Ecologies of a Dormant Assemblage: Industry, Settlement, Consequences

Olivia Poston Harvard Graduate School of Design Proseminar [ Ecologies ] Design Research Investigation

ECOLOGIES of a DORMANT ASSEMBLAGE industry, settlement, and consequences

CONTENT

001

INTRODUCTION

002

TERMINOLOGY

003

METHODOLOGY // WORKFLOWS

004

SITE

005

GARY // AETNA

006

US STEEL CORPORATION // GARY WORKS

007

AETNA POWDER & EXPLOSIVES COMPANY

008

DORMANT [ not dead ] NETWORKS

009

APPENDIX: ALLIES of THOUGHT

010

BIBLIOGRAPHY

011

QUESTIONS and CURIOSITIES

012

post SCRIPT

to preface with curiosities and unknown entanglements

to introduce key vocabulary as provocation

to conduct ethical and meaningful research

to situate the rust belt in the contemporary american landscape

to verbalize the geopolitical domain of interest

industry [ persisting ]

industry [ bankruptcy ]

landscape as [ extractive ] infrastructure

to credit generous designers and their work of influence

to credit the words and images of participants within this book

to anticipate the future capacities of this work

to record the comments and questions emerging from formal discussion

INTRODUCTION

001

Situated in the contemporary landscape of the Rust Belt, this project will survey the programmatic “afterlife” of infrastructural networks and the environments of the post-industrial city. This investigation will critique mapping conventions of decentralized or vacant conditions from ecologies of the dormant industry.

Following the legacy of mass-production in the American landscape, the region of the Rust Belt experienced an extreme measure of depopulation and de - industrialization (Belanger, Landscape as Infrastructure, 83). This analysis recognizes that in order to navigate the local experience, the post-industrial landscape needs to illustrate co-dependent relationships of human ecology and environmental service. This project will serve as a visual toolkit to connect knowledge of health, contamination, and disruption to the physical condition of large-scale infrastructures lying in fallow.

The spectacle of decay distorts the collective memory and shared knowledge of social, economic, and spatial conditions. Many of the post-industrial cities wait for industry, and assumed stability, to return one day. While selective ruins on the American landscape may represent resilience - there is a disconnect between these fallow infrastructures and their circles of disruption.

Ecologies and GEOGRAPHIES: Inhabitations of the earth’s surface, various forms and structures of collective living.

This investigation will be delivered through a conversation of shared living strategies, settlements of humans and non-human entities, and imagined tactics for understanding their environments. Therefore, it is imperative to discuss this work through the medium of geographies. Geography as a medium allows information, material knowledge, and authorship to be applied across an intellectual territory (Gissen, Architectural Reconstruction of Geography, 42).

Discussed further in the “Methodologies // Work Flow” section of this investigation, there needs to be a conversation of ethics in data collection and the editing of knowledge. This series of maps and their corresponding texts were developed in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In order to deliver informed cartographies of the region, the investigator needs to physically experience and navigate the fallow infrastructures in conjunction with their peripheral environments. This toolkit is an introduction to the curiosities of the dormant industrial city; it is the foundational knowledge required before traveling to experience the territory of interest.

ETHICS of DORMANCY

To the trained architect, abandoned buildings are a spectacle. Architecture in decay elicits the imagination of the sublime through shadow and texture. To the urban designer, abandonment in the city indicates a pattern of disinvestment or displacement. Therefore, abandoned portions of the city are never random or unprompted occurrences.

However, to the ecologist - the observer - these environments of vacancy in the city are not abandoned. The language of abandonment implies that they are not productive for capital or valuable to the field. However, these moments are not abandoned or unvalued for the organisms that inhabit and occupy the spaces.

Through the perspective of the human, these spaces are dormant, not dead.

In her book, “From Fallow,” Jill Desimini discusses the condition of vacancy in the city as an intersecting issue of landscape architecture, urban design, and social justice. Vacancy and abandonment in the city is driven by social and political pressures, targeting culture and resource accessibility of impacted communities.

As Desimini observes, these “fallow landscapes are everywhere and everywhere they are distinct. [...] it is a matter not so much of making drastic change to the sites themselves, as drastically re imagining how we approach them.” (Desimini, From Fallow, 2021). This investigation requires an empathy for embedded memory, an awareness of displacement, and a consciousness for contamination and danger.

These zones, labeled abandoned or vacant by state entities, are merely dormant.

This is not a call to rebuild cities as they existed one hundred years ago. This is not a manifesto to reintroduce industry to cities that have been declared post industrial by the state. This is a visual toolkit; a database of information on the environments and peripheral relationships of the post - industrial city.

“Empty” does not appear within this book to describe a territory, region, or a space.

To do so would discount the cultures and lifelines that entangle the site. “Vacant” or “abandoned” are only applied through the narrow focus of the human experience. To the ecologist, while these sites of interest are dormant - not dead, not abandoned, not punctuated - they are still valuable in the discussion of environment and memory. Dormancy, applied to the human programming of a space, acknowledges the history and memory of a space while understanding that the human transition period indicates a time of waiting.

TERMINOLOGY

002

DORMANCY a period in an organism’s life cycle when growth, development, and physical activity are temporarily stopped. resting; anticiating awakening at a later period in time.

ASSEMBLAGE a collection or gathering of things, ideas, or people.

ABANDONMENT the state or condition of being abandoned by a person or people; an instance of this. being abandoned is to be given up, to the control or discretion of another, or to be relinquished entirely.

FALLOW (of farmland) plowed and harrowed but left un sown for a period in order to restore its fertility as part of a crop rotation or to avoid surplus production.

VACANCY an instance or occasion of land, a tenancy, etc., being or becoming vacant. rare.

VACANT devoid of all material contents or accessories; containing, or occupied by, nothing; unfilled, empty, void. of land, houses, etc.: Uninhabited, unoccupied, untenanted. Also, of a room: Not in use, disengaged.

DISINVESTMENT the withdrawal or reduction of an investment.

[ all definition derived from Oxford Dictionaries, accessed October 10, 2021 - December 13, 2021 ]

“the World’s Largest Steel Mill “ HBS Baker Library. “Gary Works Photograph Album.” Harvard Business School, Baker Library Bloomberg Center. President & Fellows of Harvard College, 2020.

