobacteria Synechocystis sp PCC6803 trebouxia

Green Algae Chlorophyta trebouxia

Flagellate Euglena gracilis

Red Algae Phylum rhodophyta

Stoneworts Algae Nitella spp.

Contaminants

PAHs

Metals

Cadmium

(poly-aromatic hydrocarbons)

Landscape as Infrastructure Emerging from these ecological imperatives and economic exigencies, the project of landscape infrastructure proposes an expanded operating system for contemporary cities where the full complexity of biodynamic processes and resources are visualized and deployed across the full footprint of urbanism and the lifecycles of infrastructure. As a reformist evolution of the discipline of landscape architecture at the beginning of the twentieth century, landscape infrastructure engages the full capacity of post–Euclidean planning and global contextualism of capital flow while exploiting the techno-spatial capacity of twenty-first century civil engineering in order to deploy ecology as the agent of urban renewal and expansion. Departing from conventional bureaucratic and centralized forms of civic administration, this contemporary formulation foreshadows a more flexible, cooperative, and process-driven agency for the design disciplines with a co-commitment to the metrics of design, research, and implementation. From this position, design strategies can be launched between two extremes: short, immediate interventions that are graduated and sequenced over long periods of time with large, durable geopolitical and ecological effects. Design—including the research that precedes it—becomes strategic, capable of integrating multiple scales of intervention at once. Still relatively nascent, the field of landscape supports a multitude of possibilities and protocols of engagement with this project. Despite the death-of-distance thesis foreshadowed in the late 1990s by globalization and communication networks,70 the landscape of geography, ecology, and urbanism figures more prominently today than ever before. Professionally and culturally, the recognition of landscape’s directive capabilities in contemporary design culture is growing, especially with the rapidly increasing understanding of ecological complexity worldwide.71 When considered outside the confines of disciplinary professionalization, a 450

Conclusion

Hydrocarbo

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White Clover Trifolium repens

PCBs (polychlorinated biphenylss)

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The metabolic alteration to the chemical structure of a compound by a living organism or enzyme

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European White Birch Betula Pendula

Ribbonleaf Pondweed Potamogeton epihydrus

Rice-cut Grass Leersia oryzoides

Hydrocarbons

wider, more open-ended and diversified understanding of the field will liberate it from its past dependencies and borrowings from architecture and urban planning as surrogates for its own history and evolution. If we consider infrastructure as a constructed landscape of channels, pipes, grids, and networks that extend across vast territories and that precondition urban life, then we can borrow from several disciplines—urban geography, civil engineering, public administration, botany, and horticulture—and combine that knowledge with biophysical resources to form the essential services of urban regions and construct new histories and lineages. In this way, landscape becomes a beta-structure of processes, an instrumental pattern that shapes the urban world in which we live while enabling us to perceive it differently. Indexing Ecology Rendering visible the living systems that underlie urban economies is a critical practice. As a projective method, representation through the mapping of complex levels of information is instrumental to the design of infrastructure and ecology. Whether by diagrams or maps, composite imaging provides an important alternative to the conventional orthographic methods of visualization inherited from engineers and architects. Those methods were intended exclusively for construction documents—blueprints that privileged drawings as contracts for the production of legal information through representation. Conversely, a recent body of work has begun to rethink the historic or exclusive role of the drawing as contractual document to consider drawings of disclosure and public communication.72 In the public works realm, the visual communication of strategies, and the research that supports it, has become, in and of itself, an essential design practice. The visibility of flows, processes, and systems underlies much of the work to be done, especially when displaying vast movements of information and people or managing huge volumes of Infrastructural Ecologies

451

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natural resources that are often operating in remote or underground environments or at scales too large for the naked eye. New, multimedia modes of representation are seeking to redefine the conventions of design historically rooted in technical drafting or pictorial imaging. Architectural historian and theorist Kenneth Frampton reveals the purpose of this expanded representational role: â&#x20AC;&#x153;At broad scales, the creative use of landscape representation to project alternative futures for urban form, infrastructure investment, ecological restoration and environmental management can be a powerful counter to the technocratic dominance of other forms of knowledge. The understanding of the particularity and distinction of local and regional landscapes can provide a point of resistance to the homogenizing effects of globalization.â&#x20AC;?73 For example, the rise of master planning during the era of the City Beautiful Movement led to the domination of single, orthographic points of view that often excluded context and time. Constrained by a limited repertoire of design instruments (streets, blocks, and buildings) these historically imposed limits on design overlooked powerful ecological flows and geographic patterns operating at large scales that cut across property boundaries. In contrast to the specificity of planometric forms of representation, the section provides a much more flexible means of communication, prototyping change across a large scale. The section, with all of its attendant variations (cutaways, developed, expanded, and longitudinal), acts as a graphic interface between the surface and subsurface. It simultaneously reveals the invisibility of what is below ground or underwater, and translates what is downstream and what is upstream. For these reasons, sectional strategies have become the privileged interface between the complexity of the subsurface below (soils, foundations, wires, conduits, tun-

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Food Web Diagram of shoreline gradients, land use relationships, biodiversities, and feeding patterns of aquatic species in estuaries, at the base of marine ecosystems. Diagram: OPSYS

nels, and pipelines) and the banality of the surface above (curbs, edges, surfaces, manholes, posts, grates, and markings). Small and often minuscule changes of surface profiles in crosssection can have pronounced effects across vast distances when seen from above. Dynamic conditions that were most often characterized as constraints are now being projected as major opportunities, especially when laid out across time. Therefore, it is not surprising that hybrid formats of design—from sectional profiles to oblique aerial views to cutaway sections—have liberated the field from the stronghold of orthographic drawings and engaged the design of relationships, associations, and synergies across a multitude of sites. Foreshadowed by James Corner, mapping itself takes on a double agency as process and projection: “Mappings have agency because of the double-sided characteristic of all maps. First, their surfaces are directly analogous to actual ground conditions; as horizontal planes, they record the surface of the earth as direct impressions. […] By contrast, the other side of this analogous characteristic is the inevitable abstractness of maps, the result of selection, omission, isolation, distance and codification.”74 Through visualization and intervention, contemporary practice will rely on both the design and designation of new territories. The collaborative and interdisciplinary process of mapping becomes the program of the project, making it relatively fast and easy to think big. Modes of representation—such as design scenarios, section profiles, and construction sequences— that enable a level of precise approximation and strategic generalization can exploit situations of uncertainty and indeterminacy, collaboration and leadership. Simple interventions render time a medium, in and of itself. These interventions instrumentalize time zones in the orchestration of large-scale effects. Operating on prolonged timescales, the vegetal dimension of design—encompassing the horticultural, the botanical, the silvicultural, the fluvial, the Infrastructural Ecologies

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agronomic—can then be integrated as organic infrastructure at scales which were previously undervalued and overlooked. Fluid, Biotic, Contingent Once the sole purview of the profession of civil engineering, infrastructure—the management of water, waste, food, transport, and energy—is taking on extreme relevance for the design practices in the context of the changing, decentralizing structures of urban–regional economies. Food production and energy networks can no longer be engineered without considering the cascade of waste streams and the cycling of raw material inputs. Industries, landfills, farmlands, and logistics areas can no longer be designed without their wastesheds. Highway networks, sewage systems, and subdivisions can no longer be planned without their watersheds. Simply put, urban regions cannot shrink or expand without employing the geographies and climates of continental landscapes that eventually shape them. Designation of territories, zones of intervention, and modes of organization become design processes that eventually lead to the formation of new spatial morphologies and performative ecologies. Over time, we can engage infrastructure as a landscape with strategic interventions that span extremely short and immediate intervals. At the exact moment construction ends, when blueprints are implemented, the penultimate objective of design management can begin. More often than not, design should be under-detailed, leaving raw, open, and often incomplete the assembly for unknown site circumstances and social change, where the beauty of the project lies in its banality and openness to change. As a medium, time becomes a dimension of design management and superintendence that is slow but enduring.

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Post–Fordist Flexibility Cross-sectional strategy showing the dualization of surface land uses and subsurface infrastructures proposed for the intensification of industrial corridors throughout the network of portlands in Rotterdam. Diagram: OPSYS/Kelly Doran

> Intelligent Flooding Upswelling of the Danube River along the edges of the Donauinsel, a flood protection island that deflects and distributes high water away from the historic center of Vienna and transportation crossings, toward the National Parklands downriver. Photo courtesy Wolfgang H. Wögerer, Vienna, 2009

Design becomes telescopic, sliding across different scales, systems, and strategies that are no longer limited by professional or political boundaries but rather by trans-disciplinary, trans-boundary collaborations. In contraposition to hard, fixed infrastructures, this interpretation provides room for the design of softer, looser ecological systems, with a concentration on the effects at macro- and micro-levels. Born from performance and productivity, newly recognizable morphologies and topologies of the infrastructural landscape—meshes, webs, nodes, conduits, gardens, and fields—are most often hybrids of invariable types molded by additional processes of flow, trade, exchange, conveyance, mobility, and communications. Through this lens, we can begin opening a territory of new scales, systems, and synergies, upstream or downstream, across the gradient of urban economies. Invoking the unfinished project of landscape75 as a geospatial and geobotanical practice with the softer, more-fluid field of ecological systems pioneered by Sauer, Odum, and Bailey,76 the double entendre of landscape infrastructure maintains an operative, polyfunctional objective dedicated to urban contraction and expansion through land use dualization and biophysical dynamics. Sponsoring transboundary crossover, this nascent field implies a dual identity for single-use infrastructure along corridors of movement, where a synthesis of ecology preconditions the detail of implementation, where long-term resource management is as important as the short-term mobilization of capital, and where the commonwealth of public systems presides over the uncoordinated guise of self-interests, requiring sustained engagement from public and private interests. Transcending jurisdictional boundaries, the integrative and horizontal enterprise of landscape infrastructure enlists geographic zoning, boundary realignments, strategic design, subsurface programming, sectional thickening, and ecological engineering as the most influential mechanisms in the structural transformation Infrastructural Ecologies

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of urban regions to effect change on the large-scale operational and logistical aspects of urbanization. Staging uncertainty and harnessing contingency become the new urban imperatives, through the design of resilient and flexible edges, margins, and peripheries. From this position, this augmented capability condition explains the establishment of a more precise approach to complex data without sacrificing the generalized levels of interpretation and reuse of the work. It further enforces a level of general approximation that defies the current convention of basing precise measures on undefined information, or the “institutionalized black boxing of models.”77 In the most extreme circumstances, the field of landscape demonstrates its agility as le plan libre par excellence.78 Post-Carbon Public Works Embodied by projects such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and other programs of FDR’s New Deal—a historic period that defined U.S. history through its infrastructural undertakings—the era of national public works is over. The great public works which defined the identity of America, or all great nations, are crumbling. Perpetuated by the discipline of civil engineering, national infrastructure projects are unrealistic, fading away in the background of increasing ecological complexity. The perception of secure and stabile centralized infrastructure, and its affiliated notions of permanence and vertical growth, no longer provide the foundation for more horizontal, distributed urban economies.79 The construction of urban ecologies and reclamation of biophysical processes provides much greater flexibility and adaptive potential. In the wake of a loosening grip of engineering and the weaker position of planning, an estimated $5.5 trillion project of urban renewal in North America, which will see the reconstruction of more than 200 billion square feet of

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space, as well as the defense of more than 2.5 billion people living within coastal zones, presents an unprecedented opportunity. If we are to mold the future, beyond a few exceptional precedents, this project necessitates the merger of the landscape of living systems and the territory of urban infrastructure, as interface to the contemporary conditions. By design, the project of landscape infrastructure will be contingent on several processes and practices across an expanded â&#x20AC;&#x153;plane of services and performancesâ&#x20AC;?:80 1. Flexibilities The division between land use classifications (residential, commercial, industrial) and characteristics (wet/dry, high/low) will have to make way for overlaps, interconnections, and exchanges. Flexible, more porous formats of construction, design, and maintenance that privilege ecological systems will enable tidal fluctuations, moisture variations, climactic regimes, biodiversity, and social functions to flourish and grow. 2. Synergies The dismantling and decoupling of bureaucratic land use controls and the decentralization of engineered infrastructure must make way for straightforward and practical reclamation of biophysical processes and the reintegration of ecological flows. To generate multifunctionality and interoperability, design scenarios will have to combine hardware and software to expand the effects, spin-offs, and offsets of strategies. Moving beyond carbon dependence, we look forward to seeing buildings become batteries, highways as rolling warehouses, landfills as goldmines, suburbs as stormwater sponges, forests as carbon sinks, and city coastlines as estuarine aprons. Requiring suppleness, infrastructural ecologies Infrastructural Ecologies

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Power Perestroika Visual timeline of milestones in world energy during the past five hundred years as a result of technological innovation, world politics, energy resource substitution and decentralized power sources. How we map, model, and measure the landscape of energy for example, reveals an infrastructural ecology of urban complexities, conflicts, and contradictions through resource regions, economic regimes, commodity exchanges, social differentials and occupational patterns. Diagram: OPSYS

must employ existing capabilities and existing resources in order to be easily implementable and replicable.81 3. Cross-Collaborations While no single discipline or designer can lay claim to the design of infrastructure in the future, its complexity alone generates the potential of interdisciplinary partnerships and cultural cross-fertilization. Synergistic reasoning, strategic design, and integrated social agency will loosen boundaries between public and private jurisdictions and open new possibilities for strategic project partnerships. Focusing on the synthesis of ecology, engineering, and economy, complex responsibilities are spread out and risks shared across a more lateral network of professional liabilities. 4. Speeds and Scales The exchange of resources, materials, and information will drive the modification and reprogramming of urban surfaces to accommodate greater automobility and auto-diversity as a result of increasing modes of mobility. Surface differentiation, markings, and codifications at one end, and infrastructure of mobility at the other, will radically transform the built environment in the future.82 Communication networks and polycentric nodes of knowledge are generating liveâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;work patterns that, in contrast to the centralized 9-to-5 industrial model, are increasingly distributed and dispersed.

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Post-Carbon Resource Park View of the Svartsengi Geothermal Power Station in southwestern Iceland where geothermal effluents are recirculated through a public health spa and wastewater lagoon, rich in blue-green algae, mineral salts, and fine silica muds. Photo: ÂŠ2009 Stephen Bunch

5. Distribution and Disaggregation Urban densities will persistently decline and regions spread wider as long as incomes increase and transportation remains relatively inexpensive.83 The slackening of political and regulatory controls will help shape urban expansion, decongestion, fragmentation, or diffusion. Through ecological engineering, those processes enable the formation of more hybridized morphologies and new financial mechanisms that join owners, users, stakeholders, and regulators, over time. 6. Regionalization Dismantling of the historical divide between city center and periphery, or the differentiation of cities from other cities, which engages the different footprints of urbanism and life cycles of infrastructure as well as acknowledges the impermanence and flexibilities of growth and continental forces beyond the gray zones of cities on road maps. When factoring resource regions and biodynamic flows, infrastructural networks and social innovations, the restructured understanding of economic forms ultimately relies on the reclamation of capital flow as an intrinsically ecological strategy.84 The visibility of resource urbanism will bring closer the sources of resource extraction with end uses and spaces of consumption. Ecologies of Scale The Athenian Oath which has restrained urban designers for the past two thousand years can finally loosen its grip and make room for new instruments and methods for intervening

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Estuarine Urbanism The oyster cultivation region of MarennesOléron, located off the eastern coast of the Atlantic, in between the estuaries of La Charente and La Seudre River, whose yield accounts for almost 45% of the entire French oyster industry. Source: Google Earth, Image ©2014 DigitalGlobe

at geospatial scales, beyond the city and into contemporary urban territories. The linear, fixed, and closed mechanisms of the industrial economy are quickly fading in the background of more flexible, circular, and networked systems of urban economies. Releasing the pristine ideals of the city from the crutches of security, permanence, and density opens a horizon of new social equities and regional synergies—a whole range of projects beyond that of a few exceptional precedents. Moving beyond conservation or preservation, the ecological imperative instigates the design of relationships, where associations and synergies become infrastructural. Softer, more fluid forms of urban configurations generate open, flexible infrastructures where risk becomes an opportunity, and morphology is based on contingency and indeterminacy of climate fluctuations. Signaling a critical tipping point, the reexamination of historical practices reveals that the landscape of biological processes and natural resources which are integral to larger, regional systems cannot, and should not, be segregated from the discourse or the design of urban infrastructure. To learn how to slide across scales, across disciplines, or across jurisdictions, the metrics, processes, and protoecologies presented here offer preliminary examples of how designers can operate across the greatest and fullest extent of design over time: from the largest scales of geography to small scale engineering and genetics. Through the redesign of infrastructure, our work in the future lies in the re-coupling, re-configuration, and re-calibration of these processes. Urgent and pressing, the project of the ecological readjustment of these systems—where transportation departments collaborate with conservation agencies, or where port authorities partner with fisheries organizations, or where power corporations work with waste recycling organizations—is a necessary corollary to the next generation of post–Fordist, post–Taylorist infrastructures. 468

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We can posit a more-fluid understanding of urbanization formed by new forces and flows such as capital and mobility, speed and communications, power and production, toxicity and ecology, contamination and cultivation, energetics and synergies, war and wealth, and societies and networks, which can be considered the main drivers and denominators in the design and construction of contemporary urban ecologies operating across different scales, magnitudes, and borders, with regional, continental, and global capabilities. In the wake of the over-planning, over-regulation, and over-engineering of the past century, it is clear that the strategic engagement of the landscape of living systems as urban infrastructure is already moving ahead by governments and engineering consultancies worldwide, and being adopted by professional design offices and academic researchers. Whether in slums, suburbs, or skyscrapers, paradigms are changing: dispersal substitutes density, pace instead of space, sequence over speed, design instead of technology, concurrency over control, culture instead of growth. In short, ecology is urbanism’s best insurance policy; landscape is infrastructure’s most flexible strategy. For if we don’t pay attention to the effects of global change and engage urban networks as constructed ecologies, it is not “we” who will design the future flows of urbanization, but rather “they” who will be designing us.