“the Charging Floor in the Open Hearth Building at U.S. Steel’s Gary Steel Works” HBS Baker Library. “Gary Works Photograph Album.” Harvard Business School, Baker Library Bloomberg Center. President & Fellows of Harvard College, 2020.

DE - INDUSTRIALIZATION process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity.

INDUSTRIALIZATION the development of industries in a country or region on a wide scale; the process of industrializing or fact of being industrialized.

EXTRACTION the action or process of drawing (something) out of a receptacle; the pulling or taking out (of anything) by mechanical means; †withdrawal or removal (of a person); an instance of this.

FLUX continuous movement and change.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE the concept of equity in risk management that ensures communities near potentially polluting industrial sites are not more exposed to environmental health risks than are more affluent communities further removed from pollution source. present - oriented actions to mitigate regional issues in public health / well being.

CLIMATE JUSTICE the need to frame global warming as an ethical and political issue, rather than one that is purely environmental or physical in nature. long - term, future - oriented actions to mitigate global change SUPERFUND SITES a US government program for finding and cleaning up places where dangerous waste has been thrown away.

BROWNFIELD a property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.

[ all definition derived from Oxford Dictionaries, accessed October 10, 2021 - December 13, 2021 ]

METHODOLOGY & WORK FLOW

003

To begin, this project will employ speculative cartographies, data drawing, and architectural collage to unfold and survey the infrastructures in fallow in conjunction with their peripheral environments. The process of drawing will be highly productive and valuable in this conversation. All text - informative and embedded within the drawings - will be supporting actors in the final presentation and writing.

The analysis will begin at the scale of the Rust Belt region, stretching along the Great Lakes and into Upstate New York. From the Great Lakes territory, a selection of urban mapping surveys will transpose areas of contamination, migration, and disruption at the planetary scale. The cities participating in this survey needed to experience a population fall of 40% or more during the mid 20th century and the current resident population cannot exceed 200,000 people. There are a total of eleven cities that participated in this survey, with the geographic boundaries of Gary and Aetna chosen as the local site of focus.

Stemming from the timeline of American industry to decentralizing globalization emerge two realities: industry persisting and industry bankruptcy. This analysis engages with a institution of industry that has sustained to the present day, the US Steel Corporation Gary Works, and an institution that declared financial bankruptcy and succumbed to the pressure to abandon and disinvest in the industrial production center, the Aetna Powder and Explosives Company.

The workflows in responsive cartography, collage, and data collection will be highly valued in each of these episodes of ecology. In order to establish a better understanding of how these layered and cultural landscapes operate, this project will employ a “proving ground” methodology, similar to the mindset of Smout Allen’s Liquid Kingdom maps. (see “allies of thought”).

The ambition of this project is to scrutinize and challenge the perceptions, representations, and capabilities for the surroundings of post-industrial infrastructure in dormancy. This segment of research and reflection is a preparation for the site work, field data collection, and hands-on surveys that are critical for an ethical design research analysis. The following cartographies and data narratives reflect a rigorous study of maps drawn throughout the 20th century, reports from the Environmental Protection Agency, financial reports of the steel industry, and the interpolation of gis datasets.

DRAWING ORGANIZATION

As the ambition of this investigation is to provide a toolkit on the ecologies of the post - industrial city, this methodology of cartography and representation must be legible, concise, scalable, and adaptive to the territory of interest. This is a toolkit for the architect, urban designer, landscape architect, policy writer, politician, citizen. Therefore, the drawings must be trans-disciplinary in order to bring a collective awareness to issues of contamination and displacement.

Each mapping investigation begins with a traditional cartography template: North points to the top of the image, relationships are displayed from an aerial vantage point, legends and colors are unified across the book. This ensures a consistent orientation of the viewer at all times. The cartography will investigate the environment at the scale of the territory, the scale of the region, or the scale of the site - moving to a more intimate scale as the narrative continues.

Once the cartographic template is settled, there is a layer of collected information overlaid on each drawing. This information is collected and edited from multiple sites, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States Census Database, or the Natural Resources Conservation Service. It is imperative that each database or collection of quantifying information is free and accessible to the public. This project, when implemented at greater scales, must remain transparent.

The final layer is an overlay of vernacular texture. Each site embodies a unique set of conditions and relationships, not found any where else. Territory is unstable without culture; cartography is dead without assemblage. This “collage” texture is a reminder of the life and entanglements that exist on the site. Each image is taken from videos, pictures, or documentaries that attempt to archive the site. These archives will continue their life work embedded in the cartographies of the dormant environments.

SITE

004

The Rust Belt, a region of the contemporary American landscape that bleeds into New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois, is the geopolitical territory of focus for this investigation. In the late 19th century, mass-production brought accelerated growth in material production, wealth concentration, and urban development during the two World Wars in this region. This accelerated growth introduced a rapid urbanizing language that entangled the human, infrastructure networks of material logistics, and wealth of the institution. Connections to the Northeastern Seaboard and the geographical position to accept surrounding natural resources allowed this rapid expansion and the concentrated wealth cores of the corporate interests sustained this urban language. (Belanger, Landscape as Infrastructure, 84) Following the shift to globalization in production and manufacturing, these cities experienced extreme and widespread deindustrialization and decentralization catastrophes. Once the corporate interests moved out of these cities, the urban environments were left with fallow infrastructures, contaminated vacant lands, heavy tax burdens, and declining populations. (Belanger, Landscape as Infrastructure, 83).

The city of Detroit represents a critical case study in the history of post-industrial infrastructure due to the extreme accelerated growth, and the mirrored extreme decay and depopulation. It is often introduced as the primary case study among urban designers and architects to approach a former industrial territory (Daskalakis, Waldheim, Young, Stalking Detroit). However, the site and scope of this project needs to include terrestrial networks that were left by the shift towards globalization. The regions of these speculative infrastructures must include narratives from Gary, Flint, Grand Rapids, Youngstown, South Bend, and Lakewood to understand the complexities of each environment in this condition.

Note that the current state of the Rust Belt is not a failure of the citizens who inhabit these cities; these cities represent the residues left by globalization, extraction, and contamination.

SURVEY & DOMAIN

An initial survey of eleven cities across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, and Ohio was conducted to focus this topic on a more concise region of the Rust Belt.

The cities selected to participate in the survey needed to experience a resident population decline by 40% or greater from 1950 - 1980. In addition, these cities must have less than 200,000 residents today. The surveys conducted on the eleven selected cities scrutinized current health conditions, disruptions, contamination, and presence of a dormant infrastructure.

From the survey of eleven cities, the city of Gary was selected as the focused region of interest for this investigation. Gary, situated on the south beaches of Lake Michigan, was positioned for immense success during the industrial production period of the early 20th century. The corporations and institutions of industry utilized the northern waterways for transportation and material logistics.

This territory acts as a threshold to Chicago, one of the wealthiest cities in the Midwest - even following the industrial decline and widespread disinvestment.

Gary, a peripheral moment of Chicago, was situated to receive a surplus of wealth accumulation through networks of railways and highways that run north.

The city of Aetna, also located along the beaches of Lake Michigan, was incorporated by Gary in 1907 during the capital height of success of the Aetna Powder and Explosives Factory. Aetna was annexed by the city in 1928 when the population was fewer than 100. Today, the name is assigned to a small neighborhood where the explosives factory was once established (Spicer, History of Aetna, 2019).

It would be an incomplete narrative to discuss the city of Gary without the historic neighborhood of Aetna in this study of dormant infrastructure and ecology.

GARY | AE T NA L AK E MICHIGAN, INDIANA

DECOMMI SSI ON E D I N F RAS T RUC TURE CON CEN T RAT I ON OF CA N CE R DIAGN OSE S AERIAL SURV EY OF TOPOGRA PH Y / WAT E R BODI E S

SOU T H B E ND IN DIA NA

DE COM M I SSI ONE D I NF RAS T RUCTURE CONCE N T RAT I ON OF CA NCER DIAGN OSES AE R IA L SURV E Y OF T OPOGRAPH Y / WAT ER BODIES

GRAND RA PI DS MICHIGAN DECOMMISSION ED IN F RAS T RUC TURE CON CEN T RAT ION OF CAN CER DIAGN OSE S AERIAL SURV EY OF TOPOGRA PH Y / WAT E R BODI E S

SAGI NAW MICHIGAN

DE COMMI SSI ON E D I N F RAS T RUC TURE CON CE N T RAT I ON OF CA N CE R DIAGN OSE S AERIAL SURV E Y OF TOPOGRA PH Y / WAT E R BODI E S

F L IN T MICHIGAN

DE COMMISSION ED IN F RAST RUCTURE CONCE N T RAT ION OF CAN CER DIAGN OSES A E R IA L SURV E Y OF TOPOGRAPH Y / WAT ER BODIES

L A K EWOOD OHIO

DECOMMISSION ED INF RAS T RUC TURE CON CEN T RAT ION OF CA N CE R DIAGN OSE S AERIAL SURV EY OF TOPOGRA PH Y / WAT E R BODI E S

LORA I N OHIO

DECOMMISSION ED IN F RAS T RUC TURE CON CEN T RAT ION OF CA N CE R DIAGN OSE S AERIAL SURV EY OF TOPOGRA PH Y / WAT E R BODI E S

PARMA MICHIGAN

DECOMMISSION ED IN F RAST RUCTURE CON CEN T RAT ION OF CAN CER DIAGN OSES A E R IA L SURV EY OF TOPOGRAPH Y / WAT ER BODIES

PON T IAC MICHIGAN

DECOMMISSION ED IN F RAST RUCTURE CON CEN T RAT ION OF CAN CER DIAGN OSES A E RIAL SURV EY OF TOPOGRAPH Y / WAT ER BODIES

YOUN GST ON OHIO

DECOMMISSION ED IN F RAST RUCTURE CON CEN T RAT ION OF CAN CER DIAGN OSE S AERIAL SURV EY OF TOPOGRAPH Y / WAT E R BODI E S

CAN T ON OHIO

DE COMM ISSI ONE D I NF RAST RUCT URE CONCE N T RAT I ON OF CA NCE R DIAGN OSES AE R IAL SURV E Y OF T OPOGRA PH Y / WAT ER BODIES

GARY // AETNA INDIANA ORIENTATION

005

TO SITUATE PHYSICALLY The city of Gary Indiana is located south of Lake Michigan. It is only a two hour drive from Chicago by I - 90 South and a three hour drive from Indianapolis by way of I - 65 North. Currently, Gary is a peripheral condition to the Indiana State Dune Park, globally recognized for sand of exceptionally high quality in color and texture, accompanied with a low silt percentage. The Indiana State Dune Park and Marquette Beach are the two beaches that are accessible to visitors. Less than 1000 meters away from the public beaches is the US Steel Corporation - Gary Works. Over the course of its manufacturing existence, multiple environmental citations have been issued against the corporation, including toxic chemical spills, oil spills, air emission levels, and soil contamination.

TO SITUATE HISTORICALLY During the peak of it’s industrial production empire, Gary was well situated to connect agricultural fields, resource mines, stone quarries, and the Chicago center of commerce. Materials, labor, and wealth traveled by means of the railroad and the waterways anchored in the city. The human inhabitation of Gary peaked in 1960 with 175,000+ residents; today, however, fewer than 70,000 people reside in the city (Spicer, History of Aetna, 2019). Following the decline of industry production in the United States, a few manufacturing institutions moved their centers of distributions and production to the sprawling city edges in the 1970s. This action, coupled with the federal integration laws, spurred an extreme case of white flight away from Gary’s city core.

TO SITUATE SOCIALLY As there are fewer than 70,000 residents of Gary and the Aetna neighborhood, there are multiple conditions of vacancy and residues of disinvestments embedded within the urban fabric. Although the tourist population is directed to the beaches and the Indiana State Dune Park, this economy is not robust enough to sustain the residents of the city. Even today, industry and industrial networks are associated with stability and wealth (Spicer, History of Aetna, 2019). There is a collective nostalgia for a thriving industrial city and the residents have cited that industry will return one day to invest and support the city.

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LOGISTICS_COMMERCIAL RAIL LINE

IDENTIFIED U.S. SUPERFUND SITES

UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION GARY WORKS

PANY

ES COM

PLOSIV

ER & EX

REGION of INVESTIGATION

POWD AETNA

DECOMISSIONED RAIL LINE

ACTIVE RAIL LINE

PRIMARY VEHICLE HIGHWAY

TERRITORY of INVESTIGATION The Rust Belt is a messy term, often haphazardly used to describe multiple overlapping regions and vernacular knowledge bases. Many disciplines define the Rust Belt as the state borders from New York to Wisconsin. Other disciplines cite the extent of material extractions that fed city centers as the border of the Rust Belt. For the sake of this investigation, the territory of interest is a spark from the Great Lakes region nestled on the United States and Canadian border. The territory of investigation focuses on the infrastructures and landscapes that built the Rust Belt, including railways, waterways, and ports that regulate manufacturing empires.