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1. In “The Renewal of Landscape” (1931), urban theorist and critic Lewis Mumford recognized early on the foundational role of landscape in the shape of urban economies: “Now there are three main ways of modifying and humanizing the visible landscape. One of them is by agriculture and horticulture; it involves the orderly arrangement of the ploughed field, and the wood lot, the meadow and the pasture, the road and the enclosure. When these functions are undertaken consciously and intelligently, as they were by the country gentlemen of England in the eighteenth century, for example, they lead to landscape design. The second method is by city development and architecture; and the third is by works of engineering—bridges, viaducts, canals, highroads, docks, harbors, dams. These three modes intermingle, and it is impossible to neglect one without spoiling the effect of others. What is a beautiful city with bad drains, or a fine concrete highway in a barren landscape?” See Lewis Mumford, The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts of America, 1865–1895 (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1931): 60–61. More recently, the interrelated writings on landscape, infrastructure, and ecology by Alan Berger, James Corner, Richard Forman, Nina-Marie Lister, Chris Reed, Eduardo Rico, Kelly Shannon, and Charles Waldheim have provided important contributions to this fin-de-siècle discourse. 2. For more information on this crisis, see America in Ruins: The Decaying Infrastructure (Durham, NC: Duke Press Paperbacks, 1983) by Pat Choate and Susan Walter, and Report Card for America’s Infrastructure (2009) by the American Society of Civil Engineers, www.infrastructurereportcard.org. 3. The capital stock of public U.S. infrastructure is currently between 30 to 40 trillion dollars, an average of 100,000 USD per capita. See James Heintz, Robert Pollin, and Heidi Garrett-Peltier, “How Infrastructure Investments Support the U.S. Economy: Employment, Productivity and Growth” (Amherst, MA: Political Economy Research Institute, 2009). 4. On the role of failure and disaster in engineering, see Henry Petroski, To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1992). 5. For a longer discussion, see David Harvey, “Flexible Accumulation through Urbanization, Reflections on Post-Modernism in the American City,” in Post-Fordism: A Reader, ed. Ash Amin (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994), 361–386. 6. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), the quality of U.S. infrastructure ranks 23rd in the world. See Fareed Zakaria, “Are America’s Best Days Behind Us?” TIME Magazine (March 3, 2011): 28. 7. “Looking beyond the current paradoxical condition of twentieth century engineering, it is clear that there is no 'end of engineering' in the sense that it is disappearing. If anything, engineering-like activities are expanding. What is disappearing is engineering as a coherent and independent profession that is defined by well-understood relationships with industrial and other social organizations, with the material world, and with guiding principles such as functionality […] Engineering emerged in a world in which its mission was the control of non-human nature and in which that mission was defined by strong institutional authorities. Now it exists in a hybrid world in which there is no longer a clear boundary between autonomous, non-human nature and human generated processes.” See Rosalind Williams, Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 31. 8. The rereading of engineering objectives has naturally followed a concurrent course in the profession of urban plan470

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ning. This contemporary view is captured by Charles Siegel in his discussion of the legacy of over-planning of the American landscape in Unplanning: Livable Cities and Political Choices (Berkeley, CA: Preservation Institute, 2010). 9. In his Norton Lectures (1938–1939), Swiss-trained architectural historian and Harvard professor Sigfried Giedion observed the proximity of civil engineering to the practice of urban planning dating back to the nineteenth century, when “construction was ahead of architecture in expressing, often unconsciously, the true constituent forces of the period. The engineer has often been nearer to future developments than the town planner, who has too frequently been concerned exclusively with the reorganization of the body of the city itself.” See Space, Time, and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941): 823. 10. Maurie J. Cohen argues that the American environmental lobby, as a loosely associated group of small organizations, failed to gain any significant traction in its causes due to an overwhelming reliance as a strategy of resistance to urban development. See “Ecological Modernization and its Discontents: The American Environmental Movement’s Resistance to an Innovation-driven future,” Futures 38 (2006): 528–547. 11. Gary L. Strang , “Infrastructure as Landscape,” Places 10 No.3 (summer 1996): 15. 12. In Space, Time, and Architecture, Giedion recognized the significance of this turning point more than a halfcentury ago: “The world has now become aware of the impasse to which we have been led through an emphasis on purely rational thought. We have become conscious of the limits of logic and rationality. We again realize that the principles of form are based on more profound and significant elements than rigid logic. […] What we have to do in the realm of architecture is to find a method of linking rationality with the organic in such a way that the organic becomes dominant and rationality is reduced to a menial position” (872–873). 13. On a practical level, a good example of the illusion of efficiency and utility is revealed in the fact that “Up to 30% of the total water entering supply-line systems is lost to leaking pipes.” See Environment Canada's “Water Uses,” www.ec.gc.ca/eau-water/default. asp?lang=En&n=F25C70EC-1. At a theoretical level, a critique of the over-empahsis on the concepts of utility and use in science is Abraham Flexner's “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge,” Harper's no. 179 (June–November 1939): 544–552. 14. Standards are double-sided in their effects. While they provide the ability to ensure quality, uniformity, safety, or scalability, they also create an invisible, often rigid technological framework that is hard to see and difficult to understand. By virtue of that imperceptible omnipresence and complexity, it is difficult to transform and change. Critical to this understanding is the work of Lawrence Busch, author of Standards: Recipes for Reality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), and the work of Rosalind Williams, who writes about the impact of these large technological frameworks in Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change, and her earlier writing, “Cultural Origins and Environmental Implications of Large Technological Systems,” Science in Context 6 (1993). 15. Wayne Batchis, “Enabling Urban Sprawl: Revisiting the Supreme Court‘s Seminal Zoning Decision Euclid v. Ambler in the 21st Century,” Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law 17 No.3 (Spring 2010): 373–403. 16. Land uses do not simply change naturally. They are rethought, reconceived, replanned, and redeveloped by

forces that are social, economic, and ecologic. However, the instruments of planning, zoning, land use regulation, and engineering are not enough to illicit or inspire change. New strategies for sites subject to development and un-development must be explored and visualized through different means and methods, with different agencies, organizations, and interest groups; In other words, they must be designed. The creation of landscape infrastructures through the design agency of landscape architecture offers the level of flexibility and precision required in complex scenarios of contemporary urbanism. 17. The 2003 blackout in the Northeast demonstrated that most major cities only carry two- to three-day supplies of perishable food. See New York City Emergency Response Task Force, “Enhancing New York City’s Emergency Preparedness: A Report to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg” (October 2003), www.nyc.gov/html/om/pdf/em_task_force_final_10_28_03.pdf. 18. For more on the colonization effect of the engineering project as a form of “hypermodernism,” see Gene Moriarty’s chapter, in The Engineering Project: Its Nature, Ethics, and Promise (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 2008): 85. 19. Positivism entails a scientific belief based on a rational logic and verifiable evidence, and it is closely affiliated with linear forms of Taylorist management and Fordist production. In Beyond Engineering: How Society Shapes Technology (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), Robert Pool describes the limits of positivistic views inherent to twentieth-century engineering by explaining how “non-technical factors have come to exert an influence that is unprecedented in the history of technology […] the past century has seen a dramatic change in Western society, resulting in people’s attitudes toward technology. As countries have become more prosperous and more secure, their citizens have become less concerned with increasing their material well-being and more considered about such aesthetic considerations as maintaining a clean environment. […] The result is that the public now exerts a much greater influence on the development of technologies—particularly those seen as risky or otherwise undesirable—than was true one hundred, or even fifty years ago.” (7) 20. Designers must acknowledge the hierarchy associated with the design of urban systems, where the numbers alone provide an indication of the food chain of the disciplines and the prominence of civil engineering. For example, according to the respective associations, professional membership in 2010 included 26,700 landscape architects; 38,400 urban and regional planners; 141,000 architects; 551,000 construction managers; and 971,000 engineers (combining civil, mechanical, industrial, electrical, and environmental). See the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010–11 edition, www.bls. gov/oco/. 21. For example, consider one of the earliest texts in the social sciences by Louis Wirth, “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” in Cities and Society, ed. Paul K. Hatt and Albert J. Reiss, Jr. (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1957): 62. 22. The traditional reliance on landmarks and annual reviews of large public works projects as the unifying discourse of the civil engineering discipline has more recently been put into question. In Civil Engineering Practice in the 21st Century: Knowledge and Skills for Design and Management (Reston, VA: ASCE Press, 2001), Neil S. Grigg et al. provide an important direction in disciplinary discourse as they rethink the role of civil engineering in society. 23. Ibid, 103.

24. See The Principles of Scientific Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1911). As a mechanical engineer, Taylor was often thought of as the founder of systems engineering thinking. Spreading across the industrial world, Taylor's book has been translated in several languages, from French, to German, Dutch, Italian, Russian, and Japanese. His introduction features a quote from President Theodore Roosevelt which crystallizes Taylor's focus with remarkable relevance, “The conservation of our national resources is only preliminary to the larger question of national efficiency.” A few years later, Horace Bookwalter Drury released a critique titled Scientific Management: A History and Criticism (New York, NY: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918), which largely argued for the humanization of labor management to better understand and address the social complexities of labor. 25. Jean-Louis Paucelle, “From Taylorism to PostTaylorism: Simultaneously Pursuing Several Management Objectives,” Journal of Organizational Change Management 13 No.5 (2000): 452–467. 26. The turn-of-the-century rise of the design laboratory, a midway point between the factory and the studio, promises considerable potential in the formation of flexible project teams dedicated to specific spatial and ecological challenges. See Peter Galison and Caroline A. Jones, “Factory, Laboratory, Studio: Dispersing Sites of Production,” in The Architecture of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999): 497–540. 27. For a comprehensive critique of the notions of density and compactness in contemporary urban design, see Rafi Segal, “Urbanism Without Density,” Architectural Design AD 78 No.1 (January/February 2008): 6–11. Segal provides a thorough discussion of the counterproductive distinction between the urban and the non-urban, thoroughly assessed in favor of degrees, distributions, and gradients of urbanization. 28. For a comprehensive rethinking of growth as an economic driver of urbanization and the notion of stability, see Andrea Branzi’s Weak and Diffuse Modernity: The World of Projects at the Beginning of the 21st Century (Milan: Skira, 2006), and Charles Waldheim’s “Weak Work: Andrea Branzi’s ‘Weak Metropolis’ and the Projective Potential of an ‘Ecological Urbanism,’” in Ecological Urbanism, ed. Mohsen Mostafavi with Gareth Doherty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard GSD/Lars Müller, 2010): 114–121. 29. See “Dimensions in Global Urban Expansion” by Shlomo Angel with Jason Parent, Daniel L. Civco, and Alejandro M. Blei, in The Persistent Decline in Urban Densities: Global and Historical Evidence of ‘Sprawl’ (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2011). 30. A brief but concise account of engineering’s early influence in North America and European antecedents can be found in John Stilgoe’s Common Landscape of America, 1580 to 1845 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982): 121–128. 31. See Todd Shallat, “The West Point Connection,” in Structures in the Stream: Water, Science, and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Austin, TX: University of Texas, 1994): 79–116. 32. We may also attribute the overexertion of civil engineering techniques to concurrent innovations in steel and concrete construction after the industrial revolution, evolving rapidly from traditional practices of earthworks and topographic engineering. 33. For an in-depth critique of the seamlessness of infrastructure, see Paul Edwards, “Infrastructure and Modernity: Force, Time and Social Organization in the History of

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Sociotechnical Systems,” in Modernity and Technology, ed. Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey and Andrew Feenberg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 185–226. 34. Although the subject of infrastructural apartheid is not fully formed, litterature from several parts of the world can be found on its many forms and states. In the Middle East, the MA’AN Development Center refers to the infrastructure of occupation that connects different Israeli settlements and isolates non-Israeli (Palestinian) cantons as one that promotes territorial fragmentation through apartheid roads, and apartheid walls. See “Apartheid Roads: Promoting Settlements, Punishing Palestinians,” Cordaid fact sheet (December 2008). In her book The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), Sakia Sassen refers to this process as “economic restructuring” (read: segregation) through geographies of housing projects and property markets, fueled by patterns of class mobility and youth migration leading to social polarization. In France, the economist François Fourquet establishes the instrumentality of infrastructure as “tool and technique of power” deployed by political entities and factions throughout French planning history such as city and state, in Les Équipements du Pouvoir: Villes, Territoires et Équipements Collectifs (Fontenay-sousBois, FR: Série Recherches 13–Union Générale d'Éditions, 1973). Finally, in Indonesia, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing refers to the “friction” created by local empowerment struggles and global predatory business practices present in the rainforests of Indonesia. See her Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). 35. In Part III of The Condition of Post-Modernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989), geographer David Harvey focuses on the effects of time–space compression as a result of the shift from Fordism to flexible modes of accumulation; whose speed of transition had disruptive impacts on political–economic practices in the twentieth century. See “The Experience of Space and Time” in The Condition of Post-Modernity (201–325), and “Flexible Accumulation through Urbanization: Reflections on 'Post-Modernism' in the American City,” Perspecta 26 (1990): 251–272. 36. Conversely, engineering has been critical and central in infrastructure, from the prosaic to the epic. 37. See Stan Allen, “Infrastructural Urbanism,” in Points + Lines: Diagrams for the City (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999): 46–89. 38. See Joel Kotkin, “Urban Legends: Why Suburbs, Not Dense Cities, are the Future,” Foreign Policy (September/ October 2010). 39. The events at the First Planning Conference in 1909, with the ensuing conflicts between social reformer Benjamin Clarke Marsh and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., provide an important understanding of the waning of architecture’s influence and the rise of planning at the beginning of the twentieth century. See Stuart Meck and Rebecca C. Retzlaff, “A Familiar Ring: A Retrospective on the First National Conference on City Planning (1909)," Planning & Environmental Law 61 No.4 (April 2009): 3–10. 40. See Raymond Mohl’s The Making of Urban America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). 41. “Urban Population Now Exceeds Rural, More than 51 percent Live in Cities and Towns, the Census Announces,” The New York Times, January 14, 1921. 42. Between 1880 and 1890, almost 40 percent of the townships in the United States saw a decrease in rural population as a result of outmigration, and deruralization.

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The National Census revealed that in 1920, half of the country’s population lived in legal, incoporated regions such as cities and suburbs instead of rural areas. See Margo J. Anderson, The American Census: A Social History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), and Ken Ringle, “Unearthing America’s Urban Roots; Archive Releases Pivotal 1920 Census,” The Washington Post (March 3, 1992). 43. See Norman Johnston, Forms of Constraint: A History of Prison Architecture (Champaign-Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000), and Jeremy Bentham’s classic “Panopticon” (1787 letters) in The Panopticon Writings, ed. Miran Bozovic (London: Verso, 1995): 29–95. 44. Throughout his career, the renowned urban planner Constantinos Doxiadis capitalized on the perpetuation of urbanism as a global problem. See “The Universal Urban Crisis” in his study on Detroit and the Great Lakes Megalopolis, Emergence and Growth of an Urban Region, Vol.3: A Concept for Future Development (Detroit, MI: Detroit Edison Co., 1970): 3–8. 45. John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967): 388. 46. Richard T. LeGates describes well the scientific origins of city planning in Early Urban Planning 9 (London, UK: Thoemmes Press, 1935). 47. The profession of urban planning divorced itself from the foundations of geography by retreating into the social sciences. Except for Canada, the mid-twentieth century also saw the closure of geography departments altogether across North America. The most pronounced example of this was at Harvard University where the geography department closed in the '40s with the attendant rise of urban and regional planning departments, including those at MIT, University of North Carolina, Michigan State University, and University of Washington. See Jill Pearlman, Inventing American Modernism: Joseph Hudnut, Walter Gropius, and the Bauhaus Legacy at Harvard (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2007). 48. Urbanism in North America is often recounted through the discipline of urban planning, which stems from the social sciences or from the discipline of urban design rooted in architecture. In the context of North America, both of these mainstream lineages overlook the important influence that wartime planning and military engineering has had on the shape of the North American urban landscape. 49. The lack of geographic and ecological knowledge in the US is not confined to the design, planning, nor engineering disciplines either. Far from a cultural generalization, it is chronic, and pervasive, especially in the United States. According to a recent survey by National Geographic on spatial knowledge, there is an alarming lack of geographic literacy across the United States: “In this survey, most young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 demonstrate a limited understanding of the world beyond their country's borders, and they place insufficient importance on the basic geographic skills that might enhance their knowledge. In this survey, young Americans answer about half (54%) of all the questions correctly. But by and large, majorities of young adults fail at a range of questions testing their basic geographic literacy.” See Roper Public Affairs & National Geographic Education Foundation, “2006 Geographic Literacy Study: Final Report” (Washington, DC: NG Educational Foundation, 2006): 6. www.nationalgeographic. com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2006GeogLitsurvey.pdf. 50. The growth and presence of large regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are representative examples.

51. Howard W. Odum and Harry Estill Moore, “The Rise and Incidence of American Regionalism,” in American Regionalism: A Cultural-Historical Approach to National Integration (New York, NY: Henry Holt & Company, 1938): 5. 52. In Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), Robert Bruegmann discusses at great length the inevitability of sprawl and how efforts to thwart it may be doomed. 53. See Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). 54. Bruegmann, Sprawl: A Compact History, 220. 55. In his essay “Irony and Contradiction in an Age of Precision,” James Corner discusses the advantages and drawbacks of metrics in design, especially when flexibility and risk are involved, in Taking Measure across the American Landscape (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 25–37. See also Robert Pool’s discussion on control and collaboration in Beyond Engineering: How Society Shapes Technology (New York, NY: Oxford, 1997): 215–248. 56. Charles Siegel discusses this observation in “The Failures of Planning” and “The Failure of Growth” in his Unplanning: Livable Cities and Political Choices (Berkeley, CA: Preservation Institute, 2010). 57. See Todd Shallat, “Prologue: A Nation Builder,” in Structures in the Stream: Water, Science, and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Austin, TX: University of Texas, 1994): 1–9. 58. This phenomenon is manifest in the rise of the Sun Belt, the Broiler Belt, Washington’s Internet Alley, the Great Lakes Region, and the California Delta as well as the rise of regional cultural publications such as Garden & Gun, Space Coast, or Highway Star. 59. The economic stimulus plan under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act by the Obama administration is comparable to the National Industry Recovery Act of 1933 conceived under Roosevelt after the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl Decade. See The “New New Deal” issue of TIME Magazine 172 No.21 (November 24, 2008). 60. The search for formal, spatial orders in design mainly stems from a lopsided understanding of modernization as a state rather than as an ongoing process of transformation that incorporates non-formal logics, most often associated with a more-operative view of ecology, with softer morphologies such as flow patterns, organizations, and synergies. 61. Sanford Kwinter, Far from Equilibrium: Essays on Technology and Design Culture (Barcelona, Spain: ACTAR, 2008): 39. 62. Rem Koolhaas, “Bigness or the Problem of Large,” in S, M, L, XL (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 1995): 498. 63. Rem Koolhaas, “Whatever Happened to Urbanism?” in S, M, L, XL (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 1995): 969. 64. Key to this understanding is the difference between engineering and design. On one hand, engineering is premised on the notion of “closed systems”, whereby all the scientific aspects that can be controlled are enlisted as part of the scope of work and where all the other variables are externalized. On the other hand, design is a form of synthesis that often revels in complexity when dealing with diffuse, indeterminate, fluctuating processes or dynamics, most often found in biophysical processes, social networks, or urban conditions. 65. The separation of surface and structure is synonymous with the separation of civil engineering from urban design. Alternatively, design can disclose and reveal subsurface

conditions, namely through networks of access, vegetal systems, and degrees of permeability. Whereby land uses have formerly been laid out in plan, we can begin to design geographic territories in section across vast scales, where minute changes in profile can have significant effect over long distances. 66. Gary L. Strang, “Infrastructure as Landscape,” Places 10 No.3 (Summer 1996): 15. 67. Identified early on in the work of systems ecologist, Howard T. Odum, see “Energy, Ecology, Economics,” Ambio 2 No.6 (1973): 220–227. 68. In “The Pattern of the Metropolis,” Kevin Lynch proposes that “the pattern of urban development critically affects a surprising number of problems, by reason of the spacing of buildings, the location of activities, the disposition of the lines of circulation. Some of these problems might be eliminated if only we would begin to coordinate metropolitan development so as to balance services and growth, prevent premature abandonment or inefficient use, and see that decisions do not negate one another. In such cases, the form of the urban area, whether concentrated or dispersed, becomes of relatively minor importance.” See Kevin Lynch, “The Pattern of the Metropolis,” Daedalus 90 No.1 on “The Future Metropolis” (Winter 1961): 79–98. 69. Overemphasis on vertical form and growth through density obscured the importance of civil engineering in the construction of large-scale projects, especially during the megastructures movement of the 1960s. In Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 1976), Reyner Banham recounts: “The architectural concept of the megastructure, popular several years ago, was roughly that of a skeletal framework comprising the essential functions of the building, into which are inserted the individual, more or less temporary, installations. The advantages of the megastructure are that the individual is provided with necessary facilities and also a greater freedom of choice.” (sleeve) Additionally, exactly ten years earlier, notable landscape geographer and theorist J.B. Jackson proposed landscape as megastructure: “The megastructure is prior to the individual installation and presumably, more lasting. Few of us realize that there is another kind of megastructure in terms of the whole environment; one of the oldest creations of man. This megastructure consisting of the environment organized by man can be called the public landscape. A more correct term would be the political landscape, but since we associate that word not within citizenship as we should, but with politicians and politics, the term public is more effective.” See John Brinkerhoff, “The Public Landscape (1966),” in Landscapes: Selected Writings by J.B. Jackson, ed. Ervin H. Zube (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1970): 153. 70. Frances Cairncross, The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997). 71. Landscape architecture departments are unable to keep up with growth demands as functions historically associated with urban design and planning have either lost ground or become isolated. 72. James Corner, “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Intervention” in Mappings, ed. Denis Cosgrove (London, UK: Reaktion Books, 1999): 231-252. 73. Kenneth Frampton, “Toward a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance,” in The AntiAesthetic. Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, WA: 1983). 74. Corner, “The Agency of Mapping,” 231–252.

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75. The project of landscape infrastructure is seen here as the natural and new convergence of landscape architecture and civil engineering. 76. For a collective account of their contributions, see Jeff Dozier and William Marsh, Landscape: An Introduction to Physical Geography (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1981), and Carl Ortwin Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersals, Bowman Memorial Lectures Vol.2 Ser.2 (New York, NY: The American Geographical Society, 1952), and Liberty Hyde Bailey, The Horticulturist’s Rule-Book; a Compendium of Useful Information for Fruit Growers, Truck Gardeners, Florists, and Others (Norwood, MA: Norwood Press, 1895). 77. Mary P. Anderson, “Groundwater Modeling–The Emperor has No Clothes,” Ground Water 21 No.6 (November 1983): 669. 78. Borrowing from two historic strategies, this formulation conflates the notion of le plan libre expressed by Le Corbusier in his “Cinq Points de l’Architecture Moderne,” in Vers Une Architecture (Paris, FR: Les Éditions G. Cres et Cie, 1923), in which he discusses the freedom gained through the use of concrete construction and load-bearing walls. Secondly, it borrows from the free soil movement of the mid-nineteenth century which emerged from Jeffersonian agrarian ideals that equate land and freedom through free speech, free society, and the equal division of land. 79. For example, the original efficiency that was once relied upon from the use of fertilizers in the production of large, monocultural crops is now contested. The organic urbanism of Havana's Organopónicos is one of its best examples. As a former communist colony in the Antilles, the island of Cuba developed a unique decentralized strategy for the cultivation of food in the absence of imported petrochemical fertilizers and machinery necessary for intensive agriculture. Since the late 1980s, with the collapse of the Soviet bloc and a punitive U.S. trade embargo, Cuba has undergone a major structural reorganization of its agriculture and food production system which has privileged the resurgence of small urban and regional farms along with a series of agrarian formats across a range of scales. See Hugh Warwick, “Cuba’s Organic Revolution,” The Ecologist 29 No.8 (December 1999): 457–460. 80. Andrea Branzi, “The Hybrid Metropolis,” in Learning from Milan: Design and the Second Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988): 24. 81. Drawing from the example of the Great Lakes region in the US and Canada, the emergence of bio-industries, waste economies, and urban ecologies will be dominant drivers of economic growth and urban structure in the future of shrinking cities and decentralizing urban regions. See Pierre Bélanger, “Regionalisation,” JoLA - The Journal of Landscape Architecture (Fall 2010): 6–23. 82. Marcel Smets and Kelly Shannon, The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure (Rotterdam: NAI Publishers, 2010). 83. Shlomo Angel with Jason Parent, Daniel L. Civco, and Alejandro M. Blei, The Persistent Decline in Urban Densities: Global and Historical Evidence of ‘Sprawl’ (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2010). 84. In “Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital: A Brief Environmental History of Neoliberalism” (prepared for the workshop on “Food, Energy, Environment: Crisis of the Modern World-System,” Fernand Braudel Center, Binghamton University, October 9–10), Jason W. Moore explains this conceptualization much further in his critique of the historically flawed differentiation between environmentalism and industrial society. Moore’s view provides

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a different way of thinking and bluntly states: “capitalism is an ecological regime.” (4) For Moore, capitalist development is best understood when seen as complementary to a specific mode of environmental transformation where there is a generative relationship between accumulation and transformation.

Originally published in Infrastructure Sustainability & Design edited by Spiro N. Pollalis, Daniel Schodek, Andreas Georgoulias, and Stephen J. Ramos (London: Routledge, 2012): 276–315.

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Risk Landscape Coastal regions of the world showing areas of sea level rise (red), land reclamation (black), hypoxic zones (gray), and tropical storm basins (white overlays), where more than 60% of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urban population will be living by 2030 according to the United Nations. Diagram: OPSYS, with data from NOAA, NASA, UNDP

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Bibliographic Notes.

Imaging Infrastructure. Bibliographic note on image sources, permissions, and visualization methods1 “Resources appear, too, as shared visions of the possible and acceptable dreams of the innovative, as techniques, knowledge, knowhow, and the institutions for learning these things. Infrastructure in these terms is a dense interwoven fabric that is, at the same, dynamic, thoroughly ecological, even fragile.” —Louis L. Bucciarelli, Designing Engineers, 19942

Behind each image lies an agency. Spanning different scales, this representational agency takes on many different forms and functions, indexing a series of different intentions and objectives. With varying vantage points, their orientations and alignments widely differ: from the individual and the institutional, the geometric to the geographic. Across time, these images—like their agency—are sometimes instant and immediate, or iconic and enduring. Anthropogenic or not, these varying scales reference new territories, establishing connections and links between different systems, and scenes, describing new orders and new organizations of land, from the personal to the planetary. Sometimes technocratic and specialized, or alternatively amateurish and unprofessional, these images offer a lens through which infrastructure could, and should, be understood, interpreted, and imagined. How then can infrastructure be imaged? What does that image communicate? Who projects it, and who disseminates it? If infrastructure, as ethnographer Susan Leigh Starr proposes, is a “relational property,” “part of human organization,” “not a thing stripped of use,” and is also “ecological,”3 then these images reveal multiple relations and dimensions at which infrastructure can be expressed and understood. As a media of communication and medium of transmission, these infrastructural images are more than just vehicles and vessels, they “mean,” “carry,” and “question meaning,” […] “they imply underlying significations.”4 As visual equipment of the institutional or as instru-

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ment of the individual, these images then carry and convey changing identities through which we understand not only the nature of the interventions of political states, but the imagination of the state itself. If all infrastructure is historically biased, as shown here in this compilation of images, then its representation is necessarily politically biased.5 If organizations carry images, then the infrastructure is the image of that organization. Infrastructure-building is therefore also image-building.6 The visual study of infrastructure then, is a way to expose the complexity of systems that support urban life, the “invisible background” of modern life.7 Here, the media is not only the message, the media is the method. Conversely, the method of the book—visually and graphically dense— is in the media.8 Seen in time—either chronologically or synchronously—the historic delineation of infrastructural images throughout the book also reveals a series of telescopic and multidimensional scales. They are spatial, territorial, and organizational, defying the micro- and mesoscales by which technology, or large scale technological systems, is typically described. They expose the invisible conditions of the underground in relation to the surface—sections, cuts, and profiles, reclaiming rights to the subsurface and the reintegration of the underground with aboveground conditions. Like any media, they both imply and invoke bias that is personal and political. These biases are clarified, or sometimes obscured by the politics of pixels, in what Mark Dorrian refers to as the “politics of resolution,” and “resolution differentials,”9 in terms of who provides access to information, how it is shared, disseminated, or withheld. Across time, these images redefine infrastructure's agency in several ways. While public agencies may appear to be the most important providers of spatial imagery and archivers of information data since the nineteenth century (e.g. U.S. Geological Survey, NASA, Department of Transportation, Department of Agriculture, Library of Congress), privately acquired imagery has been increasing since the 1960s revealing

a growing influence of the individual (in person or in corporation) and weakening power of the state (nation or state body). With the explosion of open source imaging and satellite imaging on demand since the 1990s, the production of spatial and territorial imagery has not only seen the explosion of new interfaces such as Google Earth or data-sharing platforms such as Wikipedia, they have enabled new levels of infrastructural exchange, engagement, and action with and on the ground. Simultaneously, the imaging of infrastructure enables a form of recuperation of information and, more specifically, forms of representation, that otherwise would be left uncategorized or exteriorized by exclusive discourses on technology. One particular example is the work of

Researchers

Consultancies & Offices

Corporations & Firms

News/Media Publishers

ute-by-minute and on-demand basis, could we not propose and envision a process through which the planning and implementation of infrastructure itself, and the development of an infrastructural eye, could go live? Although the forms of representation (top views, side views, timelines) and types of imagery may vary from maps (territorial, navigational) and diagrams (patents, Sankey diagrams, organizational charts) to aerial photographs (Google Earth, Geo-Eye, kite photography) and organizational emblems (coats-of-arms, heraldic symbols), it is the range of techniques and methods of projection that cast important light on the infrastructural agency that is constantly at work: the jurisdictions of a transportation agency in the section of a curb or median bar-

Archives Foundations Libraries

State Agencies local, state, federal

Satellite Data Companies

International Organizations

Scale and spectrum of agents, agencies, and organizations retrieving and producing data

ecologist Howard T. Odum, whose systemic, diagrammatic methodologies—for radioactive species, estuarine systems, military states— feature prominently throughout this volume given the “range of scales” they cut across, and the “processes of urbanization” that are clearly invoked, yet remain fundamentally “overlooked.”10 As the frequency of infrastructural information continues to grow, aerial photography and topographic maps that were once produced every 5, 10, or 25 years are now available every month, every day, and even every minute. In 1968, after Apollo VIII circled the moon, a special stamp by the U.S. Postal Service marked “In the beginning, God…” memorialized one of the hundreds of photographs that astronaut Bill Anders took of the Earth from the Moon during the lunar orbit. Over three million stamps were issued, and the image was featured on the cover of LIFE magazine in 1969, seen and read by the eyes of nearly 3 million Americans. If then the representation of infrastructural images is being produced on a min-

rier, the territorial authority of a federal agency in the satellite overview of regions, to the functional logistical diagram of a food terminal, the reformative actions of citizen collected data and cartography, to the historic emblem of an engineering organization that reveals ambition and aspiration. It is there in the transmission of images where the circulation and projection of political ideals—a state of states and system of systems—can be found and understood. Finally, it is important to note that the image should not be confused with the individual or the institution themselves—and the “map” should not be mistaken for representing the “territory”11—the semantics and semiotics embedded in these images form visible connections and clear linkages with seemingly distant and disconnected subjects such as ecology, infrastructure, and territory.12 In the transmission of these different images and the deconstruction of their relations, we can begin to see the mapping and unfolding of different structures, states, and ultimately, new systems of power.

Bibliographic Notes

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1. This note on the imaging of infrastructure was developed in parallel with the intensive, one-year process of image permissions and retrieval of sources for spatial imagery, that was led by Séréna Vanbutsele, a PhD candidate from UC Louvain currently completing her doctoral dissertation on spatial deterritorialization, titled “Le Déménagement Urbain” (“Urbanism as Evacuation”), 2016. 2. Louis L. Bucciarelli, Designing Engineers (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 1994): 131. 3. Susan Leigh Star and Karen Ruhleder, “Steps towards an ecology of infrastructure: design and access for large information spaces,” Information Systems Research Vol.7 No.1 (1996): 113. See also Susan Leigh Star, “The Ethnography of Infrastructure,” American Behavioral Scientist Vol.43 No.3 (November 1999): 380. 4. In his Rhetoric of the Image (1977), Barthes further explains: “All images are polysemous; they imply, underlying their signifiers, a ‘floating chain’ of signifieds, the reader able to choose some and ignore others. Polysemy poses a question of meaning and this question always comes through as a dysfunction, even if this dysfunction is recuperated by society as a tragic (silent, God provides no possibility of choosing between signs) or a poetic (the panic ‘shudder of meaning’ of the Ancient Greeks) game; in the cinema itself, traumatic images are bound up with an uncertainty (an anxiety) concerning the meaning of objects or attitudes. Hence in every society various techniques are developed intended to fix the floating chain of signifieds in such a way as to counter the terror of uncertain signs; the linguistic message is one of these techniques.” See Roland Barthes, Image/Music/Text (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1977): 44. 5. See Harold A. Innis, Empire & Communications (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1950): 196–197, and The Bias of Communication (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1964). 6. See Gareth Morgan, Images of Organization (Thousand Oaks, CA: Safe, 2006). 7. Paul Edwards, “Infrastructure and Modernity: Force, Time and Social Organization in the History of Sociotechnical Systems,” in Modernity and Technology, ed. Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey, and Andrew Feenberg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 185–226. 8. See Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message,” in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York, NY: Signet, 1964): 7–23. 9. Mark Dorrian, “Google Earth” in Seeing from Above: The Aerial View in Visual Culture, ed. by Mark Dorrian, Frédéric Pousi (London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2013): 301–302. See also Mark Dorrian, Writing on the Image (London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2015). 10. Elizabeth Odum (widow of Howard T. Odum), in conversation (May 28, 2015). 11. See Alfred Korzybski’s dictum, “a map is not the territory”, in Science & Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (Brooklyn, NY: Institute of General Semantics, 1933): 750, and Alessandra Ponte’s “Maps and Territories,” Log 30 (Winter 2014): 61–65.

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12. For Michel Foucault’s writing on power and his influence on geography, see Claude Raffestin’s “Could Foucault have Revolutionized Geography?” (translated by Gerald Moore) in Space Knowledge and Power: Foucault and Geography, ed. Jeremy Crampton and Stuart Elden (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2007): 129–137.

Resolution Revolution Comparative index of images showing the different scales, systems, and states that are invoked and implied by the media and method represented in this book, indicative of geography, agency, and history. From the Apollo VIII Mission that shared images of the Earth to the International Joint Commission that fought the pollution of boundary waters, these images reflect on the institutions and individuals that shape infrastructures and environments through their action through positions, policies, practices, and purposes. In turn, their strength lies in the multimedia nature of images themselves that expressively rethink scientific orders and authorities by including critical biases such as gender, family, diversity, biota, belief, even symbolism. Either i`n the rise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the middle of the nineteenth century or of landscape architects in the twenty-first century, we can see important changes and shifts in the scalar resolution of infrastructural images. More than just maps or mottos, signs or symbols, these images represent territorial motivations from the ground, in the kitchen of a suburban family home at Love Canal to the aquatic space of the great Lake Erie. Semiotically and semantically, as well as through resolution, they shape perception as past and future projections, making possible the imaging and imagination of change with and beyond the nation state. When displayed across time (diachronically) and in time (synchronically), the chronological timeline of images in this volume help to redefine infrastructureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s agency, beyond the nation state from the privatization of spatial imagery and information retrieval, to citizen cartography and live, grounded information. Bibliographic Notes

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Re-Reading Infrastructure. Bibliographic note and future readings on the converging fields of urbanism, landscape, and ecology This selection of references provides a rereading of infrastructure through the lens of landscape and ecology. Responding to contemporary environmental pressures, resource economies, and mobile populations worldwide, this bibliographical note presents a series of influential views from a range of design disciplines to address pressing issues related to waste, water, energy, food, and mobility. Visà-vis the overexertion of civil engineering and the inertia of urban planning at the turn of the twenty-first century, the compilation reexamines canonical texts throughout urban history—from Geddes to Gottmann, MacKaye to Mumford, Olmsted to Odum—with an aim toward elucidating the latent reciprocity between ecology and economy, infrastructure and urbanism, growth and decline. Organized as a sequence of cumulative subjects, each set of readings establishes a lineage of practices, projects, and processes that have been historically overlooked by an exclusively Old World view of New World urbanism. Using a reverse chronological order, the readings work backwards through the past hundred years when urbanization of the North American continent took on radically new proportions at the dawn of the twentieth century. To illustrate the magnitude of this change, each set of readings is paired with a selection of maps and timelines that chart urbanization as an unfinished process, further contextualizing the content within larger geographies, across broader timescales. Challenging the laissez-faire dogma of neoliberalist economics, Fordist forms of civil engineering, Taylorist methods of scientific management, and Euclidean planning policies that marked the past century, the compilation proposes an augmented agency for the design disciplines, where the field of landscape emerges as a base operating system for urban economies. Foreshadowing the preeminence of ecology for urban transformation in the present and future, the motive of this compilation is to open a contemporary horizon on infrastructure 484

as design medium and to prime a clear, cogent discourse on the field of landscape as it becomes the locus of intellectual, ecological and economic significance. The references are thus organized into two main groups of texts. The first group, “Preconditions & Processes,” outlines preliminary knowledge on urbanism, landscape, and infrastructure. Looking beyond the ‘problematization’ of the urban and the historic characterization of it as “crisis,” the following references revisit the transformation of different urban conditions as processes that are conditioned by pre-urban, pre-industrial and pre-Fordist factors. The second group, “Projections & Protoecologies,” is more projective and forward looking, with design methodologies and directive ecologies. This group explores new spatial models and media that provide ways of working and alternative applications related to contemporary practice. The sub-list of texts in each section are also organized in reverse chronology, starting with the most recent and contemporary reference, leading back through history of the early nineteenth century age of Western industrialization to trace critical lineages across different fields of knowledge as well as propose relevant associations and applications. As references, these readings open a range of contemporary urban discourses that acknowledge critical, fin-de-siècle tendencies occurring worldwide: the emergence of ecology, the revival of geography, the overexertion of engineering, the spatial apartheid of infrastructure, and the inertia of urban planning vis-à-vis the pace of urban change today. Drawing from an array of urbanists, designers, ecologists, industrialists, engineers, and planners, these texts articulate canonical views from twentieth century America to give relevance to the processes and patterns of contemporary urbanization. Historically segregated by the professionalization of design disciplines, they provide a foundation for the re-engagement of an infrastructure discourse that synthesizes practices of planning, zoning, and engineering through the agency of design.

Preconditions & Processes From Industrialization to Urbanization Brenner, Neil & Christian Schmid. “Planetary Urbanisation” in Urban Constellations edited by Matthew Gandy (Berlin, DE: Jovis, 2012): 11–13. Ouroussoff, Nicolai. “The Silent Radicals,” New York Times - Arts Section (July 20, 2007). Waldheim, Charles. “Landscape as Urbanism,” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006): 35–54. Welter, Volker M. “The Region-City: A Step toward Conurbations and the World City,” in Biopolis: Patrick Geddes and the City of Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002): 70–75. Frampton, Kenneth. “Toward an Urban Landscape,” Columbia Documents of Architecture and Theory, Vol.4 (1995): 83–93. Koolhaas, Rem. “Whatever Happened to Urbanism?” in S, M, L, XL (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 1995): 958-971. Hough, Michael. “The Urban Landscape: The Hidden Frontier,” Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology– Landscape Preservation, Vol.15 No.4 (1983): 9–14. Reps, John William. “European Planning on the Eve of American Colonization” in Making of Urban America: a History of City Planning in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965): 1–25. Mumford, Lewis. “The Natural History of Urbanization” in Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, edited by William L. Thomas, Jr. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1956): 382–398. Giedion, Siegfried. Space, Time, and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941). Wirth, Louis. “Urbanism as a Way of Life” in American Journal of Sociology Vol.44 No.1 (July 1938): 1-2. Geddes, Patrick. “The Evolution of Cities,” in Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the Study of Civics (London, UK: Williams and Norgate, 1915): 1–24. Olmsted, Frederick Law. “Expanding Cities: Random Versus Organized Growth (1868)” in Civilizing American Cities: Writings on City Landscapes ed. S.B. Sutton (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971): 21–99. *Scruton, Paul. “The New Urban World” (graphic), The Guardian (Saturday, June 27, 2007). Infrastructure, & the Ascent of Civil Engineering Bélanger, Pierre. “Redefining Infrastructure” in Ecological Urbanism, ed. Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty (Baden, CH: Lars Müller Publishers, 2010): 332–349. Meyboom, AnnaLisa. “Infrastructure as Practice,” Journal for Architectural Education Vol.62 No.4 (May 2009): 72–81. Petroski, Henry. “Things Small and Large” in Success through Failure: the Paradox of Design (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006): 97–115.

Jones, Peter. “Cultivating the Art of the Impossible” in Ove Arup: Master Builder of the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006): 282–301. Picon, Antoine. “Engineers and Engineering History: Problems and Perspectives,” History and Technology Vol. 20 No.4, (December 2004): 421–436. Edwards, Paul N. “Infrastructure & Modernity: Force, Time and Social Organization in the History of Sociotechnical Systems” in Modernity and Technology edited by Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey and Andrew Feenberg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 185–226. Williams, Rosalind. Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002). Grigg, Neil S. et al. “Civil Engineering: History, Heritage, and Future” in Civil Engineering Practice in the Twenty-First Century: Knowledge and Skills for Design and Management (Reston VA: ASCE Press, 2001): 13–44. Koolhaas, Rem. “Bigness or the Problem of Large” in S,M,L,XL (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 1995): 494–517. Schodek, Daniel L. Landmarks in Civil Engineering (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). Layton, Edwin. The Revolt of Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). Choate, Pat and Susan Walter. “Declining Facilities/Declining Investments” in America in Ruins: The Decaying Infrastructure (Durham, NC: Duke Press Paperbacks, 1983): 1–29. de Camp, L. Sprague. The Ancient Engineers (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1960). Ley, Willy. Engineer’s Dreams (New York, NY: The Viking Press, 1954). Beers, Henry P. “A History of the U.S. Topographical Engineers, 1813-1863,” Military Engineering 34 (June, 1942): 287-91 and (July, 1942): 348–352. *Thom, W. Taylor. “Science and Engineering and the Future of Man” in Science and the Future of Mankind (World Academy of Art & Science - Series 1) edited by Hugo Boyko (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1961): 256. Whatever Happened to Planning? Zoning, after Euclid Wolf, Michael A. “On the Road to Zoning” in The Zoning of America: Euclid vs. Ambler (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2008): 17–31. Light, Jennifer S. “Introduction” and “Planning for the Atomic Age” in From Warfare and Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2003): 1–31. Davidson, Joel. “Building for War, Preparing for Peace: World War II and the Military-Industrial Complex” in World War II and the American Dream: How Wartime Building Changed a Nation edited by Donald Albrecht (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995): 184–229. Nelson, Robert H. “Zoning Myth and Practice - from Euclid into the Future” in Zoning and the American Dream edited by Jerold Kayden and Charles M. Haar (Chicago, IL.: Planners Press, 1989): 299–318. Boyer, M. Christine. “The Rise of the Planning Mentality” in Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City PlanBibliographic Notes

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ning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983): 59-82. Galbraith, John Kenneth. “The Planning System” in Economics and the Public Purpose (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1973): 96–190. Wilhem, Sidney W. “Introduction” in Urban Zoning and Land Use Theory (New York, NY: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962): 1–11. Wiener, Norbert. “How US Cities Can Prepare for Atomic War,” Time Magazine Life Publications (Dec. 18 1950): 77–86. Hilberseimer, Ludwig. “Cities and Defense (c.1945)” in In the Shadow of Mies: Ludwig Hilberseimer: Architect, Educator and Urban Planner by Richard Pommer, David Spaeth, and Kevin Harrington with selected writings by Ludwig Hilberseimer (Chicago, IL: Art Institute of Chicago & Rizzoli International, 1988): 89–93.