LANDFILL P

REGION of INVESTIGATION

PROPERTY

PROTECTED WETLANDS

REGION of INVESTIGATION Focus on Lake Michigan within the territory of investigation. Lake Michigan is will connected to the waterway routes along the Northeastern Seaboard and the railroad webs that carry resources to manufacturing and distribution centers.

The region of investigation is defined by the swell of urban growth from the industrial height of the early 20th century. The region incorporates the peripheral environments of the two institutions of industrial production and their networks of nourishment.

advocacy groups environmental protection agency regulation

policy stronger regulations action

AWARENESS lower life expectancy high medical debts

severe health crisis

CONTAMINATION

lower life expectancy high medical debts

severe health crisis

capping practice

[ CONTAMINATION ECOLOGIES ]

DESTRUCTION / LOSS reduced land value increased probability of property buyout

formation of specialized industrial waste landfills

decre

HAZARDOUS WASTE pollution

[ EMMISIONS AND WASTE

high ecological destruction

wealth / capital accumulation

MATERIAL PRO PRODUCT PACKAGING

nitroglycerin COKING AND BYPRODUCT RECOVERY SINTERING IRON AND STEEL-MAKING FINISHING MILLS

ethylene glycol dinitrate

high carbon emissions

wood pulp | sawdust | flour | starch

PRODUCT MANUFACTURING MATERIAL EXTRACTION

oil consumption oil spills / incidents

oil

oil spills

COK

AETNA POWDER / EXPLOSIVES COMPANY 1880 - 1917

UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATIO GARY WORKS 1906 - .

[ NOSTALGIA ] for INDUSTRIAL CITIES FALLOW INFRASTRUCTURE FALLOW EXTRACTIVE LANDSCAPES

[ all infrastructure int environmen

INFRASTRUCTURE as EXTRACTIVE LANDSCAPE INDUSTRY, ECONOMY, AND A RAPID URBANIZATION

lower life expectancy high medical debts high ecological destruction

severe health crisis

ease in biodiversity decrease in biodiversity

toxic sand strata

POLLUTION

toxic sand strata

toxic air emissions

landfill formation transportation logistics

E ECOLOGIES ]

capping practice

INDUSTRIAL WASTE

industrial infrastructure creation vulnerable habitats

ODUCTION

maintenance of the infrastructure networks

vulnerable wetlands decline in species biodiversity

rapid urban sprawl habitat displacement

INDUSTRY / CONSTRUCTION high carbon emissions political backing of the conservative parties

l consumption

DISPERSED SETTLEMENTS STEEL PRODUCTION

[ STEEL CONSUMPTION ECOLOGIES ]

fragmented community

s / incidents

disjointed community values vacancy in the city core

KING AND BYPRODUCT RECOVERY SINTERING IRON AND STEEL-MAKING FINISHING MILLS

ON

ALIENATION tended to pull resources from their lifeline nts for commodity and exchange ]

INCREASED DEMAND & CONSUMPTION OF STEEL increase in industrial waste linear waste economies

fallow parcels of land

higher dependence on automobiles for personal freedoms

fallow mobility infrastructure rapid urban sprawl

no alternatives to disposable lifestyles

high energy / gas consumption suburban lawn dilemma

UNITED STATES STEEL CORPS GARY WORKS

006

INDUSTRY [ PERSISTING ] Following the disinvestment of the United States Steel economy, thousands of workers and skilled manufacturers lost their jobs. Cities across the Rust Belt region, composed of various populations, demographics, and collective values, shared a nostalgia for industrial environments. Equated with wealth, success, and stability, industrial environments were highly valued by the existing communities, optimistic for days when the industry would return to the fallow infrastructures and rusting factories (Pete, US Steel Industry, 2016).

To the residents of Gary and Aetna, the US Steel Corporation Gary Works may symbolize stability and investment. It is a symbolic entity that will financially support and promote the wealth of the residents. However, there is a dangerous disconnect between the collective acceptance of the institution and the spectrum of danger and displacement that it employs on the residents of Gary. The institution continues to extract and deplete surrounding natural resources of the Midwestern corridor while pumping toxins and carcinogens into the water, air, and soil.

Landscape as infrastructure in this relationship acts as an extractive agent on the natural wealth of the geographic location. The resources were harvested throughout the interior of the country, but the imprinted infrastructures were required to economically support the city of Chicago. The wealth distribution was disproportionate and the environmental scars left by the process of transportation impacted the surrounding region and urban ecologies.

As it continues operation today, this portion of the research investigation will analyze the impacts of contamination, displacement, and physical danger employed by the Gary Works Mill and it’s steel manufacturing and finishing plant.

Through the capital accumulation of Gary, wealth was not geographically tethered.

Pierre Belanger argues that infrastructure needs to be an active participant in the discipline and the conversations within landscape architecture. The extractive economies that embrace these infrastructures disproportionately favor the wealth concentrations of city centers and leave the regions of industry and mining with environmental vulnerabilities. The forces of landscape as infrastructure extraction are economic, environmental, social, and ecological (Belanger, Landscape as Infrastructure, 83).

“the Rail Mill” HBS Baker Library. “Gary Works Photograph Album.” Harvard Business School, Baker Library Bloomberg Center. President & Fellows of Harvard College, 2020.

“Stills of Atmospheric Pollutions” “United States Steel - Gary Works (1971).” Youtube. britishpathe, April 13, 2014.

[ 001 ] STRATA CONTAMINATION The identification of vulnerable sands and strata compositions.

Measuring from the ground plane, approximately 12 inches of the strata in this region of the Great Lakes is composed of sand. There are various sediment typologies, porosity, and pigment within the strata profile, however, there is a consistently low silt (sand particles with less than 150 micron measurement) percentage. It should be noted that sand from Lake Michigan is globally known for its high quality and “luster.” Sand mines along the waterline operate in all seasons to extract, pull commodity, and ship the sand from this region. The operating US Steel Corporation poses a threat to the extraction and sourcing of sand.