Ecological Emergence & Urban Complexity Reed, Chris. “The Agency of Ecology” in Ecological Urbanism edited by Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty (Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2010): 324–329. Del Tredici, Peter. “Brave New Ecology,” Landscape Architecture 96 (February, 2006): 46–52. Kangas, Patrick. “Designing New Ecosystems” and “Principles of Ecological Engineering” in Ecological Engineering: Principles and Practice (Boca Raton, FA: CRC Press, 2004): 13–24. Nordhaus, Ted and Michael Shellenberger. “The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World,” The Break Through Institute, http://thebreakthrough.org/PDF/Death_of_Environmentalism.pdf.

*Choay, Françoise. “The Modern City: Planning in the 19th Century” in Planning and Cities edited by George R. Collins (London: Studio Vista, 1969): 121–125.

Mol, Arthur P.J. “The Environmental Transformation of the Modern Order” in Modernity and Technology edited by Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey, and Andrew Feenberg (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2003): 303–325.

Sub-Urbanization & Super-Urbanization

Forman, Richard T.T. “The Emergence of Landscape Ecology” in Landscape Ecology edited by Richard T.T. Forman and Michel Godron (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1986): 3–31.

Segal, Rafi. “Urbanism Without Density” in Architectural Design AD Vol. 78 No.1 (Jan.-Feb. 2008): 6–11. Simone, AbdouMaliq. “At the Frontier of the Urban Periphery” in Sarai Reader 2007: Frontiers edited by Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi , and Ravi Sundaram (Delhi, IN: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 2007): 462–470. Davis, Mike. “The Urban Climateric” and “the Prevalence of Slums” in Planet of Slums (New York, NY: Verso, 2006): 1–19, 20–50. Bruegmann, Robert. “Defining Sprawl” and “Early Sprawl” in Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005): 17–20, 21–32. Sieverts, Thomas. “The Living Space of the Majority of Mankind: an Anonymous Space with no Visual Quality” in Cities without Cities (London, UK: Spon Press, 2003): 1–47.

Odum, Howard T. “Cities and Regions” in Ecological and General Systems: An Introduction to Systems Ecology (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1983): 532-553. McHale, John. “Dimensions of Change,” and “An Ecological Overview,” in The Future of the Future (New York, NY: Braziller, 1969): 57–74. McHarg, Ian. “An Ecological Method for Landscape Architecture,” Landscape Architecture 57 (January 1967): 105107. Sears, Paul B. “Ecology – A Subversive Subject,” Bioscience Vol.14 No.7 (1964): 11–13. *Djalali, Amir with Piet Vollaard. “The Complex History of Sustainability: An Index of Trends, Authors, Projects and Fiction,” Volume #18 - After Zero (2008): 33–41.

Lerup, Lars. “Stim and Dross: Rethinking the Metropolis” in After the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000): 46–63. Harvey, David. “Flexible Accumulation through Urbanization, Reflections on Post-Modernism in the American City” in Post-Fordism: A Reader edited by Ash Amin (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994): 361–386. Gottman, Jean. “The Main Street of the Nation” and “The Dynamics of Urbanization” in Megalopolis (New York, NY: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961): 3–22. Wright, Frank Lloyd. “Decentralization” in The Living City (New York, NY: Horizon Press, 1958): 77–105. Gruen, Victor. “Dynamic Planning for Retail Areas,” Harvard Business Review (Nov.-Dec. 1954): 53–62. *Thomas, Gary Scott. “Micropolitan America” (map) American Demographics 20 (1 May 1989): 1-2, and U.S. Department Of Commerce Economics and Statistics Administration, Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas of the United States and Puerto Rico (Washington DC: US CENSUS Bureau Geography Division, December, 2006).

Projections & Protoecologies Constructed Ecologies & Soft Systems Bélanger, Pierre. “Landscape as Infrastructure,” Landscape Journal 28 (Spring 2009): 79–95. Allen, Stan. “Infrastructural Urbanism” in Points + Lines: Diagrams for the City (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999): 46–89. Corner, James. “Eidetic Operations & New Landscapes” in Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, edited by James Corner (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999): 153–170. Frampton, Kenneth. “Megaform as Urban Landscape,” 1999 Raoul Wallenberg Lecture (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1999): 1-42. Corner, James. “Measures of Land” and “Measures of Control” in Taking Measures Across the American Landscape

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(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996): 41-96.

2000): 50-68.

Easterling, Keller. “Network Ecology,” Landscapes - Felix Journal of Media Arts & Communication 2 No.1 (1995): 258-265.

Rogers, Peter. “Water Resources and Public Policy” in America’s Water: Federal Roles and Responsibilities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993): 1-24.

Banham, Reyner. “Antecedents, Analogies, and Mégastructures trouvées” in Megastructures: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (London, UK: Thames and Hudson, 1976): 13-32.

Illich, Ivan. “The Dirt of Cities” in H20 & The Waters of Forgetfulness (London, UK: Maryon Boyars Publishers, 1986): 45-76.

Jackson, John Brinkerhoff. “The Public Landscape (1966)” in Landscapes: Selected Writings by J.B. Jackson edited by Ervin H. Zube (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1970): 153-160.

Leuba, Clarence. “The Tennessee Valley Authority: Accomplishments & Disappointments” in A Road to Creativity: Arthur Morgan - Engineer, Educator, Administrator (North Quincy, MA: The Christopher Publishing House, 1971): 163-202.

Lynch, Kevin. “Earthwork & Utilities” in Site Planning (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1962): 157-188. Ely, Richard T. and George S. Wehrwein. Land Economics (New York, NY: The MacMillan Company, 1940): 1-23, 5073. Mumford, Lewis. “The Renewal of the Landscape” in The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts of America, 1865-1895 (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1931): 75-106. *Bélanger, Pierre. “Venice Lagoon 2100: A Strategy for the economy and ecology of the Venice Lagoon” in Concurso 2G Competition: Venice Lagoon Park edited by Mónica Gili (Barcelona, Spain: 2G International Review, 2008): 52-53. *Odum, Howard T. “Representative City System” in Ecological and General Systems (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1983): 548. Water: Public Works, Hydrologic Systems, & Coastal Dynamics Mathur, Anuradha and Dilip Da Cunha. “Monsoon in an Estuary” and “Estuary in a Monsoon” in SOAK: Mumbai in an Estuary (New Delhi, India: Rupa and Co., 2009), 3-9, 185-187. De Meulder, Brian and Kelly Shannon. “Water and the City: the ‘Great Stink’ and Clean Urbanism” in Water Urbanisms edited by De Meulder, V. d’Auria, J. Gosseye and K. Shannon (Amsterdam, NL: SUN, 2008): 5-9. Barles, Sabine. “The Nitrogen Question,” Journal of Urban History 33 (2007): 794-812. Picon, Antoine. “Constructing Landscape by Engineering Water” in Landscape Architecture in Mutation: Essays on Urban Landscapes by Institute for Landscape Architecture, ETH Zurich (Zurich, CH: gta Verlag, 2005), 99-114. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. “The Battle for Public Development and Remaking the Tennessee Valley” in The Coming of the New Deal, 1933-1935 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2003): 319-334. Wolff, Jane. “A Brief History of the Delta” in Delta Primer: A Field Guide to the California Delta (San Francisco, CA: William Stout Publishers, 2003): 37-45. Gandy, Matthew. “Water, Space, and Power” in Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002): 19-75. Melosi, Martin. “Pure and Plentiful: from Protosystems to Modern Water Works,” “Subterranean Networks: Wastewater Systems as Works in Progress” in The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press,

Wolman, Abel. “The Metabolism of Cities,” Scientific American Vol. 213 No.3 (1965): 178-193. *Bélanger, Pierre. “Risk Landscape: Coastal Flood Zones, Land Reclamation & Hypotrophic Zones of the World” (graphic) in Maasvlakte 2100 by OPSYS (Rotterdam, Netherlands: Rotterdam Port Authority, 2010): 171-172. Waste: Landscape of Surplus, Cycling & Accumulation Bélanger, Pierre. “Airspace: The Ecologies and Economies of Landfilling in Michigan and Ontario” in Trash edited by John Knechtel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006): 132155. Berger, Alan. “The Production of Waste Landscape” and “Post-Fordism: Waste Landscape through Accumulation” in Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006): 46-52, 53-75. Engler, Mira. “Contemplating Waste: Theories and Constructs” in Designing America’s Waste Landscapes (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004): 1-41. Berger, Alan. “The Altered Western Landscape” in Reclaiming the American West (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002): 15-55. Bélanger, Pierre. “Jankara Jetty: Recycling Cloverleaf,” and “Ebute Ero: Market Economies” in Harvard Project on the City: Lagos edited by Rem Koolhaas and Jeffrey Inaba (Cambridge, MA: Graduate School of Design, 2000). Kirkwood, Niall. “Manufactured Sites: Integrating Technology and Design in Reclaimed Landscapes” in Manufactured Sites: Re-Thinking the Post-Industrial Landscape edited by Niall Kirkwood (London, UK: SPON Press, 2001): 3-11. Miller, Benjamin. “Prologue: Garbage” in Fat of the Land: Garbage in New York - The Last Two Hundred Years (New York, NY: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000): 1-16. Hawken, Paul. “The Creation of Waste” in The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1993): 37-55. Frosch, Robert A. and Nicholas E. Gallopoulos. “Strategies for Manufacturing,” Scientific American - Special Issue: Managing Planet Earth (1989): 94-102. Ford, Henry. “Learning from Waste” in Today and Tomorrow (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1926): 89–98. *Bélanger, Pierre. “Shit City: Aggregate landscape of waste flows, exchanges and synergies accumulated during the past five centuries in the Port of Rotterdam“ (graphic) in Maasvlakte 2100 by OPSYS (Rotterdam, Netherlands: Rotterdam Port Authority, 2010): 60–61.

Bibliographic Notes

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Food: Agrarian Landscapes, Market Economies, & Harvest Regions Imbert, Dorothée. “Let Them Eat Kale,” Architecture Boston (Fall 2010): 24–26. Rice, Andrew. “Agro-Imperialism?,” NY Times Magazine (Nov. 2, 2009): 46-51. Bélanger, Pierre and Angela Iarocci. “Foodshed: The Global Infrastructure of the Ontario Food Terminal” in TRASH edited by John Knechtel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007): 116–138. Pollan, Michael. “The Farm” in The Omnivore’s Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2006): 32–56. Branzi, Andrea. “Agronica” in Weak & Diffuse Modernity: The World of Projects at the Beginning of the 21st century (Milan, IT: Skira, 2006): 132–146. Mazoyer, Marcel and Laurence Roudart. “Humanity’s Agrarian Heritage” in A History of World Agriculture: From the Neolithic Age to the Current Crisis, trans. James H. Membrez (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2006): 9–26. Diamond, Jared. “From Food to Guns, Germs and Steel: The Evolution of Technology” in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York, NY: Norton & Company, 1999): 239–264. Hough, Michael. “City Farming” in Cities & Natural Process: A Basis for Sustainability (London, UK: Routledge, 1995): 160-188. Giedion, Siegfried. “Mechanization and the Soil: Agriculture” in Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to an Anonymous History (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1969): 130–147.

Ausubel, Jesse H. “The Liberation of the Environment: Technological Development and Global Environmental Change,” Daedalus Vol.125 No.3 (Summer 1996): 1–17. Dozier, Jeff and William Marsh. “Energy Processes on the Earth’s Surface” in Landscape: An Introduction to Physical Geography (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1981): 1–20. llich, Ivan. Energy and Equity (London, UK: Calder and Boyars, 1974): 1–29. Odum, Howard T. “Energy, Ecology, Economics,” Ambio Vol.2 No.6 Energy in Society: A Special Issue (1973): 220– 227. Mumford, Lewis. “Power & Mobility” in Technics and Civilization (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1934): 235–239. *Bélanger, Pierre. “Power Perestroika” in New Geographies 02 - Landscapes of Energy edited by Rania Ghosn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press): 119–124. Logistics: Industrialization, Decentralization & Disassembly Waldheim, Charles and Alan Berger. “Logistics Landscape” in Landscape Journal Vol.27 No.2 (2008): 219–246. Bélanger, Pierre. “Landscapes of Disassembly” in Topos 60 (October, 2007): 83–91. Schumacher, Patrik and Christian Rogner. “After Ford” in Stalking Detroit edited by Georgia Daskalakis, Charles Waldheim and Jason Young (ACTAR, Barcelona, 2001): 48–56.

Hedden, Walter P. “The Food Supply of a Great City” in How Great Cities are Fed (New York, NY: D.C. Heath, 1929): 1–16.

Nash, Gary B. “The Social Evolution of Pre-Industrial American Cities, 1700-1820” in The Making of Urban America, edited by Raymond A. Mohl (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1997): 15–36.

Piotr Kropotkin, “The Possibilities of Agriculture” (Chapters 3-4) in Fields, Factories And Workshops: or Industry Combined with Agriculture and Brain Work with Manual Work (London, UK: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1912): 79–187.

Dandaneau, Steven P. “Introduction: Ideology and Dependent Deindustrialization” in A Town Abandoned: Flint, Michigan Confronts Deindustrialization (Albany State University of New York Press, 1994): xix–xxviii.

*Brandford, Sue. “Global Land Grab” (graphic), The Guardian (22 November 2008).

Garreau, Joel. “The Foundry” in The Nine Nations of North America (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1981): 48– 97.

*Bélanger, Pierre. Global Foodshed & PLU Landscape (graphic) (Toronto, ON: Ontario Food Terminal Board, 2007). Fuel: Energy Networks & the Carbon Landscape Ghosn, Rania. “Energy as Spatial Project” in Landscapes of Energy - New Geographies Journal 02 (2009): 7–10. Friedmann, S. Julio and Thomas Homer-Dixon. “Out of the Energy Box,” Foreign Affairs, Volume 83 No.6 (November/ December 2004): 72–83. Ascher, Kate. “Power” in The Works: Anatomy of a City (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2005): 94–121. Jakob, Michael. “Conversation with Paul Virilio,” and “Architecture and Energy or the History of an Invisible Presence” in 2G International Architecture Review No. 18 (2001): 4–32. 488

Brennan, Teresa. “Energetics” in Exhausting Modernity: Grounds for a New Economy (New York, NY: Routledge, 2000): 41–54.

Conway, McKinley. “Emergence of the Park Concept and Proliferation of Units” and “Types of Parks” in Industrial Park Growth: an Environmental Success Story (Atlanta: Conway Publications, 1979): 5–20, 45–62. Galbraith, John Kenneth. “The Nature of Industrial Planning” in The New Industrial State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967): 25–41. Reps, John William. “The Towns that Companies Built” in Making of Urban America: a History of City Planning in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965): 414–448. Mumford, Lewis. “Paleotechnic Paradise: Coketown” in The City in History (New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1961): 446–481. *Bélanger, Pierre. “Kalundborg’s Protoecology & Wasteshed” (graphic) in Topos 60 (October, 2007): 88,

and Fuller, Buckminster. Acceleration in the Discoveries of Science: Profile of the Industrial Revolution (1946, 1964). Mobility I: Speed, Transportation & Surface Networks Guldi, Jo. “Road to Rule” in Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012): 1–24. Bélanger, Pierre. “Synthetic Surfaces” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader edited by Charles Waldheim (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006): 239–265. Schnapp, Jeffrey T. “Three Pieces of Asphalt” in Grey Room 11 (Spring, 2003): 5–21. McPhee, John. “Fleet of One: Eighty Thousand Pounds of Dangerous Goods” in The New Yorker - Annals of Transport Section, (February 17-24, 2003): 148–162. Gregotti, Vittorio. “The Road: Layout and Built Object” in Casabella No.553-554 (January-February 1989): 2–5, 118. Virilio, Paul. “The Dromocratic Revolution” in Speed & Politics: An Essay on Dromology, translated by Mark Polizzotti (New York, NY: Autonomedia Press, 1986): 1–34. Mumford, Lewis. “Landscape and Townscape,” and “The Highway and the City” in The Highway and the City (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981): 233–256. Frampton, Kenneth. “The Generic Street as a Continuous Built Form” in On Streets edited by Stanford Anderson (Cambridge: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, MIT Press, 1978): 308–336. Newton, Norman T. “Parkways and Their Offpsring” in Design on the Land: The Development of Landscape Architecture (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971): 596–619. Ritter, Paul. “History of Traffic Segregation” in Planning for Man and Motor (Oxford, UK: Pergamon Press, 1964): 314–330. Jellicoe, Sir Geoffrey “Segregation of Traffic” in Motopia: Evolution of the Urban Landscape (New York, NY: Praeger, 1961): 117–140. Olmsted, Frederick Law. “History of Streets” (Washington, DC: Frederick Law Olmsted Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, 1888). *Staley, E. “Technical Progress in Travel Time” (graphic) in World Economy in Transition (New York, NY: Council on Foreign Relations, 1939): 6. Mobility II: Communications, Broadband, & Subterranean Urbanism NY Times, “A Plan for Broadband,” New York Times OP-ED Section (Sunday, March 21, 2010): 1. Wu, Tim. “Bandwidth Is the New Black Gold,” Time Magazine (Thursday, Mar. 11, 2010)

Bélanger, Pierre. “Underground Landscape: The Urbanism & Infrastructure of Toronto’s Downtown Pedestrian Network,” Journal of Underground Space and Tunnelling Vol. 22 No.3 (October 2006): 272–292. Alonzo, Eric. “De la place-carrefour à l’échangeur, instrumentalisation du système giratoire” and “Le réseau des giratoires, vers une nouvelle organisation des territoires urbains,” in Du Rond-Point au Giratoire (Paris, FR: Parenthèses, 2005): 84–100, 127–33. Wall, Alex. “Programming the Urban Surface” in Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture edited by James Corner (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999): 233–250. Schmandt, Jurgen, Frederick Williams, Robert H. Wilson, and Sharon Strover, editors. “Introduction” in The New Urban Infrastructure: Cities and Telecommunications (New York, NY: Praeger, 1990): 1–6. McCluskey, Jim. “Networks” in Road Form and Townscape (London: Architectural Press, 1979): 12–38. Giedion, Siegfried. “Movement” in Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to an Anonymous History (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1969): 14–44. *McHale, John. “Vertical Mobility” (graphic) in The Future of the Future (New York, NY: Braziller, 1969): 69. From Globalization to Regionalization Bélanger, Pierre. “Regionalisation,” JoLA - The Journal of Landscape Architecture (Fall 2010): 6–23. Forman, Richard T. T. “Urban Region Planning” in Urban Regions: Ecology and Planning Beyond the City (Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 45–50. Wolff, Jane. “Redefining Landscape” in The Tennessee Valley Authority: Design and Persuasion edited by Tim Culvahouse (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007): 52–63. Easterling, Keller. “Partition: Watershed & Wayside” in Organization Space: Landscapes, Houses and Highways in America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999): 54–66. Branzi, Andrea. “The Hybrid Metropolis” in Learning from Milan: Design and the Second Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988): 20–24. Gregotti, Vittorio. “La Forme du Territoire (The Shape of Landscape),” AA L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui No.218 (December 1981): 10–15. Dal Co, Francesco. “From Parks to the Region: Progressive Ideology and the Reform of the American City” in The American City: From the Civil War and the New Deal ed. Giorgio Cucci, Francesco Dal Co, Mario Manieri-Elia, and Manfredo Tafuri (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979): 143–292. McHarg, Ian. “The City: Process & Form” in Design with Nature (Garden City, NY: Natural History Press, 1969): 175–186.

Schnapp, Jeffrey T. “Fast (Slow) Modern” in Speed Limits (Montreal, QC: CCA, 2009): 26–37.

Odum, Howard W. and Harry Estill Moore. “The Rise and Incidence of American Regionalism” in American Regionalism: A Cultural-Historical Approach to National Integration (New York, NY: Henry Holt & Company, 1938): 3–34.

Varnelis, Kazys. “Invisible City: Telecommunications” in The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles (Barcelona, ES: ACTAR, 2008): 118–129.

MacKaye, Benton. “Appalachian America – A World Empire” in The New Exploration: A Philosophy of Regional Planning (New York, NY: Harcourt, 1928): 95–119.

Bibliographic Notes

489

Landscape Cartography & the Agency of Mapping Rosenberg, Daniel & Anthony Grafton. Cartographies of Time (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). Dodge, Martin, Perkins, Chris, and Kitchin, Rob. “Mapping Modes, Methods and Moments: A Manifesto for Map Studies” in Rethinking Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory (New York, NY: Routledge, 2009): 220–243. Schäfer, Wolf. “Ptolemy’s Revenge: A Critique of Historical Cartography” in Coordinates Series A-3 (August 29, 2005): 1–16. Archibald, Sasha, and Rosenberg, Daniel. “A Timeline of Timelines,” Cabinet 13 - Futures (Spring 2004). Cosgrove, D. “Mapping Meaning” in Mappings (London: Reaktion, 1999): 1–23. Kwinter, Sanford. “The Genealogy of Models,” Any 23: Diagram Work (Fall 1998): 59. Corner, James. “Aerial Representation & The Making of Landscape” in Taking Measure across the American Landscape by James Corner & Alex S. Mclean (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996): 15–20. O’Hara, Robert J. “Representations of the Natural System in the Nineteenth Century” in Biology and Philosophy 6 (1991): 255–274.

Bluffing” in Risk, Reliability, Uncertainty, and Robustness of Water Resource Systems edited by János Bogárdi and Zbigniew Kundzewicz (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 22–29. Mathur, Anuradha and Dilip DaCunha. “Introduction: Mississippi Horizons” in Mississippi Floods: Designing a Shifting Landscape (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001): 1–31. Latz, Peter. “The Idea of Making Time Visible,” Topos Vol. 33 (2000): 94–99. Beck, Ulrich. “Environment, Knowledge, and Indeterminacy: Beyond Modernist Ecology?” in Risk, Environment & Modernity edited by Scott Lash, Bronislaw Szerszynski, and Brian Wynne (London, Sage Publications, 1996): 27–43. Forman, Richard T.T. “Landscape Change” in Landscape Ecology by Richard T.T. Forman and Michel Godron (New York, NY: Wiley, 1986): 427–458. Perrow, Charles. “Living with High-Risk Technologies” in Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1984): 305–352.

* indicates additional graphic media and representational references (maps, diagrams, charts) added at the end of each reading section.

Monmonier, Mark S. “Introduction” in How to Lie with Maps (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991): 1–4. Harley, J.B. “Deconstructing the Map,” Cartographica 26: 2 (1989): 1–20. Harley, J.B. “Maps, Knowledge, and Power” in The Iconography of the Landscape edited by D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 277–312. Wood, Denis. and Fels, John. “Designs on Signs / Myth and Meaning in Maps” in Cartographica Vol.23 No.3 (1986): 54–103. Fisher, Howard T. Mapping Information: The Graphic Display of Quantitative Information (Cambridge, MA: Abt Books, 1982). Bertin, Jacques. Sémiologie Graphique: Les Diagrammes, les Réseaux, les Cartes (Paris, FR: Gauthier-Villars, 1967). Bunge, William. Theoretical Geography (Lund, SW: Gleerup, 1962). Urban Hazards: Risk, Contingency & Indeterminate Landscapes Meyer, Elizabeth K. “Slow Landscapes” in Harvard Design Magazine Vol. 31 (Fall/Winter 2010): 22–31. Lister, Nina-Marie. “Bridging Science and Values: The Challenge of Biodiversity Preservation” in The Ecosystem Approach edited by James J. Kay, Nina-Marie E. Lister, and David Waltner-Toews (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2008): 83–108. Berrizbeitia, Anita. “Re-Placing Process” in Large Parks edited by Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007): 175–198. Klemeš, Vit. “Risk Analysis: The Unbearable Cleverness of

490

> Landscape Revolutions

Using the format of a timeline, the following bibliographical references outline the intersection and convergence of several fields of knowledge in engineering, ecology, planning and geography. Across time, the diagram proposes the emergence of landscape as an overlapping field of design practice and theoretical investigation that has been under development during the past two centuries, and now beginning to blossom as an area of inquiry, engagement, and intervention. Diagram: OPSYS/Daniel Daou

Military Engineering

Engineering

Henry Beers “A History of the U.S. Topographical E

eorge E. Waring “Draining For Profit, and Draining for Health” (1867)

Sanitary tary E ta En

Scientific Manageme Management Taylorism Frederick Olmsted “Expandingg Cities: Random versus Organized Growth” (1868) H.G. Wells “The Probable Difussion of Great Cities” (1902)

Pla P Pl lla lan an

Patrick Geddes “Expandin

Geography raphy phyy

as Modified by Human Action: a Last Revision of Man and Natu nciples of Agriculture: a Textbook for Schools and Rural Societi Piotr Kropotkin “The Possibilities of Agriculture” (1912)

Ecology Ecolo

Ernst Haeckel “Generelle Morph

Bibliographic Bibli hi N Notes t

491

he U.S. Topographical Engineers” (1879 1942)

Food F Fo ood

Walter Hed dden

of a Gr eatt City t ” (1929) 29 29) 9)

Wate Energy E nergy gy & Mobi F di Fordism ement eme Waste stte & Surplus Surplus sm Ove Pla P Pl lla lann lanning an nn nin &A tary E ta Engineering ering er ng g

Euclidean Zoning

Carl Ortwin Sauer “The Morphology of Landscape” (1925) vision of Man and Nature” (1907) ools and Rural Societies” (1909) re” (1912)

Walter Christaller “Central Place Theory” (1933)

Benton Mackaye “Appalachian America” (1928)

Howard Odum “The Rise and Incidence of Americ

Lewis Mumford “The Renewal of the Landscape” (1931) Richard Ely “Land Economics” (1

Armin Lobeck, “Airways of America” (1933)

Armin Lobeck, “Physiographic Diagram

492

Taylor Thom “Science and Engineering and the Future ofH Herbert erb er rbe ert Alexan Alexander Sim Kevin Ly L nch “Earthwork and Utilities” (1962) 2)ohn McHale “Dimens 2) Hasan Özbekha Christopher Tunnard “Man-made America: Chaos or Contr Buckminster Fuller “Acc c e ler le r a t ion in the Discoveries o Norbert Wiener “How U.S. Cities can Prepare for Atomic War” (1950) John William R eps “The e Towns that Companies Harrison Brown “The Challenge of Man’s Future” (1954) John Kenne e th Galbraith “The Natu

Cont Control Co C ontttrol o ontrol rol rol

Standardization Standardizatio on o n

er lityy

ments to Floods” (1942)

Abe el Wolman “The Metabolism of Citiie s” (1965

Lewis Mum m ford “Paleo ot echnic Paradis e: Coketown” (19 1961) 19 9 Lewis Mu umford “The Highway and u d th the C City” Ci t ” (1963) (1 1 Paul Pa P a l Ritt Ritter “Pl “Planning i g ffor M Man and an nd n dM Motor” t ” ((19 (196 9 ) 96 964) John McHale e “Vert r ica Siegfr g ied Gie iedion “Mo ie

er Production er-Production tion Accumulation A Ac ccumulation umula ula

Lewis Mu Mumford umford “The The City in Histo History: History ry: y: its Origins,, it iits ts Transformations, Transformations an a V icct or G rue n Dynammic Planning for Retail Areass” (1954) Lewis Mumford “The Nattural Historyy of Urbanization” (1956) John Brinkerr hoff f Jackson “The Public La Louis Wirth “Urba anism as a W ay of Life” (1957)) Frank Lloyyd Wright “D De centralization” (1958) Je e an Go ott ma n “TT he M ain Street of the Nation” (1961) 9 6 1) 1an Özbekhan “To Henri Lefebvre Ke vin Ly Lynch “Patt t ern off t he Metropoli p lilis is” (1961) Jean Gottmann “Megal gal galopolis” ga (1961 61) 61 1 Ludwig Hilberseimer “The New Regional Pattern” (1949)) Kevin Lynch “The Pa Pattern of the M Metropolis” (1961)

Ian McHarg “Design w Sidney Wilhem “Urban Zoning and Land Use Theory” (1962) JJohn ohn h W William ill am R illi Reps ep ps “European E urop pe an Plann Planning nnin i g on tthe he John William Reps “The The Making of Urban Ame

can Regionalism” (1938)

Rachel ell Carson “The “The Sea Around Us” (1951)

1940)

Alfred Sauvy “Trois Mondes, Une Planète” (1952)

Walter Christaller “Die Hierarchie der Städte” (1962) Norman T Clarence Ian McHarg “The City: john Collins, “Military Geography for Professionals & The Public” (1988)

System Dyna Dynamics D amics a mics i m of the United States” (1957)

Jay Wright Forrester “System Dynamics” (1961) Jay Wright Forrester “ Harold A. Innis “The Bias of Communication” n”y(1964) g Paul Baran “Communications, Communications, Computers, and an

Scientific Cartography phy Ludwig von Bertalanff Ludwig von Bertalanffy “Gen Don

Paul Sears rs “E Ecology, a S ub u versive Subj b ect c ” (1964) Marg r ar et W ard “Spa c eship Ea arth” (1966 D’Arcy W. Thompson pson “On G Gro Grow Growth row w and Fo Ian McHarg “An Ecological Method

Catastroph atastroph a tast sstroph troph Bibliographic Notes

493

d the Future ofH Julian Lincoln Simon “The Ultimate Resource” (1981) P. Aanen “Nat Herbert erb er bert Alexan Alexander Simon “The Sciences of the Artificial ”(1969) Utilities” (1962) 2)ohn McHale “Dimensions of Change” (1969) 2) Pa Hasan Özbekhan “The Predicamentt off M Mankind” (1970) Man-made America: Chaos or Control?”” ((19 (1963) 1963 63 3)nneth Galbraith “The Planning System” (1973) 1J9 7 3) er “Accc ele ler e r at ion in the Discoveries of Scienc e: Profile of the Industrial dustrial ustrial Rev Re Revolution” ev t (1964) 964 4) oe l Garreau “The Foundry” (1981) Pat Choate “Declining Facilities, Declining Investments” (1983) m R eps “The e Towns that Companies Built” (1965) Charles Perrow “Normall A Accidents: id t Li Living i with ith Hi High-Risk h Ri k John Kenne e th Galbraith “The Nature of Indus tr ial Pla a nn nning” (1967) voir: villes, territoires et équipements q collect Robert Fr osch “Strategies

ont ontrol ntrol ttrol rol rol & C Ce Certainty Certaint ert ert rtainty t i ty

Wendell B Wend Berry “The The Unsettling off A America: Cu u 1969)

Pe Jim McCluske y “Ne ttw orks” (1979) JJeff ef D Dozier i ““Energ E ne e rg r yP Processes ro on the e Eart r h’s Surf rface” (1981) rf rfa 1J9 8 u81 r g1) e n Schma nd dt “T

an “The Metabolism of Cit ie ies” e (1965)

dis e: Coketown” (19 1961) 19 9 ighway and d the th C City” Ci t ” (1963) (1 1 Ivan Ilich “Energ r y and Equity t ” (1974) ning i g ffor M Man and nd n dM Motor” t ” (19 (196 9 ) 96 964) John McHale e “Vert r ical Mobility” (1969) Siegf g ried Giie dion “Movement” (1969)

Thomas Parke Hughes “Netwo works of Power: wo wer: Electrification of W w McClusk

Ivan Illich “The Diir t of Cities” (1986)

: its Origins Origins,, its it its Transformations Transformations, and its Prospects” Prospects (1961) (196 61) 1 yner Banham “Megastructure” Megastructure (1976) Michael Hou ugh “The Urb rrb ban Land Stanford Anderson “On Streets” (1978) Andrea A And ndrea nd drea Bran Branz B ra a nzi “The The e Hyb Hybr H yb brrid r id id Metro Metro William H. Wh hyte “City: Re Rediscov R Brinkerr hoff f Jackson “The Public Landscape” (1966) Michael Hough “The Urban Landscap pe: The H Hidden Fronti Hi tier” (19 ti (19 9 David Schuyler “The New Urrban Landsc scape sc c pe pe: he Nation” (1961) 9 6 1) 1an Özbekhan “Toward a General Theory r of Planning” (1969) Henri Lefebvre “The Urban Revolution” (1970) olis lis” lis i (1961) 61) 61 1 Norman Furniss “The Practical Significance of Decentralization” (1974)) Gary r Scott Th homas “Micrrop etropolis” (1961) Reyner Banham “Antecedent s, Analogies, and Megastructures ctures Trouvees ctu Trouvees”” (1976) Robert Nelson n “Zoning Myyt

Di it l St Digital Digit Storage ag ge e

Ian McHarg “Design with Natur ure” (1969) ur g and Land Use Theory” (1962) mR Reps ep ps “European E urop pe an Plann Planning nnin i g on tthe he E Eve ve of A Amer m erica icc an Co Colonizat C olon niz i atio t ion” on (1965) (1965 m Reps “The The Making of Urban America: a History o of City Planni Planning ning ni ng in the United States” States (1965)

yer “TT he Rise of the Planning Menta a lilty t ” (198 983) 98 8

Frederick W. Turn rner “Beyond rn d Geography: the Western Spirit itt Against the e Wilderne e chie der Städte” (1962) Norman T. Newton “Design on the Land:: tthe Development of Landscape Landscap a Architectu ape ap Architect cture” ctu t (1971) Raymond y d A.Mohl “The h Makingg of he Clarence Leuba “The Tennesse ee Valley Autt hority t ” (1971) David R. Gold Da dfield d f “Cotton Cotton Fields and Skysca Skyscapers: ca a apers: South hern City and Ian McHarg “The City: Process and Form” (196 969) 96 McKinley Conway “Emergence e of the Park Concept and Proliffe ration of Un nits” (1979) Da Francesco Dal Co o “Form Parr ks to the Region: Progressive Ide deology and th de the Reform of the th he Joh ohn oh hn P. P Powelso Powelssso on “The Storyy o of L Hugo M. Schiechtl “Sich ch cherungsarbe beiten in Landscha be Landschaftsbau” af aftsbau” af (19 973) fessionals & The Public” (1988) Howard Odum “Net Enerr gy, Ecology,, a and Economics cs” cs s (1973) Vitt t orio G regot

Quantitativve Quantitative v Ge Geog G Geography eog eo e o ograp g aphy ap phy p hy

mics” (1961) Jay Wright Forrester “Urban Dynamics” (1969) The Bias of Communication” n” Jay(1964) Wright Forrester “Industrial Dynamics” (1971) “Communications, Communications, Computers, and People People” (1965)

J.B. Ha a rley “Maps, Kno nowledge, no o P. D. A. Harvey Harve eyy “The Historyy of Topographic p g p c Maps: M p Symb y bo b , Pictures,, an bols, and Surveys a y Jacques Bertin “Semiolo Ja Jac olo logy ogy of Graph hics: Diagrams, h g , Networks, N ,M Deniis W oods “De e signs on Signs:: Myth and Me J. B. Harley “De D construcct in i Edwar ard ar r Tufte “En En nvis Mark Mon nmon Robert O’ O’H ’ ara Ho

Flow F low ow & Fle Flex F Flexibility lexibility exibili e exibility ex x biility lliity

Ludwig von Bertalanffy “Gene Ludwig von Bertalanff f y “General Sy Donella M William Nordh ha us “World Dynamics: Measureme ents With hout Data” (19 1973) 19 9 Swamii Muktanand da “From the Infinite to th he Fin nite: Review to o the t Limits im to Growth” (197 (1974) 97 How w ard Odu d m “Representativve City System m ” (1983))

La ogy, a S ub u versive Subj b ect c ” (1964) ga ar et W ard “Spa c eship Ea arth” (1966) cy W. Thompson pson “On G Grow Gro Growth row w and Form” (1966) Ian McHarg “An Ecological Method for Landscape p Archite e ct ure” ((1967) 67) 67) Howard Odum “E E nergy, g Ecology, ogy, and Economics” cs” s” (1973)

strophism stroph st troph hiiism sm sm 494

Howard Odum “ Cities and Regions” (1983) Richard Forman “The Emergence of Landsca Richard Forman “Lands cape Change” (1986 Richard d Forman “Landscape L d p E Ecology” og ” (1986

System S t

Gro Brundtland “Development and Eco James Lovelock “The Ages of Ga United Pa

g g j g ( ) Mart M a rt in n(1991) Melosi M e losi ““Pure u and Plentiful lentiful from o Protosystem Protosystems otosyste m s to Modern oderPnie Waterworks” ate a (2 20 ieW rraterworks” et e01 Brewl)aonrkgse r (2000) R00 e00 d0) e)fining Infrastruct c ure” (2010) ture, Engineering, and Civil Engineering Works” Neil N e il l Grigg G r i g g “C ivil v l Engineering: E n g e g H History, is t y , Heritage Heritag Heritage, ge e, and n Fut Future” u re e ( (2001) 0 aul Hawken “The Ecology gy of Commerce” (1993 3)N iall Kir kwood “ Ma nufactur e d Sites” (2001) 1)harle s W aldheim “L ogistic s Landscape ” (2008) Ash Amin “Post-Fordism” (1994) Rosalind li d Williams il i ““Retooling: “R R i a Histor Historian C Confronts f Technological ol i C Change” h e” ((2002) 2002) 002) Keller K ll E Easterling t li “N “Network t k Ecology g ” (1995) Art r hur Mol “The Environmental Transformation of the Modern Order” (2003) Pce E d rds “I nfrastr uc ture and Mode r nity t ” (2003) Joel Davidson “Buidling for War, Preparing for Peace” ac ce” e”l(1995) 1A 9nt Antoine n9t5oine o)i e P Picon iic on ““Engineers E ngi gine er a nd dE Enggiinee rin ng Hiisst ory r ” (2004) Steve n Dand ane au “Introduction: Ideology and Dependent Deindustrialization” E riicc A lonzo(1994) “19 De la plac e-carrefour rr f à ll’é éc hange ge ur, r inst instrumentalisation du système giratire” (2 Peter P Pe eter e te r JJones te ones o ne es “ C Cultivating ult ivat i g tthe h A Art rt off tthe he IImpossible possiible”” (2006) Technologies” h l gi ” ((1984) 1984 1984) 84) Robert U. Ayres “Industrial Ecology: Towards Closing the Materials Cycle” (1996) P i e r r e B e l a n g e r “ U n derg round La nd scap e ” (2006) tifs” (1976) ( ) H)e nrr y P Petroski Pe ettross k kii ““Thi “Things T h in g S Small al l a and d LLarge” e ” (2006) (2006) 006) Gary G a ry N Nash Na as h “Th “The T he S Social Socia ia l E Evolution Evo ollution t i off P Pre-Industrial” re e IIndustrial d t i l” (1997) 7)enry 7 7) for Manufacturing” (1989 989) Robert Pool “Beyond y Engineering: g g How Societyy Shapes p PTechnology” ie rr e Belagynge((1997) r “ A irrs) pace” (2006) ( ) Mich hae e l Hough “City ty Farming” (1995) 199

Michael Pollan “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” (2006) Marcel Mazoyer ye “Humanity’s a y s Ag Agrarian g arian ai H Heritage” Heriit g ” (2 (2006) Pierre Belange r “ Foodshe d” (2007) Andrew A d wR Rice ice e ““Agro-Imperialism” A gr o Im Agr IImpe peria r sm m (2009) ( 009) Dorothee Imber t “ L et Them Eat Kale” (2010)

ulture & Agriculture” (1 u (1986) 1

Ke e lll er Eastt er liingg “ Parttit ion: Watershed W t h d and d Wayside” W id de” de e” (1999) ((1999 199 99 9a nge r “ Kallundb 9) dborg’ g’s P g’ Protoecology t l g and dW Watershed” t h d” (2007) W at er and t h he eC City ity” (2008) Anuradha A ura d dh ha M Mathur atthu hur “ M Mississippi issi ss issi s ippi ppi H Horizons” orizons or rizons”” (2001) (200 001 01 1))y Shannon ““W er”A ” A(2002 (2 (20 2002 nu 002 ra2) dh ha M Mathur th ““M Monsoon n in n an a n Es ttuar y” (2009) eter R ogers “Water Resource e s and Publililic l Policy” (1993) 93 3)a tt hew Ga ndy “Wa te r, Space, and Power” Ja ne W Wolff lf ““A AB Brief ieff H History isttory off the D DeltF eltF Frédér F rédéric ré éd éd déric déri érii LLasserre é La “Les L guerres d de l’l’eau” ’ ” ((2009) 2009) 009) The New w Urban Infrastructur e: C Cities and Te Telecommunic Michae M icc hae