[ 002 ] CHEMICAL // OIL SPILL VISUALIZATION The combination of local journalism records of toxic spills and cartographic language.

On a Thursday morning in October 2021, an oil spill from the US Steel Corporation Gary Works was reported and local beaches were prompted to close aas a precaution. It was the second oil spill in less than two weeks. Authorities closed visitor access to the water and deployed methods to control the oil sheen on the water. As per regulation requires, the factory was idled once the spill was reported. By Thursday evening, the factory returned to normal operating power.

As of November 2021, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has not released a statement covering the most recent spill.

[ 003 ] SPECULATIVE DANGER ZONES The intersection of vulnerable habitats and deployed contaminates.

Contaminants are camouflaged under the ground surface, seeping into the water ways and porous sand sediments. Protected wetlands are not as strictly protected from industrial dumping grounds and waste regulations. Anonymous volunteers and organized figures that re-mediate the wetlands, the parks, the most vulnerable environments of the territory are celebrated as local Samaritans. The active corporations continue to manufacture under light-handed regulations. Zones of toxic environments and life-threatening conditions will continue to grow. This map is already out of date.

[ 001 ] STRATA CONTAMINATION

UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION GARY WORKS

PROTECTED WETLANDS

(RED) HIGHLY VULNERABLE SOIL

(ORANGE) VULNERABLE SOIL

(BROWN) SOIL OF CONCERN

LANDFILL PROPERTY

[ 002 ] CHEMICAL // OIL SPILL VISUALIZATION

UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION GARY WORKS

PROTECTED WETLANDS

LANDFILL PROPERTY

SUPERFUND SIT

N

TE

SPECULATIVE DANGER INPUT

SPECULATIVE OIL / CHEMICAL SPILL INCIDENT ZONE

[ 003 ] SPECULATIVE DANGER ZONES

UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION GARY WORKS

PROTECTED WETLANDS

INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM

BROW

WNFIELD SITE

LANDFILL PROPERTY

SPECULATIVE SMOKE PARTICLE EMISSIONS RADIUS

Heath Hen (Tympanuchus cupido cupido)

Caroline Parakeet (Conuropsis Carolinensis Carolineensis)

Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)

ECONOMY During the height of its wealth production, this city was ideally positioned to generate, cultivate, produce, and distribute industrial goods - steel, iron, and sand.

The peripheral region of Gary has the capacity to mine and extract the material aggregates to produce steel; to accommodate this material economy, entire infrastructures of transportation were built. The wealth generated in the state of exchange was concentrated along the routes of transportation and within the city of Chicago. Today, the condition of the city is a byproduct of the residues of globalization and decentralization (Daskalakis, Waldheim, Young 2001).

Thismia americana (no common name)

Bigleaf scurfpea (Orbexilum macrophyllum)

Leafshell (Epioblasma flexuosa) Round combshell (Epioblasma personata) Tennessee riffleshell (Epioblasma propinqua)

Blue pike (Stizostedion vitreum glacum) Longjaw cisco (Coregonus alpenae) Sampson's pearlymussel (Wabash riffleshell) Epioblasma sampsonii Shortnose cisco (Coregonus reighardi) Scioto pigtoe (Pleurobema bournianum)

Blackfin cisco (Coregonus nigripinnis) Deepwater cisco (Coregonus johannae)

Contaminated Ground Water Plume (Kokomo) Continental Steel Corp. (Kokomo) Neal's Landfill (Bloomington) Lemon Lane Landfill Bennett Stone Quarry Carter Lee Lumber Co. American Chemical Service, Inc. Himco Dump Conrail Rail Yard (Elkhart)

TEXTURE | ATMOSPHERE “United States Steel - Gary Works (1971).” Youtube. britishpathe, April 13, 2014.

The 1971 film follows the nearly opaque smoke clouds, saturated and oily waters, and - perhaps the most jolting - the masses of dead fish that have floated to the top of Lake Michigan. For all of the maps of clean borders and crisp colors, the residues and imprints of the contaminations have been lost. During the season of field work and on site analysis, every survey and cartographic exercise will capture the texture of the vernacular atmosphere.

AETNA POWDER & EXPLOSIVES COMPANY

007

INDUSTRY [ BANKRUPTCY ] The settlement of the Aetna Powder and Explosive Company begins with the partnership of Parker, Pratt, and Tierney in 1880. While each man had individual success and generational wealth, it was apparent that the three men were not equipped to run an explosives factory. Despite 14 deadly plant explosions in the first eight years of operation, the company was in operation until 1917.

“Although this is called a “powder works,” no common powder is made here. It is all “high explosive powder,” and nitroglycerine is the active agent in the compound. [...]

It is only fourteen months since the company began here; now they have twenty-six buildings, employ forty-five men, and have a capacity of 60,000 pounds of powder a day. [...] They own 200 acres of land are buying more.” (Goodspeed 541).

Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, and Charles Blanchard. 2011. Counties of Porter and Lake,

Indiana: historical and biographical. Nabu Press.

The explosives manufactured at the factory were shipped to quarries, mines, and agricultural lands all throughout the Midwest corridor during its time of operation.

One of the largest projects accomplished through the distribution of the explosives was the Chicago Drainage Canal, which required over one million pounds of dynamite. The year 1911 marked peak production for the plant when laborers surpassed two million pounds of dynamite in one month. As can be expected, the factory gained considerable momentum in 1915 and signed several multiple million dollar contracts with state and federal institutions for war production. The gun cotton plants were built on the factory campus as the war orders and productions began to accumulate. As with most inexperienced business leadership, the company over extended itself and was found in extensive debt. When a fire in late August 1917 destroyed four mills and an entire production department storage gun cotton, the administration could never financially recover (Spicer, History of Aetna, 2016).

The factory seemingly “evaporated” overnight, and thousands of residents of Aetna were unemployed and unstable. Over the course of several decades, the factories and mills were demolished and disassembled. Few fragments of the mill and its infrastructural networks remain scattered throughout the city. Today, a neighborhood - streets, sidewalks, and detached homes - lies on the former site of the explosives factory. Several environmental agencies and interest groups continue to report toxic levels of nitroglycerin and metals in the water and soil from previous lives of the campus.

“the Rail Networks for Aetna Explosives Company” Spicer, S. (2019, July). Maps and Photos - Aetna Powder/Explosives Company. Steve’s Website.

Retrieved November 11, 2021,

“the Large Factory Plant on the Aetna Company Campus” Spicer, S. (2019, July). Maps and Photos - Aetna Powder/Explosives Company. Steve’s Website.

Retrieved November 11, 2021,

“Articles Covering the Aetna Company Accidents” Spicer, S. (2019, July). Maps and Photos - Aetna Powder/Explosives Company. Steve’s Website.

Retrieved November 11, 2021,

“Marketing Graphic for Product” Spicer, S. (2019, July). Maps and Photos - Aetna Powder/Explosives Company. Steve’s Website.

Retrieved November 11, 2021,

“Marketing Graphic for Consumption” Spicer, S. (2019, July). Maps and Photos - Aetna Powder/Explosives Company. Steve’s Website.

Retrieved November 11, 2021,

[ 001 ] EXTRACTION ECONOMIES an investigation into the physical and fiscal networks of the dynamite manufacturer.

While in operation, the Aetna Powder and Explosives Company connected landscapes of production, landscapes of extraction, and landscapes of capital. In an attempt to understand the territorial scale of Aetna Powder, this cartography visualizes the networks that were built and maintained to transport material economies of dynamite and explosives. A large amount of materials was sent to mines and quarries in adjacent cities to Gary, Indiana. These landscapes of extraction used the explosives to carve and capitalize on the natural resources. In turn, the greater the employed operation - the greater the capital accumulation.

[ 002 ] CONTAMINATION an investigation to understand the current conditions of contamination and danger.

Although the factory buildings of the Aetna Powder and Explosives Company have been demolished and no longer stand to mark a site of production, there is a sustained issue of contamination and toxic environment. Previous industrial waste dump sites prove to have a higher toxic soil, water, and air levels in the Environmental Protection Agency’s report. Industrial programmatic sites today do not reflect an accurate knowledge of industrial waste and contaminate inflicted sites. Surveyed designations for Superfund or brown field sites skirt around the Aetna neighborhood, even though there are several reported industrial spills and released toxins. These are dangerous gaps in knowledge and awareness.

[ 003 ] PALIMPSEST an overlay of the dangerous campus of production and the people impacted today.

Bankruptcy was spurred on by inadequacy in management. Recovery was not an option after the fire of the powder assembly plant. The Aetna Powder and Explosives factory was demolished in the middle of the twentieth century; only the train depot, the railroad tracks, and a few scattered administration buildings are camouflaged in the fabric of the Aetna neighborhood. Today, Aetna is a dense neighborhood filled with single family homes, driveways, bus stops, and a primary school. Unsurprisingly, this neighborhood experiences a disproportionately high rate of water and soil contamination. Public health is severely impacted by the previous existence of the nitroglycerin plants and it’s multiple reports of spills, fires, and industrial accidents.

[ 001 ] EXTRACTION ECONOMIES

MINE // QUARRY SITES OF EXTRACTION

RAILROAD NETWORKS CONNECTING DYNAMITE TO SITES OF EXTRACTIONS

CAPITAL ACCUMULATION DERIVED FROM SITES OF EXTRACTIONS

[ 002 ] CONTAMINATION

[ 003 ] PALIMPSEST

PROTECTED WETLANDS

INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS

AETNA EXPLOSIVES COMPAN 1915

NY

AETNA NEIGHBORHOOD 2020

BROWNFIELD SITE

REPORTED PLANT EXPLOSION

“Finding Original Surveys of Aetna Explosives Company” Spicer, S. (2019, July). Maps and Photos - Aetna Powder/Explosives Company. Steve’s Website.

Retrieved November 11, 2021,

“Tracing Living Fragments in Gary” Spicer, S. (2019, July). Maps and Photos - Aetna Powder/Explosives Company. Steve’s Website.

Retrieved November 11, 2021,

ENTANGLED ARCHIVE of GARY Although the Aetna Powder and Explosives Factory has disbanded and the primary factory campus has been demolished, there is a large following of history enthusiasts and archivists that have published their collections of newspaper clippings, photographs, and early surveys. Steve Spicer, a resident of Gary, has kept a page filled with his family genealogy and unique record of Gary in which he traces existing building fragments and perspectives from archived photographs, as seen above. There are thousands of perspectives and interpretations of Gary, Spicer and his community, are critical to tracing the life lines of a demolished campus.

DORMANT [ not dead ] NETWORKS

008

LANDSCAPE as [ EXTRACTIVE ] INFRASTRUCTURE As outlined in the arguments of “Landscape as Infrastructure,” Pierre Belanger references the residues of deindustrialization and depopulation within the United States to reposition landscape as an instrument to support contemporary urban ecologies. Due to intersecting social and political forces in the American landscape - such as the conclusion of the General Motor “Futurama” exhibit at the New York World Fair and the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service awarded to the campaign against water pollution in the Great Lakes - the year 1967 represents a turning point that left a legacy of industrial production, infrastructural decay and pollutants scattered across the continent (Belanger, Landscape as Infrastructure, 80).

Belanger argues that this “failure to return land to productive reuse and reinvestment in public works signals that conventional approaches to redevelopment and remediation have reached a tipping point,” (Belanger 80).

These decaying infrastructure systems need to re imagine the technocratic implementation of civil engineering over the biophysical ecologies of modern industry. As a form of lamentation over these realities, John Kenneth Galbraith verbalizes that “capital and power became more important than land,” (Galbraith 1967) in this century. Belanger continues this analysis of post-industrial infrastructures by introducing urban ecologies as a source of growing consumption, bio-industries as a focus on the agrarian sector, and waste economies as the punctuation in the material loop of industry and production (Belanger 86-89).

Belanger concludes his argument by noting the societal shift away from previous schools of thought about contamination and environmentalism, and commends the move towards the mutually interdependent economy of production and environmental ecology (Belanger 90). By amplifying the biophysical relationships of post-industrial urban ecologies, Belanger positions landscape as a critical instrument in understanding its capacity for service and nourishment.

The extractive economies that embrace these infrastructures disproportionately favor the wealth concentrations of city centers and leave the regions of industry and mining with environmental vulnerabilities.