Decentralization De D ecentraliz ec e centrraliza alilizati lizza at at

Western Society, W ci y 1880–1930” (1983) cciety, (19 (19 key “Road Form ke Fo o and Townsca Townscape” nscap scape” (1 sc ((1992) Tere es a Brennan “Energ r etics” (2000)

Ra nia G hosn E ne rgy a s Sp pa tia l Pr oje c t (2009)) Ti m Wu “Bandwidth is the New Blac k Gol d” (2010) Pierre B P Belang l er ““P Powe r P Per estroik ka”” (2010) 2 0 1 0)) Jo G Guldi ldi “R “Roads R d tto P Power” wer” r” (201 (2012)

bine Barlles “ T he N itrogen Questtion”” (2007)) Benjami B e j in M ilill iller “ Prollo ogu g e e: Garbage” Garbage b ” (2000 (2000) 0)S) ab aul Haw w ken “The Cr eation of W aste” (19 1993) 19 Pier P ie r e Be elanger “Jankar a Jetty: t Recycling Cloverleaf” Pie rr e Bela (2000) a nge r “Landscapes p of Disassembly” y ((2007) Mira E Engler gl “C “Contemplating t l ti g W Waste” t (2004) ( 2 00 00 04 4 Belanger “Shit City t ” (2010) Alan Berger g “The Altered Western Landscape” (2002)) Alan Berger “Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America” (2006) Sabine e Barles “Le Le sol urbain” (1999) Alan Bergger “The Product ctiion off W Waste t LLandscap d pe”” (2006) ( )

LLiv ive iiv vve eD Da Data ata at a tta a & Me M Media Medi ed

Rafi fi Segall “ Urb bani sm Wit houtt D ensit y” (2008) uctural Urbanism ” (1999) dsca cape: ca a the Hidd dden dd den Frontier” (1988 (19 9 St an A llen “Infrastru op opo polis lis”” (1988)) vering ve e the Cent nter”” (1988) nt (1 983)) the Redefin finition of City fin tyy F Form Fo in n Ni Rem K R Koolhaas lh “Big Big ness Kenneth Frampton p “TTow Rem Ko K olhaas “W hat Ever Happ pened to U rba nism? (1995) Kat e A sc he r The W or ks: A natomy of a City (2005) Andrea A n e B Branzi ra nz nzi “Ag Ag ronica” on ca (2006) (2 ) polita an America” (1989)) Charles W aldhe im “L ands ca pe a s Ur bani sm” (2006) l19 O9 ff ““The The S Silent i tR Radicals” di s”” (2007) (200 ( Kennet et h Fra Framp a mp pton n “Mega Meggafor orm rm a ass U Urban r ban Landscape” d N peic” (1999) ((1 199 9i 99 9 9))roussoff t h and Practice ” (1989) 89) 9) 9) Paul Scruttt on “The New Urban World” (2007) ( ) LLars ars Lerup a p “After After the e City” Cityy (2000) ( )

C th Cathy hy D D. K Kneppe er “G “Greenbelt, b llt M Maryland: yl d a Li Living i LLegacy g y off th the h N New D Deal” l” (2001) orst, t, Rittel, Web Webber ebber “Dilemmas eb mas as in Generak Theory off Pl Pla Planning” lla a i g”” (19 ( 9 993) 93) 93 Light “Planning for the Atomic A ge” (2003) 93 Donald Shoup h “The High Cost off P Parking” ki (2005) Mike Davis “The Urban Climateric” (2006) ( AbdouMaliq Simone “At the Frontier of the Urban Periphery” (2007) Rich hard d Forman “U rb ban Reggion Planniingg” (2008) ( ) Michael Allen Wolf “The The Zoning of America: Euclid v. v Ambler Ambler” (2008) Richard Forman “Urban Regions: Ecology and Planning Beyond the City ss” (1980) Thomas S ieverts t “The Living g Space p of the Maj a j ority y of Mankind” (2003) fU Urban Americ rica ric ica ca” (1988) ca ( ) Keller Easterlingg “Subtraction” ((2005)) Reg Re R eg egion, eg 1607–1 –1980” – 19 19 (1982) (19 ) (19 ta96 B)e rr izbe tia “R e-Placing Process” (2007) James Corne r “Aerial Representation and th he Making of Landscape ”A (n19 (1 1ni99 9 6 JJa(1996) eW ollff ff ““Redifining R di ingg LLandscape” and ds cape” p ” (2007) ( ) avid a d Ha arvey eyy “Flexi e ible e Accumulation Through Urbanization” (199 ( 99 994) Sue Brandford “Global Land G rab” (2008) Americ rican ric ic City” (1979 9 J979 a79) me s Corner “Measures of Land” (1996) Pierre P Pi ierre B Belanger elan l nge r “U “United United i dR Regions Re e gi gio ons o off Amer America” r icc a (2010) Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen g “Borderlines and Bo Land: a World Historyy o of Land Tenure and Agrarian g Reform” ((19 (1988) 9 ) Pierre Belanger “Regionalisation” (2010) Nicholas as Eyles “Environmental Geology of Urba Urban a Areas” (1 (1996) 1 Neil Brenner “Planetary r Urbanization” (2012) JJared d Di Diamond d “F “From F Food d tto oG Guns, G Gerrms, m and Steel” (1999) tti “La a Fo F rm me du Territoire”” (1991) ( (1 Shlomo Angel g “Atlas Atlas off Urban Expansion Expansion” p i ” (20 ((201 Art r hurr Schlesinge er “The Battle for Public Development and Remaking of the Tennesse Valley” (2003) and nd d Power” (1988) (1988 88) 8 Mike Davis “Planet of Slums” (2006) McLuhan han a “Understandingg Media: the Extension of Man” Ma a (1994) s”” (1 ( Marshall 980)) Daniel Rosenberg “Cartographies of Time” (2010) Sanford S anfford d Kw winter intter “TThe he G Genealogy eneallogy off M Mod od delss” (1998 (199 8 ) Maps” p (1983) ( 983)) Mark M kE E. JJ. N Newman “N “Networks” t k ” (2010) ( ) JJam a mess Corner Co “Eidetic de t Operations p at and dN New ew La ndscapes” (1999) Manuell LLima M ima “Visual Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns o eaning in Maps” (1986) Den nnis Cosgrove sg ro ro “ Ma appi pp ng Mea eanin e an ngg” ((1999) 99 99)) Sim mo nds, Waddell, Wegener Equlibrium v. Dynamics ngg the Map” (1989) 1989 Paul E dwards “T he W orld in a Machine:: O Origins and Impacts of Earlyy C Com Computerized mp pu uterized Global Systems Models” (2000) sioning Information” (1990) Peter LLatz “The T h Idea off M Makingg Time i Visib ble”” (2000 (2000) M Martin n Dodge dge “Rethinking Re Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic T nier “How to Lie with Maps” (1991) ( ) Sasha S a sha A as Arc rc hiba ld “A Ti me line of Timelines 2004) “Representations of the Nat ural System in the Nineteenth Century” (1991 91) 91 W1o olf lf S Schafe h e r ““Ptolemy’s P l ’ R Revenge: A Critiq Critiqu Critique of Historical Cartography” (2005) Dodge, Martin, Perkins, Kitchin, Rob “Mapping Modes, Methods, an orst, Rittel, Webber “Dilemmas in General Theory and Planning” (1993) Dennis Cosgro Cosgrove g e “Apo “Apollo’s Apollo’s p Eye: a Carto E Cartographic to oggraphic p Genealogy gy of the Earth in the Western Imagination” Imagination g ((2001)) Denis Wood and John Fels. “The Natures of Maps: Cartographic Constru eck “Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity” (1992) Beck B k Ul Ulrich i h “E “Environmen i tt, K Knowledge, l dg and Indeterminacy: Beyo ond Modern o nist Ecology?” (1996) ni n Virg r in inia nia Aberneth Abernethy “Carr “Carrying ingg Capacit apa acity: t The TTra radition ra and Polic Policy IImplications of Limits” (2001) Vit Kleme s “Risk Ana lysis: The Unbeara able Clverness of Bluffing” (2002)

Risk Risk k & Co Contingen Contingenc Contin C Con o on nti tingenc tting iingenc ing ngenc n ge g en ncc

ash, Scott, Bronislaw aw Szerszynski and and

Patrick Kang as Designin ng New Ecosystems (2004) Peter del TTre P e dici “Brave N Ne ew Ecology l g ” (2006) (2 2 Howard T. T. Odum “En “Environment, n P Power, and Society for the Twenty-first Centur pe Ecology g Richard ” (1986) Forman “Land Mosaics: the Ecology of Landscapes and Regions” (1995) 6)) Eric Kramer “A Brief He rmeneutic of the Co-Constitution of Nature and Culture” (1985) 1985)M ) a rie Lisster “Bridg ing Science and Values: The Challenges of Biodiv 6)) Amir Djalali “ T he Compllex H History r of Sustainability bilit ” (2008) Chris Reed d “The Agency of Ecology g ” (2010) (2 2010) 0

ms Ecologies i

onomic Co-Operation: Environment” (1987) aia: a Biography of Our Living Earth” (1988) Richard Huggett and Jo Cheessman “Topography & the Environment” (2002). Nations “Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development” p ((1992)) aul Hawken “The Ecology of Commerce: a Declaration of Sustainability” (1993) Jesse A Ausubel usub bel ““The T he LLiberation ib beration off th the he E Environment” nviironment”” (1996) Bibliographic Notes

495

Urbanism, without Infrastructure? Bibliographic note and future readings exploring practices beyond the disciplines of engineering, architecture, and planning If infrastructure has become the interface through which we understand urban life, then it also provides an index to interpret social and ecologic change. Whether we speak about roads and their relationship to the transformation of watersheds, about power supply systems and the sources of energy, about patterns of consumption and the generation of waste streams, or about patterns of development along coastal zones and the influence of rising tides or increasing storms, the large scale technological systems of roads, wires, pipes, and plants that support urban economies are unequivocally tied to the landscape of ecological externalities and social-political dynamics that underlie them. Yet, due to their scale, magnitude, and ubiquity, these associations and dualities are seldom revealed or visible in the engineering of infrastructural systems. Instead, and very often, they are excluded, homogenized, neutralized, or attenuated. In short, the industrial metropolis of the nineteenth century could not have existed without the fixed, centralized, technocratic, underground infrastructure that lies below cities. So what happens to urban patterns and market economies when these socio-ecologic complexities change or when new vulnerabilities emerge? What happens when climatic zones shift or populations migrate? What happens to the development policies, the engineering systems, or zoning mechanisms that we have planned for in relationship to specific plans, properties, parameters, and policies based on the exactitude of growth projections and demographics? By redefining the landscape of infrastructure as both ecological media and measure, these questions explore the omnipresence of flexible patterns of occupation and responsive market configurations in the absence of conventional, centralized infrastructure. Looking outside the temperate, industrial worldview that underpins 496

Western civilizations, a profile of contemporary urban patterns in emerging economies will serve to postulate the potential persistence of urbanization beyond the parameters and problématiques of population growth; further putting into question the systematization of infrastructure planning and technocratic frameworks that are required to finance and service them. By revealing more flexible and more dynamic distributions of urban territories, we can put into question the exclusive reliance on growth to produce urbanism and decouple the notions of permanence and durability from sustainability, toward understanding how patterns and fields of urbanization can strategically exist without conventional infrastructure and how we can address emerging ecological indeterminacies through weaker forms of planning, with more contingent, reflexive methods of design and un-design. Focusing on the entanglement of state, infrastructure, and development, the following key references provide an introduction to the study and research of infrastructural ecologies. Chronicling the underlying nature of infrastructure as invisible instrument of state power, these texts proposes how central forces of growth and projects of development often instrumentalize that power to varying degrees of legibility. The landscape of ecological processes that underlie these transformations thus provide both a re-reading of territorial powers and in some instances, resistance to counter prevailing powers. Together, they propose new visions of state and citizenship through weaker forms of engineering (and planning), and softer forms of infrastructure. In this light, landscape provides both a model of thought and medium of intervention where the existing body politic can thus be transformed by an emerging body ecologic. Jo Guldi, Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). Stuart Elden, “Land, Terrain, Territory,” Progress in Human Geography Vol.34 No.6 (April 21, 2010): 799–817.

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An Ehtnography of Global Connection (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). Richard Peet and Michael Watts, Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Developments (London, Routledge, 1996). Rosalind Williams, “Cultural Origins and Environmental Implications of Large Technological Systems,” Science in Context 6 (1993): 377–403. William Marsh, Jeff Dozier, Landscape: An Introduction to Physical Geography (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1981). André Gorz, Ecology as Politics (Écologie et Politique) translated by Patsy Vigderman and Jonathan Cloud (London, UK: Pluton Press, 1987/1975). François Fourquet, Lion Murard, Les Équipements du Pouvoir; Villes, Territoires et Équipements Collectifs–Recherches No. 13 (Fontenay-sous-Bois, FR: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1973). Howard T. Odum, Environment, Power, and Society (New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience, 1971). John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (New York, NY: Signet, 1967). Christopher Tunnard & Boris Pushkarev, Man-Made America: Chaos or Control (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963). Carl O. Sauer, Agricultural Origins & Dispersals (New York, NY: The American Geographical Society, 1952).

To the new class of technical experts—the technocrats—that the economist John Kenneth Galbraith warned of in The New Industrial State (1967), Donald Worster adds in his chapter “The Flow of Power in History” cited here from his Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1985) that, “the best exemplar of that power of expertise” is “the contemporary engineer […] Though not himself necessarily concerned with profit making [and capitalism], he reinforces directly and indirectly the rule of instrumentalism and unending economic growth. The engineer is not interested in understanding things for their

own sake or for the sake of insight, but in accordance with their [sic] being fitted into a scheme, no matter how alien to their own inner structure; this holds for living beings as well as inanimate things. The engineer’s mind is that of industrialism in its streamlined form. His purposeful rule would make men an agglomeration of instruments without a purpose of their own. Democracy cannot survive where technical expertise, accumulated capital, or their combination is allowed to take command.”(57) Together, Galbraith’s prediction of technocratic and corporate growth, with Worster’s precaution against the dominion of technocrats, propose an alternative epistemological direction: a second conclusion. If we are to consider the era of urbanism (and processes of urbanization it implies) as an advancement beyond the age of industrialism, then the current domination by the industrial state and continued rise of the corporation propose an alternative reality. Notwithstanding the perpetual technological obsolescence that the “expansive disintegration” of engineering requires to rule over daily life, the current hegemony of technocratic and bureaucratic engineering as Rosalind Williams has observed in her Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (2002) seems to be tracing the contours of a super-industrial age; one of a magnitude so large and so encompassing that its influence is no longer visible, and barely perceptible, nor detectable. From this alternative vantage then, if we are to advance beyond the centralization of capital in trade, or beyond the concentration of currency in exchange, that underlie today’s economies, perhaps we must reconsider whether in fact, we have ever been urban at all? Perhaps, where development from the Western industrial world has not yet fully formed or transformed by engineering, where the technocrats do not reign, or where resistance to colonialism is growing, there may be an overlooked value and power in the ecologies of underdevelopment and the territories of pre-states, as the potential index and fruitful path to support contemporary urban life in the future.

Bibliographic Notes

497

Acknowledgments Several fields have influenced this project, and as a result, several practitioners from different camps, including different industries, organizations, and institutions, brought influence and inquiry to this project and its ideas. A very early supporter of the research of this project was Charles Waldheim, former Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and former director of the Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Toronto. Charles saw not only the potential for the line of inquiry proposed in this book but supported several key studios, seminars, and symposia, both at Harvard University and the University of Toronto, at several critical stages of development, providing important steps forward. Together with Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean of the Harvard GSD who built the foundation for design’s rappel-à-l’ordre at Harvard University and the renewal of the landscape project, they have accorded considerable time, latitude, and funding to complete this project and cultivate its audience. Albeit in an unsolicited way, thanks to Neil Brenner, a geographer from New York who joined the GSD in 2012 due to the initiative of Mohsen Mostafavi and Charles Waldheim. Neil has provided capstone mentorship and intellectual feedback as this project reached maturity. While I contend that theories are for the blind, he alternatively argues that everyone is a theorist, in turn promoting the need to go deep into cultural thinking while resurfacing for air. Neil helped confirm the relevance of the infrastructure subject through the field of landscape and its influence on the discipline of geography in North America. He also underscored the influences and extremes in geographic knowledge and discourse between the United States (a country that saw the closure of its geography departments from the 1930s onward) compared to the geographic culture and geospatial literacy of countries of the Commonwealth such as the UK, Australia, Singapore, Nigeria, India, and Canada, where geographic knowledge has been more pervasive early on, and from where geographic information systems were conceived and innovated. When arriving in Cambridge, Michael Van Valkenburgh and Antoine Picon from the Harvard GSD and L’École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, as well as Alan Berger from MIT, provided unbiased advice at key moments that helped strategize this project. Their work, and their words, through conversations and courses, have had important influence on the combined polemical, political, technological, and popular dimensions that design disciplines often overlook. Throughout the past few years, several key colleagues have also strongly influenced this project, both directly and indirectly. It is their unsolicited influence, as practitioners and pedagogues from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the University of Toronto, that has enabled every minute of every day to be one long, open, extended conversation. Additional colleagues at the Harvard GSD whose influence bears importance include Nina-Marie Lister, 498

Hashim Sarkis, Chris Reed, Gary Hilderbrand, Niall Kirkwood, Sonja Duempelmann, Richard T.T. Forman, Anita Berrizbeitia, and Patricia Roberts. Thanks to the guest speakers who participated in two separate conferences, the most recent at the GSD in 2012: Kate Ascher (Happold Consulting), Sabine Barles (Université Paris 1), Liz Barry (PLOTS), Peter Del Tredici (Arnold Arboretum-GSD), Erle Ellis (UMBC), Christophe Girot (ETH Zurich), Wendi Goldsmith (Bioengineering Group), Jo Guldi (Harvard Society of Fellows), Kevin S. Holden (USACE), Eduardo Rico and Enriqueta Llabres (Relational Urbanism Design Studio, ARUP), Todd Shallat (BSU), Kevin Shanley and YingYu Hung (SWA), Dirk Sijmons (TU Delft), Rosalind Williams (MIT), and Dawn Wright (ESRI); and the second, in 2009 at the University of Toronto: Stan Allen (Princeton), George Baird (Toronto), Julia Czerniak (Syracuse), Herbert Dreiseitl (Atelier Dreiseitl), Kristina Hill (UCB), Michael Jakob (HEPIA), Nina-Marie Lister (Ryerson University), Kate Orff (Columbia), and Jane Wolff (University of Toronto) as well as plenary discussions with Rodolphe el-Khoury, David Fletcher, Ted Kesik, Robert Levit, Liat Margolis, Alissa North, Mason White, and Robert Wright. Both events contributed enormously in helping to bring the subjects of ecology, economy, and engineering closer together, through design, as well as to lay out the groundwork for future collaborations and projects together. They serve as a reminder that we have only begun scratching the surface of the infrastructure subject and landscape’s tremendous potential. Dr. Ted Kesik, building scientist and environmental engineer, as well as Professor Robert Wright, landscape architect and ecological planner from the University of Toronto, provided the initial impetus for this project very early on, in its pre-doctoral stage. Both of them proposed that the measure of influence of this work should find itself on the shelf of the T Section (technology and engineering) of the university’s main library, in the hands of engineers who equally stood to gain from this research—that, in addition to the more common NA and SB sections (architecture and landscape), where the book would naturally find a home. Their influence during the incubation period of this project was important. In addition to their influence, George Baird and Larry Richards provided sustained guidance to research and develop this thinking while at the University of Toronto. Equally, Brigitte Shim, John Danahy, Emily Waugh, Jane Wolff, and Mason White constantly engaged this discussion in reviews, lectures, and presentations. Fred Urban provided much encouragement exactly over years ago for the directions proposed here that, albeit experimental some time ago, have become more widely accepted and common today. During those years, Michael Hough was the intellectual entrepreneur who provided precedents and alternative views at several key moments to the optic on infrastructural practices seen through the development of his office and organization, which has undergone an unprecedented level of growth and influence as a large-scale enterprise.