[ 001.A ] GARY WORKS - RAIL NETWORKS

PROTECTED WETLANDS

SITES OF UNDERGROUND INDUSTRIAL STORAGE

BROWNFIELD SITE

LANDFILL PROPERTY

SUPERFUND PROPERTY

[ 001.B ] GARY WORKS - RAIL NETWORKS

PROTECTED WETLANDS

INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM

BROWNFIELD SITE

LANDFILL PROPERTY

SUPERFUND PROPERTY

[ 002.A ] GARY WORKS - WATER NETWORKS

PROTECTED WETLANDS

SITES OF UNDERGROUND INDUSTRIAL STORAGE

BROWNFIELD SITE

LANDFILL PROPERTY

SUPERFUND PROPERTY

[ 002.B ] GARY WORKS - WATER NETWORKS

PROTECTED WETLANDS

INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM

BROWNFIELD SITE

LANDFILL PROPERTY

SUPERFUND PROPERTY

[ 003.A ] AETNA POWDER - RAIL NETWORKS

PROTECTED WETLANDS

INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM

BROWNFIELD SITE

LANDFILL PROPERTY

SUPERFUND PROPERTY

[ 003.B ] AETNA POWDER - RAIL NETWORKS

PROTECTED WETLANDS

INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM

BROWNFIELD SITE

LANDFILL PROPERTY

SUPERFUND PROPERTY

“Entangled Archives of Gary” Glass Web Projects, L. L. C. (2019, February 21). Indiana coal ash map. Hoosier Environmental Council. Retrieved November 11, 2021.

ENTANGLED ARCHIVE of GARY Adjacent to the archives of early 20th century photographs and surveys that have been preserved over four generations is a data collection of residents living in the territory of interest today. The life lines of residents today are entangled with networks of dormant infrastructure. Two examples, shown above, follow fragments of fallow rail lines throughout the peripheral region of Gary. One is taken from the ground, observing the palimpsest qualities of the networks; another from the air, observing the context of the networks within the post - industrial landscape.

APPENDIX:

ALLIES of THOUGHT

002

009

Misrach, Richard, Kate Orff, and Richard Misrach. 2012. Petrochemical America. New York: Aperture.

The introduction to Petrochemical America - and the corresponding sections of Cancer Alley and the Ecological Atlas - discusses the visual language of the publication and the intentionality of design decisions.

The diagrams of the publication can be separated into three distinct techniques of narrative: Maps, Data Narrative, Synthesis. Each portrait of a Cancer Alley environment in Louisiana embodies a temporal scale, dynamic process, and a plural narrative for contamination, impact and culture. What are the ethical implications of drawing, photographing, researching, and writing on ugly narratives through beautiful mediums? It is clear from both contributors that they find beauty in the foregrounding research and representations of the findings. “[...] to frame these [petrochemical] issues and make them legible by bridging art. research. and action.” (Orff 115) “Maps [Orientation] as a layering of spatial data, geographical characteristics. and community narratives. Data Narratives [Analysis] to decode the image by analyzing and revealing associated industrial or ecological processes. Eco-Portraits [synthesis] as synthetic moments where a series of data points and observations converge into an overall ecology or process view,” (Orff 117)

Pierre Belanger, “Landscape as Infrastructure,” Landscape Journal, vol. 28, no. 1 (2009): 79-95, book.

Belanger investigates post-industrial infrastructures by introducing urban ecologies as a source of growing consumption, bio-industries as a focus on the agrarian sector, and waste economies as the punctuation in the material loop of industry and production (Belanger 86-89).

Belanger concludes his argument by noting the societal shift away from previous schools of thought about contamination and environmentalism, and commends the move towards the mutually interdependent economy of production and environmental ecology (Belanger 90). By amplifying the biophysical relationships of post-industrial urban ecologies, Belanger positions landscape as a critical instrument in understanding its capacity for service and nourishment.

“Underlying this legacy is a major network of post-war infrastructures—airports, harbours, roads, sewers, bridges, dikes, dams, power corridors, terminais, treatment plants—that is now suffering major decay from lack of repair and maintenance.” (ASCE 2008, Infrastructure Canada 2007-2008. Choate and Walter 1983).

“Ecologies are constructed: there exists a complex biophysical system {hydrology, geology, biomass, climate) that preconditions modes of production that are inextricably bound to urban systems (populations, markets).” (Belanger, 90).

“Put simply, the urban-regional landscape should be conceived as infrastructure.” (Belanger, 91).

Corner, James. “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention.” in Denis Cosgrove [ed], Mappings, Reaktion Books, London, 1999, p.231 - 252

In this series of thoughts and provocations, James Corner situates mapping as a dynamic, generative, and critical element of understanding our environments. Corner claims that mapping is not holding a mirror to perceived reality, but a cultural project to re-engage and re-envision the world. The danger of practicing mapping is that many people will simply draw what is known and “trace” their realities, instead of allowing the maps to fold realities over and over again. This piece is an integral safeguard for this project - the maps must never represent was is equal in reality, but what is yet to come in imagined realties.

“Maps present only one version of the earth’s surface, an eidetic fiction constructed from factual observation.” (Corner 215).

“The ‘alleged competence’ of the tracing effectively dominates the exploratory inventiveness integral to acts of mapping.” (Corner 216).

“But more than this, the function of maps is not to depict but to enable, to precipitate a set of effects in time. Thus, mappings do not represent geographies or ideas; rather they effect their actualization.” (Corner 225)

Smout Allen, Liquid Kingdom, 2015, London, UK.

Liquid Kingdoms is a series of speculative landscape and architectural “proving grounds” along the Isle of Sheppey coastline to bridge the gap between climate science and the experience of the general public.

Through a contemporary understanding of cartography, Smout and Allen re-employ the map as a positive, cultural service to reimagine environments and the interrelation of time.

“Installations are placed on a giant ‘Dymaxion Map’, created by architect and polymath Buckminster Fuller in 1954 to critique the accepted representation of the earth. By removing visual hierarchies from the presentation of the globe, the map reveals countries as one unified landmass in an ocean; encouraging an alternative view of the world and global social relations.” (Smout Allen, 2015).

“The projects exhibited on it explore how cartography opens up new ways of seeing complexity in the world and engenders multiple design possibilities.” (Smout Allen, 2015).

Gissen, David. “The Architectural Reconstruction of Geography,” in Coupling: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism, ed. Infranet Lab and Lateral Office (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), 42-45.

David Gissen asks architects to adopt geographical theory in order to bring material and representational revolutions to the discipline.