Students from graduate courses at several institutions—Harvard GSD, University of Toronto, BOKU University in Austria, IAAC in Spain, AA in London, TU Delft and Wageningen University in the Netherlands— and several other universities across North America, who performed as unsung institutional stuntmen and pedagogical guinea pigs, put to the test curricular methods, constantly asking critical questions in seminars and studios, exposing holes, gaps, and omissions through their inquiries, while seeing potentials, establishing connections, and drawing bridges to new dimensions, without judgment. It is those questions that open up new areas of investigation, and those questions should always keep coming. Those graduate students who became collaborators at OPSYS and the Landscape Infrastructure Lab helped conceive, incubate, express, and research different ideas, while developing, materializing, and implementing strategies: Alexander S. Arroyo, Behnaz Assadi, Daniella Bacchin, Anne Clark Baker, Chen Chen, David Christensen, Joshua Cohen, John Davis, Hana Disch, Kelly Doran, Kimberly Garza, Alexandra Gauzza, Stephan Hausheer, Luke Hegeman, Tawab Hlimi, Brett Hoonaert, Sara Jacobs, Deborah Kenley, Kees Lokman, Fadi Masoud, Hoda Matar, Christina Milos, Aisling O’Carroll, Erik Prince, Maya Przybylski, Pamela Ritchot, Curtis Roth, Daniel Seiders, Andrew tenBrink, Sarah Thomas, Elena Tudela, Jacqueline Urbano, Ed Zec, and Chris de Vries. This work would have been impossible without influence from industry and boards that I had the privilege and opportunity to serve on. From different company representatives and managers who provided unfettered access to sites and records, from floodplains to food terminals to landfills: Renata von Tscharner (Charles River Conservancy), Brian Ezyk (Republic Services, Inc.), Bruce Nicholas, Gianfranco Leo, and Gary Da Silva (Ontario Food Terminal Board), Alexander Reford (Jardins International de Métis), Chris Rickett (Toronto and Region Conservation Authority), and more recently to Kevin Holden, from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who opened a huge area of latent collaboration that has been dormant for decades. Together, they have identified the great responsibility upon the practice of landscape architecture to address challenges of large-scale projects and the finer-grain details of standards and specifications that engineers typically work with. On several occasions, mostly through short but influential exchanges, in airports, emails and elevators, James Corner (Field Operations), Adriaan Geuze (West 8), Jack Dangermond (ESRI), Joe Brown (AECOM), Rem Koolhaas (OMA/AMO), Winy Maas (MVRDV), Ben van Berkel (UN-Studio), George Hargreaves (Hargreaves Associates), Joe Miotto and Elizabeth Starr (NORR), Bill Hewick (ACME Environmentals), Dirk Brinkman (Brinkman & Associates Reforestation), Martha Schwartz (MSP), Gary Pilger (Pilger Equipment), Wendi Goldsmith (Bioengineering Group), and Tyler Ginther (Super Soil) provided memorable advice in pursuing dirt research with practical applications. Several funding organizations helped support several events and related endeavors, including Harvard GSD, University of Toronto Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, and Design; Landscape Architecture

Canada Foundation; Netherlands Architecture Fund; Ontario Sand, Stone & Gravel Association; Canada Department of Natural Resources; the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry; Canada Foundation for Innovation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council; and the Canada Golf Foundation. The Norman T. Newton Prize from Harvard University provided me with a copy of Norman T. Newton’s Design on the Land: The Development of Landscape Architecture (Harvard University/Belknap Press, 1971), an important book whose raison d’être highly influenced my thinking about the discpline of landscape architecture (and its undiscipline), through how land is constructed and cultivated, neglected or abandoned, designed and engineered, territorialized and deterritorialized, colonized and decolonized. I would like to thank Prof. Jusuck Koh for his initial invitation to develop this writing into doctoral research at the University of Wageningen, the premier institution for studies in life sciences and agricultural research in the world. His support was catalytic, and was sustained for more than five years in pursuit of its underlying thesis. Taught by Ian McHarg at the University of Pennsylvania, Professor Koh provided an open and critical forum and a theoretical platform—the classroom as a lab—for unlocking several key ideas and concepts presented here. Without his initial invitation to Wageningen in 2006 for a conference on contemporary landscape urbanism, this project would have taken a very different direction. Unknowingly, the project saw the intellectual influence of Sabine Barles (Université Paris 1), Kelly Shannon (AHO School of Architecture), Dirk Sijmons (TU Delft), Anemone Koh (Oikos), Bert Holtslag (WUR Meteorology), and Arnold van der Valk (Wageningen University), who shaped the central idea of this book through the influence of their work and writing on the multilayered landscape of infrastructure, conveyed through histories, ecologies, myths, infrastructures, and urbanisms of water over the past few years. The concluding notion that “form follows fluidity,” as the contemporary inflexion of the historic adage “form follows function,” is a direct outcome of their profound influence. Thankfully, they all accepted Professor Koh’s invitation and generously agreed to form the Doctoral Review Committee, sharing their time through focused feedback and critical support. Informal, raw conversations during experiences and exchanges with friends are the unspoken contributions to this project: Peter and Alissa North, Shane and Betsy Williamson, Leslie Lee and Wynne Mun, Maximo and Janine Rohm, Nazrudin Hiyate, Ricardo Pappini, Luc Dandurand, Louis Martin-Villeneuve, Hans Joseph, and David Lavictoire. In different ways, they all helped test and shape ideas presented here. Gloria I. Taylor, Jacob and Yoshiko Mazereeuw defied distance and supported this effort through all its developments and discoveries. And, finally, an incalculable debt is owed to Miho and Nina, whose unquestioned and unconditional support provided the greatest level of love, balance, and intelligence that seeded and sustained the project, bringing it, and many new possibilities to life.

Acknowledgements

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Index 1968 15, 74, 88, 91, 93, 94, 96, 110, 113, 257, 339, 346, 421, 481 The Incredible Year 91 2018 60 2150 89 accumulation 22, 98, 113, 195, 248, 265, 472, 474. See also waste; See also David Harvey agrarian 128, 275, 283, 381, 398, 409, 423, 474 Agricultural Adjustment Act 132 Allen, Stan 160 Ambler Realty 123, 125, 261 America in Ruins 144, 152, 385, 470, 485 Americas 299, 417, 421, 422 Apollo Missions 88, 90, 183, 257, 258, 481, 482 Apollo 8 88, 90 apple globalization of 313 architects Phillip Shore & Robert Moffat 302 architectures 33, 51, 54 Traffic Architecture 311 Armstrong, Neil 88 ASCE 54, 55, 72, 471, 485. See also USACE Building Strong 54 asian carp 418 asphalt 113, 159, 162, 184, 185, 186, 488 astronaut 88, 90, 183, 257, 258, 481, 482 Atlantic City 182 Atlantic Ocean 258, 430 Australia 77, 325, 356, 362, 498

Bad Axe MI 409 Baird, George 26, 498 Baran, Paul 56 RAND 56, 110, 111 barging 197 Bark Camp 179, 180, 182, 188 Barthes, Roland 483 Basel Convention (1992) 244 Battelle 75, 91, 97, 110, 111 Behrens, William W. III 75, 89, 110 borders 59, 75, 83, 85, 101, 108, 166, 188, 222, 272, 280, 284, 301, 321, 339, 368, 386, 394, 414, 418, 421, 422, 429, 437, 441, 469, 472. See also rivers

500

All-American Canal 437 transboundary 87, 208, 280, 284, 290, 440, 457 transboundary governance 369 US-Mexico 437 watershed partitions 415 West Bank 437 Brampton ON 281 Broadacre City 380, 381 Brundtland, Gro Harlem 87, 91, 111, 112, 214, 342, 356, 357 Buffalo, City of Light 382 California 15, 26, 110, 151, 167, 172, 184, 234, 258, 304, 318, 320, 409, 437, 473, 487 capitalism (counter) capitalizing 223, 346, 422 cooperative capital 243 carbohydrates 285 carbon 62, 86, 109, 110, 151, 185, 414, 429, 442, 459 decarbonization 337, 357 post-carbon 458, 467 Carlsberg 342, 357 Carter, Jimmy 140, 258, 261, 262 Central Artery Tunnel Project 181, 188 Charles-Brun, Jean 362 Chicago School of Earthmoving 368 China 226, 230, 235, 236, 272, 303, 386, 405, 417, 441 Choate, Pat 141, 144, 152, 385, 470 Christaller, Walter 56, 75, 109 City Beautiful Movement 437, 438, 454 Cleijne, Edgar 191, 223 Cleveland, Bridge City 382 climates changing 1, 9, 12, 15, 19, 32, 84, 107, 409, 430 storm basins 476 Club of Rome 75, 84, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 96, 97, 102, 110, 111, 113, 356 Battelle 91 Limits to Growth 31, 75, 84, 88, 92, 97, 108, 110, 111, 356 coasts 18, 106, 164 coastal contraflow 423 Gulf Coast 429 littoralization 106 cold chain cold storage 296, 305

refrigeration 299 Cold War 22, 73, 87, 88, 91, 97, 248, 339, 355, 485 colonialism 244, 497 City Beautiful Movement 437, 438, 454 Columbia River Basin 130 Columbus, OH 91, 111 concrete 23, 58, 164, 165, 169, 172, 185, 186, 265, 347, 354, 470, 471, 474 conferences 87, 88, 109, 110, 184, 228, 354, 355, 472 conservation 136, 150, 151, 268, 275, 288, 350, 368, 374, 390, 391, 499. See also soil Civilian Conservation Corps 136 Copenhagen 216, 220, 284, 338, 342, 343, 346, 347, 356, 357 Corner, James 26, 29, 184, 188, 265, 292, 455, 470, 473, 486, 489 cross-collaborations 466 cultivate 7 Dangermond, Jack 83, 499 decay 7, 140, 144, 258 decentralization 34, 35, 58, 62, 75, 108, 290, 347, 355, 385, 437, 486, 488 abandonment 97, 108, 272, 273, 290, 385, 388, 414, 473 decongestion 108, 347, 467 evacuation 108, 265, 423 inevitability 290 sprawl 55, 59, 75, 84, 108, 113, 151, 238, 290, 405, 406, 439, 441, 473 Deepwater Horizon 20, 146. See also Gulf of Mexico Demanufacturing 234 Denmark 214, 216, 217, 248, 249, 338, 339, 342, 343, 346, 347, 348, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 467 deregulation 140 divestment 140 design abductive thinking 11, 19 de-design 70 distributed 353 engineering to design 50, 434 flexibilities 459 for failure 148 personal action 108 professionalization of 484 scarcity and ingenuity 341

telescopic 457 un-design 268 De Smedt, Edward Joseph 162, 185 Detroit MI 23, 75, 200, 467, 472 Detroit Edison Company 401, 409 Motor City 382 United Auto Workers 406 diagrams altitudinal 104 borders & boundaries 260, 273, 358, 415 closed system 95 constellations 211, 233, 279 deconstruction 64 distributed geographies 235, 319, 320, 322, 476 flow diagrams 213, 286, 307, 373, 423, 453 ground surface 122, 225 historical hurricanes 430 logistical schedules 291 longitudinal profile 178, 411 manifestos 69 networks 182 open systems 100 patent trademark 168 process diagrams 291 Sankey diagram 354, 357 scale comparison 199, 309, 420 schedules 24, 166, 291 sheds 245, 325, 446 spatial organization 56 timelines & timescales 114, 146, 171, 184, 203, 266, 270, 313, 327, 460, 489 webs 450, 455 dispersal Dispersal 58, 85 Dokai Bay (Japan) 237, 239, 241 Doxiadis, Constantine 401 Dozier, Jeff 75, 474, 497 dredging. See mud Dust Bowl 136, 137, 473 Earth 87, 88, 90, 91, 109, 110, 113, 217, 257, 258, 263, 282, 345, 357, 434, 441, 442, 446, 468, 481, 482, 483, 485, 487, 488. See also globalization Blue Marble 88, 91 carrying capacity 63 Earth Day 88 The Planet 88, 91 as big brownfield 337 The World 88, 91 problĂŠmatique 21, 63, 75, 84, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93, 97, 103, 104, 108, 111, 112, 356 Third World 88, 97, 112, 356 Tiers-Monde 88

We are Not The World 406 Easterling, Keller 26, 184 ecology / ecologies. See also systems agency of ecology 429 constructed ecology 242, 264 coupling 37, 59, 74, 183, 468 disassembly 25, 195, 235, 236, 238, 239, 243, 246, 247, 287 ecologic 14, 19, 20, 57, 84, 103, 107, 246, 337, 470, 496 ecological problems 74, 75, 84, 91, 92, 93, 94, 111, 485. See also problĂŠmatique ecological substitution 102, 152, 184, 438, 460 ecological systems 8, 26, 37, 47, 442, 457, 459 Ecology 5.0 248, 249 ecology as economy 148 ecology of commerce 113, 192, 248, 283, 355, 487 effluents 23, 24, 37, 62, 88, 102, 128, 212, 241, 246, 264, 338, 342, 355, 388, 391, 429, 467 emergence of ecology 10, 28, 29, 62, 66, 103, 484 emissions 24, 37, 88, 102, 109, 110, 198, 212, 215, 235, 281, 343, 344, 346, 350, 429 far from equilibrium 76, 473 flow diagram 56 indexing 451 infrastructural ecologies 1, 26, 47, 63, 115, 459, 496 liberation ecologies 497 novel ecologies 195 of scale 46, 288, 347, 417 protoecologies 24, 71, 468 social intelligence 243 synthesis 182 synthetic ecology 42 urban ecologies 20, 33, 45, 50, 62, 72, 75, 83, 100, 103, 195, 248, 277, 280, 283, 292, 458, 469, 474 waste ecologies 24, 83, 195, 246, 247, 287, 337 economies. See also markets carbohydrate 414 circular 244, 448 declining 485 extra-national 420 keynesian policies 300 of scale 284 surface economies 162 urban economies 290, 468 Edwards, Paul 39, 72, 471, 483

Eisenhower, Dwight D. 163, 164, 185, 186, 187 Elden, Stuart 483, 496 Ely, Richard T. 378, 381 energy. See John Deere blackouts 58, 119, 429 farming of 406 power perestroika 460, 488 power plants 50, 71, 139, 149, 347, 409 shortages 80, 339 sugar beet farm 407 engineering accidents 261 automation 165 civil engineering 9, 18, 19, 22, 26, 33, 51, 55, 58, 59, 72, 73, 74, 131, 148, 150, 258, 261, 291, 368, 432, 434, 436, 443, 446, 450, 451, 456, 458, 470, 471, 473, 474, 484 de-engineering 391 ecological engineering 148, 486 engineers 7, 20, 22, 23, 50, 51, 54, 55, 63, 64, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 94, 103, 114, 115, 131, 275, 291, 292, 436, 440, 443, 451, 471, 484, 498, 499 from engineering to design 50, 434 learning from failure 146 monofunctionality 433 myths 64, 249 neglect 118 over-engineering 70 permanence 433 reversibility of 36 standardization 226, 432 Structures in the Stream 64, 471, 473 The Engineer and the Future 72 engineers designing engineers 480, 483 EPA 391 Euclid OH 122, 123, 124, 260, 261, 438. See Euclidean Planning vs. Ambler Realty 123 extraction 1, 24, 25, 75, 258, 337, 342, 430, 440, 467 Exxon Valdez 197

Farnsworth House 395 field work 350 Firestone Tire & Rubber 208 Flint MI 253, 269, 272, 275, 385, 388, 399, 405, 406, 488 floods 120, 121, 487 1927 120 Farnsworth House 395 Hurricane Hazel 388

Index

501

intelligent flooding 457 valleys 127, 276, 367 food 23, 25 agronomic landscape 327 asian carp 419 chain 314, 320 crops 136 how great cities are fed 296, 488 markets 188, 196, 223, 232, 249, 250, 252, 287, 300, 303, 304, 487 Ontario Food Terminal 299 PLU 322, 488 produce & provenance 322 retail chains 313 St. Lawrence Market 300, 303 terminal 304 wholesale 215, 222, 225, 300, 302, 303, 304, 309, 319, 339 Ford, Henry 37, 186, 192, 248, 283, 386, 421 Fordism 37, 248, 470, 472, 486, 487 Post-Fordism 457 foreign trade zone 158, 173, 175, 176, 178, 187 Foreign Trade Zone No. 49 158, 173, 175, 178, 187 forests 372, 459 Forman, Richard T.T. 26, 277, 486, 498 Forrester, Jay 84, 99, 112 RAM 97 Fourquet, François 472, 497 Fox River 387, 395 fragmentation 23, 75, 467, 472 Frampton, Kenneth 26, 288, 454, 473 Fresh Kills Landfill 198, 199, 200, 284 Friedman, Milton 142 Friedman, Thomas L. 142, 272, 290, 356, 473 Frosch, Robert 248, 338, 357 frost action 161 fuel 23, 24, 42, 43, 67, 103, 150, 222, 225, 230, 231, 232, 245, 283, 284, 338, 339, 342, 346, 354, 370, 414 future of the Future 94, 96, 99, 112, 486, 489 Galbraith, John K. 47, 150, 152, 254, 257, 258, 439, 472, 485, 488, 497 Garreau, Joel 384, 385 GATT 272 Geddes, Patrick 360, 362, 401, 405, 485

502

General Motors (GM) 248, 257, 272, 388, 399, 406 geography 10, 11, 28, 29, 62, 66, 67, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 107, 112, 184, 212, 213, 249, 291, 318, 401, 422, 439, 450, 451, 468, 472, 482, 483, 484, 490, 498 death-of-distance thesis 450 economic geographies 379 geopolitical 269 revival of 10, 29, 62, 484 social marginalization 437 spatial segregation 437 the geographic subject 66, 75, 103 Geuze, Adriaan 26, 396 Gibbs, Lois Marie 262, 277, 391 Gillman, Alf 196 globalization 272, 313, 355, 422, 489 rhetoric on globalization 406 Goodyear, Charles 162, 185 Gorz, André 15 Écologie et Politique 14, 15, 497 Gottmann, Jean 83, 112, 362, 398, 400, 401, 402, 405 Great Britain 140 Great Cutover 362, 370, 371 Great Depression 132, 136, 151, 382, 473 Greater Toronto Area 310 Great Lakes 258, 278, 288, 368, 414, 421 fish migration 419 International Joint Commission (IJC) 280, 368, 394 Lake Erie 237, 258, 260, 282, 360, 388, 414, 438, 482 Lake Huron 258, 364, 388, 409 Lake Michigan 258, 364, 366, 367, 372, 388 Lake Ontario 258, 264, 265, 275, 364, 388, 391, 393, 396, 409, 418 Greenway Strategy 393 Toronto Waterfront 275 Lake Superior 258, 372, 382, 388, 409 St. Lawrence Seaway 368, 409 Watershed 278, 388 Greenbelt MD 133 greenhouses 282, 316, 409, 414 Greenland 339, 355, 356, 357 Gregotti, Vittorio 158 groundwater 128, 215, 262, 265, 275, 280, 283, 291, 338, 342, 343, 346, 347, 355, 356, 357, 378, 381, 391, 393, 405, 429, 440, 474 Guldi, Jo 74 Gulf of Mexico 120, 146, 365, 423. See also Deepwater Horizon

Hamilton, Steel Town 382 Harvard University 1, 72, 73, 74, 112, 470, 472, 485, 488 Harvey, David 37, 248, 272, 437, 470, 472 Hassler, Ferdinand R. 168 Hawken, Paul 113, 192, 248, 283, 355 heat landscape of 370 Hedden, Walter P. 296 Hooker Electrochemical Company 261 Hoover, Herbert 51, 73 horizontality 243 Horns Rev 357 Hough, Michael 152, 268, 277, 287, 391, 498, 499 Houston-Galveston 430 Hurricanes Hurricane Alley 171, 430 Hurricane Hazel 275, 388, 390 Hurricane Ike 430 Hurricane Katrina 20, 144 Hyatt Regency Hotel 272 Iceland 467

IJC (International Joint Commission) 280, 283, 368, 369, 394 Illich, Ivan 334, 355 image. See also diagrams data 482 Google Earth 481 image-building 480 image of organizations 21, 61, 67, 98, 113, 149, 195, 246, 249, 258, 290, 356, 381, 391, 435, 468, 470, 471, 473, 480, 498, 499 imaging infrastructure 5, 480 politics of resolution 480 ‘rhetoric of the image’ 483 semantics 481 semiotics 64, 67 signs or symbols 482 Imperial Valley CA 437 infrastructure. See also image 1927 120, 121, 127 and Modernity 39, 66, 72, 76, 116, 471, 483 as landscape 20, 417, 470, 473 catastrophe 118 collapse 6, 91, 106, 125, 435, 474 coupling 396 decoupling 247, 443, 459 elastic 324 ethnography of 483

image of 6, 96, 112, 176, 217, 304, 405, 406, 480, 481, 483 infrastructural apartheid 436, 437 black townships SA 437 national security 141 planetary infrastructure 108 re-reading of 5, 484 without infrastructure? 5, 152, 496 ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 281

Kalundborg (Denmark) 25, 216, 219, 248, 249, 338, 344, 346, 347, 348, 350, 355, 356, 357, 488 Kalundborg Symbiosis Institute 356 Kingston Fossil Plant 145, 435 Kitakyushu 237, 239, 241, 242 Koh, Jusuck 26, 499 Koolhaas, Rem 72, 73, 447, 473, 487, 499 Kwinter, Sanford 26, 70, 76, 447, 473

landscape architects 7, 20, 72, 109, 249, 471, 482 landscape infrastructure 38 landscaping 7 metabolism 240 morphology of 10 ontology 14, 51, 119, 362, 371 recycling of land 241 representation 21, 29, 65, 67, 94, 311, 337, 389, 451, 454, 455, 480, 481 revolutions 490 Layton, Edwin 51 Leamington ON 282, 316, 317, 408, 409, 414 Lefebvre, Henri 43, 75, 109, 337, 355 Lely, Cornelis 26 Leslie Street Spit 264, 265, 268, 269 Lewis Mumford 75, 84, 156, 184, 360, 405, 421, 470 Liberty Hyde Bailey 474 Limits to Growth 31, 75, 84, 88, 92, 97, 108, 110, 111, 356 logistics 55, 67, 106, 163, 166, 184, 188, 248, 268, 292, 346, 397, 398, 433, 441, 456 Canadian Tire 289 Intermodal 173 Intermodal Drive 289 Panamax 177, 187 Love Canal 261, 262, 263, 265, 269, 391, 482 Homeowners Association 262 Lynch, Kevin 26, 112, 113, 184, 250, 473

Lagos 25, 97, 106, 196, 222, 223, 228, 232, 233, 249, 250, 252, 437, 487 Lagos Lagoon 97, 106, 250 Third Mainland Bridge 106, 223, 224, 232, 437 laissez-faire 132, 484 land banking 405 brownfield 211, 288, 292, 337, 394, 405, 406 capital and power 254 recycling of land 241 landscape agronomic landscape 327 introduction to physical geography 75, 474, 488, 497 labor 7, 25, 36, 51, 67, 97, 113, 165, 222, 224, 243, 245, 257, 258, 272, 381, 382, 386, 402, 405, 434, 435, 471

MacKaye, Benton 45, 83, 112, 139, 277, 372, 373, 374, 375, 381 Manhattan 86 Manhattan Project 96 mapping 18, 21, 25, 212, 213, 247, 421, 451, 455, 483 a map is not the territory 483 Australia 77 cartography 481, 482 map makers 168, 186 mappings 455, 473, 474, 489 maps 14, 21, 232, 451, 455, 467, 481, 482, 484, 490 maps and territories 483 Marennes-OlĂŠron (France) 468 Marsh, William 75, 474, 488, 497 Mathur, Anuradha 26 McCormick Reaper 371 McHarg, Ian post-McHargian 18 Meadows, Dennis L. 75, 89, 110

Jacobsen, Noel Brings 219, 249, 356 Jankara Market (Lagos) 196, 222, 223, 224, 232, 252, 487 Japan 146, 234, 235, 237, 239, 242, 250, 301, 354, 362, 417, 437 Jevonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Paradox 460 John Deere 353, 371, 407, 409, 449 Energy Renewables 407, 409, 449

Meadows, Donella H. 31, 75, 89, 110 megalopolis 83, 292, 362, 371, 398, 400, 401, 402, 405, 472, 486. See also Gottmann Euclid OH. See Gottmann megaregion 405 megastructure 73, 189, 393, 473, 486 mercury 258, 388 metabolic 102, 103, 106, 334, 337, 355 Metabolization 102 metropolis 18, 23, 24, 62, 75, 156, 189, 371, 496 Mexicali Valley 437 Mexico 120, 146, 167, 173, 182, 197, 272, 304, 318, 320, 325, 365, 386, 423, 437 Meyer, Elizabeth 20 military 22, 50, 51, 54, 65, 66, 73, 83, 85, 99, 103, 110, 112, 132, 140, 151, 164, 168, 169, 186, 187, 261, 262, 290, 354, 435, 436, 440, 472, 481 Defense Act (1916) 139 expeditions 164 Transcontinental Convoy (1919) 164 Vietnam War 257 warfare 83 wartime planning 436, 472 Milwaukee Sentinel 391 Milwaukee WI 97, 257, 258, 259, 269, 272, 382, 385, 386, 388, 391, 402 Supplier to the World 382 Mississippi River 118, 120, 121, 127, 365, 368, 419, 435. See also rivers MIT 15, 26, 33, 39, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 84, 88, 89, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 112, 150, 151, 184, 249, 284, 324, 381, 470, 471, 472, 474, 483, 485, 486, 487, 488, 489, 498 ARPANET 96 MITRE 96 SAGE 96 Mitchell, William J.T. 14 Mitsubishi 236 Mixing Bowl 173 mobility 23, 24, 32, 35, 42, 43, 67, 83, 100, 103, 135, 149, 150, 156, 160, 172, 189, 272, 290, 292, 338, 339, 371, 386, 417, 430, 437, 439, 442, 443, 446, 457, 466, 469, 472, 484

Index

503

circulation 307, 334 recirculation 106, 354 population movements 12 Mobro 4000 196, 197, 200, 247, 249 modernization 470 Moore, Michael 272 Morgan, Arthur 139 mud 23, 50, 160, 161, 164, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 187 dredging 177, 181, 187 Mud Dump 177, 179, 181, 187 silt 176 mushrooms 208 NAFTA 272, 386 NASA 90, 99, 146, 258, 357, 364, 406, 409, 417, 437, 476, 481 Nassauer, Joan 406 National Weather Service 121, 137 Newark 99, 158, 162, 166, 167, 172, 173, 175, 176, 178, 180, 181, 182, 187, 188, 257, 272, 385 Newark Liberty International Airport 166 New Jersey 113, 158, 162, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 172, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 186, 187, 188, 320, 446 New Jersey Turnpike Authority 165, 168, 169, 186 Nigeria 106, 196, 222, 223, 250, 252, 498 NOAA 137, 291, 367, 409, 430, 476 North America 183 Northeast Recycling Council 209, 287 Novo Nordisk 216, 338, 357 Novozymes 344, 346, 347, 348 Ocean (Atlantic) 177, 180, 188, 258, 430 Odum, Howard T. 26, 56, 80, 100, 101, 112, 113, 473, 481, 483 Odum, Howard W. 45, 99, 112, 132, 150, 423, 441, 473 Ohrstrom, George 139 oil spill 20, 197 Ontario Food Terminal (OFT) 25, 26, 299, 300, 302, 304, 313, 314, 322, 324, 325, 487, 488, 499 Opel, Darin 419 Operation Sand 166, 186

504

OSSGA (Ontario Stone, Sand, and Gravel Association) 155 diapers & aggregates 155 Outer Space Treaty (1967) 257 oyster cultivation 468 Özbekhan, Hasan 91

Panasonic 236 Peccei, Aurelio 91, 92, 93, 110, 111 Philips, Gerard 26 Pittsburg, Steel City 382 Places Journal 19, 448 planning American Planning Association 125 disciplinary cleavage 446 Euclidean planning 32 imperial planning 83 inertia of planning 22, 62, 148, 484 military planning 85 planning pedagogy 125 plans to processes 440 post-Euclidean 450 pre-planning 375 President as Planner 133 school of planning 85 scientific basis of planning 93 Toward A General Theory 93 unplanning 83, 148, 439, 470, 473 urban planning 18, 97 without planners 496 plants 268, 283 2.5 billion trees 151 200 million trees 136 bioindication 450 bioremediation 414 birch trees 372 Christmas trees 283 flowers 282, 283, 301, 414 gardens 457 history of plants 327 oaks 372 pine trees 101 silviculture 414 species as indicators 450 tomato 414 trees as infrastructure 116 trees turning black 262 Ponte, Alessandra 483 Port Elizabeth NJ 178, 187 Port of Rotterdam 213, 453, 487 power 139 and capital 254 Connecticut Valley Power Exchange 139 electricity 131, 151 empire 7, 62, 83, 368, 483, 489, 497 empire & communications 483 flow of power in history 497

Les Équipements du Pouvoir 472, 497 Michel Foucault 483 state power 22, 481 TVA 139 problématique 21, 63, 75, 84, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93, 97, 103, 104, 108, 111, 112, 356 The Predicament of Mankind 75, 84, 91, 92, 97, 110, 111 processes biophysical 9, 13, 19, 20, 22, 38, 39, 50, 59, 67, 71, 83, 148, 149, 261, 262, 275, 277, 288, 290, 291, 292, 362, 367, 368, 378, 388, 414, 417, 421, 430, 432, 433, 436, 440, 441, 449, 451, 457, 458, 459, 473 endogenous 43, 277, 280, 287, 421, 422, 423, 449 exogenous 43, 277, 280, 421, 423, 448 production and beyond 195, 246 propaganda crops 136 Every Farm a Factory 406 property 41, 152, 188, 272, 273, 406, 421, 440, 454, 472, 480 site 41, 75, 108, 165, 166, 181, 183, 187, 188, 208, 223, 248, 249, 261, 262, 263, 265, 277, 280, 284, 286, 287, 304, 305, 353, 357, 422, 432, 456 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service 258 Raffestin, Claude 41, 483 Randers, Jørgen 75, 89, 110 Reagan, Ronald 140, 142, 143, 151 regionalization 5, 25, 112, 276, 361, 418, 422, 446, 467, 489 regional flows 373 regionalism 45, 112, 275, 421, 423, 473, 489 urban regions 1, 9, 102, 148, 149, 405, 422, 432, 451, 456, 458, 474 representation. See image; See also diagrams Republic Avenue (Manila) 434, 437 Resettlement Administration 133, 151 resource economies 12, 32, 84, 484 resource park 467 Richards, Wally 133 risk 12, 41, 107, 115, 148, 152, 188, 197, 342, 446, 447,

468, 473, 476, 487, 490 contingency 442, 490 high-risk technological landscape 447 rivers. See also borders Chicago River 364, 366, 368, 371 Clinch River 145 Colorado River 437 cordon sanitaire 366 Cuyahoga River 258 Danube River 446, 457 dead zone 258 Emory River 145 Hudson 167, 178, 186, 187, 189, 258, 391, 473, 486 La Charente 468 La Seudre 468 Mississippi 118, 120, 121, 127, 258, 364, 365, 367, 368, 374, 391, 419, 435, 490 Potomac 161, 258, 391 reversal 364 Rivers of Empire 497 roads 50, 55, 59, 71, 72, 116, 120, 128, 135, 144, 150, 160, 161, 164, 165, 168, 173, 184, 185, 187, 218, 260, 275, 291, 398, 431, 432, 437, 441, 446, 447, 472, 496 barriers 172, 187 California Highway Design Manual 167 disaster 118 DOT 118 frost action 161 gangs 438 highway signage 171 Intermodal Drive 289 Jersey Freeway model 167 Johannesburg Ring Road 437 New Jersey barrier 168 pre-highway era 166 private 135 public highways 135 Public Roads Magazine 187 roads to power 496 Route 443 437 toll roads 135 traffic jams 169 turnpike 165, 166, 167, 168, 181 Turnpike Authority 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 186 U.S. Interstate and Defense Highway System 135, 169 US Route 1 161 Roosevelt, Franklin D. (FDR) 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 139, 140, 150, 151, 168, 458, 471, 473 New Deal Program 130 Rust Belt 25, 237, 269, 272, 276,

283, 292, 362, 371, 385, 386, 388, 405, 409 manufacturing belt 382

Saginaw Bay 406 Sarnia, Chemical Valley 382 Sauer, Carl O. 10, 15, 29, 497 Sauvy, Alfred 88, 110 scale ecologies of scale 288, 347, 417 economies of scale 108 global scale 96 intermediary 148 macro-scale 291 meso-scales 480 micro-scale 277 personal action 108 regional 442 rescaling 186, 421 speeds and scales 466 telescopic 31, 152, 291, 457, 480 timescale 484 urban scales 98, 443 Schnapp, Jeffrey T. 185 science 13, 15, 48, 66, 109, 111, 150, 168, 185, 438, 470 newtonian 63, 103 positivism 63 scientists 11, 51, 67, 75, 88, 89, 94, 111 Scientific American 43, 102, 113, 248, 338, 355, 357, 487 Shallat, Todd 64, 73, 471, 473, 498 Shark River Reef 180, 181, 187 silt 176, 187 Smith, Roger 272, 388 soft 38, 63, 70, 435, 447 software 39, 71, 95, 110, 258, 432, 449, 459 soil 132, 136, 160, 181, 185, 188, 280, 286, 319, 347, 357, 374, 378, 381, 430, 474 Soil Conservation Law 136 Sony 236 Spirn, Ann Whiston 26 Starr, Susan Leigh 480 state. See also territory; See also infrastructure; See also mapping; See also image deterritorialization 83, 421 nation 54, 65, 74, 109, 119, 131, 132, 139, 144, 162, 167, 168, 169, 172, 187, 258, 261, 338, 342, 344, 346, 385, 388, 422, 440, 481, 482 sub-nation 384 Statoil 215, 344, 346, 348 Strang, Gary L. 20, 470, 473 Stratford, Texas 137

Sudbury, Nickel City 382 Suez Canal 169, 187 Superfund 391 surfaces 23, 35, 70, 72, 159, 160, 167, 169, 183, 184, 185, 188, 237, 239, 273, 280, 414, 455, 466 separations 173 Sydney (Australia) 265 synthesis 182 systems breakdown 113, 114 ecological 8, 26, 37, 47, 442, 457, 459 ecological and general systems 56 ecologies 101 highway system 135, 151, 169, 173, 176, 181, 183, 186, 300 infrastructural systems 22, 45, 496 of sewage separation 129 open, complex 389 sociotechnical 39, 66, 72, 76, 471, 483, 485 System Dynamics Group 84, 88, 91, 95, 97 systemic fluidity 243 systemization 168 systems of modernity 72, 116 systems of systems 5, 22, 81 technological 1, 9, 15, 38, 39, 48, 50, 62, 72, 75, 114, 116, 470, 480, 496, 497

Taylor, Frederick Post-Taylorism 434 taylorist 32 technology 6, 7, 13, 25, 52, 54, 67, 99, 100, 109, 131, 186, 241, 287, 290, 354, 355, 441, 442, 469, 471, 480, 481, 498 and environment 6 positivism 74, 93 technocrats 50, 67, 497 Tennessee Valley 138, 139, 145, 151, 487, 489 territory 1, 24, 25, 62, 66, 72, 83, 101, 414, 421, 422, 440, 442, 443, 451, 455, 456, 468, 473, 480, 496 dĂŠmĂŠnagement urbain 483 deterritorialization 45, 483 map is not the territory 483 reterritorialization 83 territorial 9, 10, 13, 21, 35, 66, 67, 225, 339, 355, 415, 472, 480, 481, 482, 496 territoriality 41, 496 territorialization 25, 59, 83, 421 territorial waters 415

Index

505

Thatcher, Margaret 140, 142 The American City 150, 381, 489 The New Industrial State 47, 257, 258, 439, 472, 488, 497 theory 69 Thule Air Force Base 357. See also Greenland time 39, 40, 66, 72, 73, 74, 76, 184, 470, 471, 472, 483, 485, 486, 489, 490 delineation of 41 indeterminacy 41, 101, 455, 468 timeline 54, 146, 429, 460, 482, 490 Toledo, Glass City 382 Tomato Capital 414 Transfers 414 tropical (tropicalization) 101, 107, 113, 325, 476 Tsing, Anna 472, 496 Tsukamoto, Yuji 238 TU Delft 498, 499 Tunnard, Christopher 62, 74, 75, 497 TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) 138, 139, 145, 151. See also Tennessee Valley Underground 7, 26, 489 United Nations 87, 97, 109, 250, 336, 356, 357, 476 Agenda 21 87 Brundtland Commission 87 Earth Summit 87 Limits to Growth 88 Rio Declaration 87 Stockholm 1972 87 UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) 476 University of Toronto 2, 19, 26, 72, 483, 498, 499 urbanism estuarine urbanism 409, 468 without infrastructure? 5, 496 urbanization. See also problĂŠmatique; See also ecology / ecologies; See also processes agrarian 380 altitudes 45, 70, 76, 105 and infrastructure 6 as landscape 288 atmospheres 45, 70 beyond the city 468 Beyond the City 398, 489 boomtowns 386 Brenner, Neil 485 cities 430, 433, 438, 441, 443 cities as incorporations 11 compactness 73, 83, 84, 85, 86, 94, 105, 109, 398, 405,

506

436, 471 constellations 83, 485 decentralization 34, 35, 58, 62, 75, 108, 290, 347, 355, 385, 437, 486, 488 deindustrialization 25, 151, 188, 246, 269, 272, 276, 385, 388, 439, 488 density 85 disaggregation 467 disurbanization 31, 273, 292 footprint 25, 44, 85, 108, 109, 303, 364, 442, 450 geographic 405 of the food chain 320 Old World notion of the city 245, 398 paradox of density 35, 85, 86, 109, 471, 486 sub-urbanization 31, 105, 397 super-urbanization 31, 70, 105, 112, 372, 442 the urban question 31, 356 urbanizations 42 urban life 10, 22, 23, 50, 58, 104, 108, 423, 451, 480, 496, 497 Wirth, Louis 485 USACE 64 Building Strong 65, 508 Essayons! 54 U.S. Army 51, 54, 64, 65, 73, 120, 128, 130, 150, 164, 179, 188, 288, 436, 471, 472, 473, 482, 499, 508 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 61 U.S. Forest Service 136, 372, 374, 375

van der Rohe, Mies 395 Vestas 217, 347, 353, 357. See also Denmark Wageningen University 2, 499 Waldheim, Charles 26, 73, 184, 186, 188, 189, 381, 397, 470, 471, 488, 498 Wall, Alex 156, 158, 160, 173, 184, 187, 189 warehouses 218, 303, 459 waste 22, 98, 113, 195, 248, 265, 472, 474. See Henry Ford detritus 43 excreta 24, 43, 354 waste diversion 181, 198, 244, 247, 280, 288, 364, 367, 368, 372, 436 waste ecologies 24, 83, 195, 246, 247, 287, 337 waste utilization 192

water 42. See also groundwater; See also rivers; See also Great Lakes; See also waste; See also effluents; See also Worster algal blooms 388 Center for Watershed Protection 280, 391 Clean Water Act (1977) 261, 391 extraction 342, 430, 440 weak 46 West Point 436, 471 wetlands 65, 239, 446 Williams, Jay 275, 277, 397 Williams, Rosalind 7, 15, 33, 39, 48, 62, 66, 74, 75, 470, 497, 498 Wisconsin (WI) 258, 269, 367, 370, 372, 374, 375, 378, 381, 385, 387 Wolman, Abel 43, 84, 101, 102, 112, 113, 334, 338, 355, 357 World See Earth Worster, Donald 497 Wright, Frank Lloyd 74, 277, 380, 381 Youngstown OH 269, 273, 275, 276, 385, 397, 398 Yucca Flat NV 257

Zhengzhou (China) 441 Zon, Dr. Raphael 136 zone(s) density zoning 150 dezoning 273, 438, 443 Euclidean zoning 22, 123, 125, 150. See also Euclid OH after Euclid 439, 485 exclusionary zoning 123 foreign trade zones (FTZ) 158, 173, 176 land use zoning 59, 85, 430, 433 rezoning 148, 276, 290, 292, 398 zoning 22, 47, 59, 67, 75, 85, 109, 122, 123, 125, 128, 150, 248, 261, 275, 276, 354, 357, 406, 430, 433, 438, 439, 443, 446, 457, 470, 484, 485, 486, 496

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