Through the experiment of geography as architecture, geography has a “meta-role” to articulate and distribute authorship within an intellectual territory. Surficial maps indicate physical realities - hard political borders, river location, etc. - but compelling maps draw the speculating thoughts and anticipations.

“We can see this [ shift ] in various contemporary works that advance the territory of maps over plans, the flow of matter over subjects, and the concept of environment over that of space-time.” (Gissen, 42) “Significantly, the entire connective tissue of the geographical within architecture is the redesign of “environment.” Geographically oriented work is not simply anti-spatial; environment is spatial and temporal, but relations between space and time are beholden to the constituent features of the environment. In turn, these redesigned environments create new forms and ideas about the geographical.” (Gissen 44).

Amélie Labourdette, Empire of Dust, 2017, Paris, France.

Amélie Labourdette, through the medium of photography, captures a landscape of longing after years of embezzlement and fraud has left infrastructure projects in Southern Italy “incomplete.” Labourdette challenges embedded nostalgia and collective memory for spaces and infrastructures that were never a service to urban environments, yet still creep into a state of ruin.

“Concrete skeletons of major projects remained pending, of unfinished buildings, recurring patterns of our time affected by socio-economic upheavals, become also, because of their incompleteness, interstitial spaces of indeterminacy, conducive to a photographic quest, exploring the possibilities of a singular reinvestment of the world: they are proving to be, spaces and indefinite forms that have, due to their incompleteness, a «becoming-other» that the design of the initial project had dedicated them.” (Labourdette, 2017).

“The moment of capture stretches until become an ethereal period, creating a sense of unreality: the static light, the lack of shadows realize a shift in temporal stratification of the landscape that contains preludes the past, evidence of this, and stigma of the future.”

(Labourdette, 2017).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

010

“Abandoned Railroad Remnants in Indiana and Illinois.” Abandoned Railroad Remnants. GMF Train Videos, September 8, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=e9bG7z-XqAQ. Amélie Labourdette, Empire of Dust, 2017, Paris, France.

Antonelli, Paola. The Neri Oxman Material Ecology Catalogue. New York, New York ; London: The Museum of Modern Art, Artbook · DAP: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2020.

Pierre Belanger, “Landscape as Infrastructure,” Landscape Journal, vol. 28, no. 1 (2009): 79-95, book.

Berger, Alan. 2007. Drosscape: wasting land in urban America. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Berger, Alan. 2002. Reclaiming the American West. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Cole, Teju, and Siri Hustvedt. 2017. Teju Cole blind spot. London: Faber & Faber.

Corner, James. “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention.” in Denis Cosgrove [ed], Mappings, Reaktion Books, London, 1999, p.231 - 252 Cosgrove, Denis. “Introduction: Mapping Meaning,” Mappings (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), 1-23.

Daskalakis, Georgia, Charles Waldheim, and Jason Young. 2001. Stalking Detroit.

Barcelona: ACTAR. Desimini, Jill, Charles Waldheim, and Mohsen Mostafavi. 2016. Cartographic grounds: projecting the landscape imaginary.

Desimini, Jill, Daniel D’Oca, and Julia Czerniak. 2019. From fallow: 100 ideas for abandoned urban landscapes.

Eva Castro, Alfredo Ramirez, Eduardo Rico, Douglas Spencer, “Introduction: Landscape Urbanism and the Dialectics of Praxis,” and Douglas Spencer, “Towards a Transdisciplinary Practice: AALU,” Critical Territories: From Academia to Praxis (Milano: List Lab, 2013), 5-13, 14- 33.

“EPA List of Superfund Sites in Indiana.” EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, 2020. https://www.epa.gov/superfund.

Glass Web Projects, L. L. C. (2019, February 21). Indiana coal ash map. Hoosier Environmental Council. Retrieved November 11, 2021, from https://www.hecweb.org/ issues/environmental-health-justice/coal-ash/indiana-coal-ash-map/.

Gissen, David. “The Architectural Reconstruction of Geography,” in Coupling: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism, ed. Infranet Lab and Lateral Office (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), 42-45.

Glass Web Projects, L. L. C. (2019, February 21). Environmental Justice in Lake County. Hoosier Environmental Council. Retrieved November 11, 2021, from https:// www.hecweb.org/issues/environmental-health-justice/environmental-justice/ environmental-justice-lake-county/ Glass Web Projects, L. L. C. (2019, February 21). US Steel 2017 Spill. Hoosier Environmental Council. Retrieved November 11, 2021, from https://www.hecweb.org/ issues/water-wilderness/water-protection/us-steel-2017-spill/ HBS Baker Library. “Gary Works Photograph Album.” Harvard Business School, Baker Library Bloomberg Center. President & Fellows of Harvard College, 2020. https://www.library.hbs.edu/us-steel/exhibition/gary-works-photograph-album.

Hutton, Jane Elizabeth. Material Culture Assembling and Disassembling Landscapes. Landscript 5. Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 2017.

Hutton, Jane Elizabeth, Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of Material Movements.

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.

Latour, Bruno. “Why Political Ecology Has to Let Go of Nature” (pp. 9-52) and “Summary of the Argument (for Readers in a Hurry…)” (pp. 231-236), in Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Lippard, Lucy R. 2014. Undermining: a Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West.

Mathur, Anuradha, and Dilip da Cunha. 2001. Mississippi floods: designing a shifting landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Masoud, Fadi, Brent D. Ryan, and Fadi Masoud. 2021. Terra-sorta-firma: reclaiming the littoral gradient.

Misrach, Richard, Kate Orff, and Richard Misrach. 2012. Petrochemical America. New York: Aperture.

Mohsen Mostafavi, “Why Ecological Urbanism? Why Now?” Harvard Design Magazine, no. 32, vol. 1 (Spring/Summer 2010): 1-12.

Pete, Joseph S. “U.S. Steel Industry Has Lost 48,000 Jobs since 2000.” United Steel Workers USW 1066, August 18, 2016. https://www.usw1066.org/singlepost/2016/08/18/us-steel-industry-has-lost-48000-jobs-since-2000.

Reed, Chris; Lister, Nina-Marie. 2014. Projective Ecologies. Actar.

Smout Allen, Liquid Kingdom, 2015, London, UK. Spicer, S. (2019, July). Maps and Photos - Aetna Powder/Explosives Company.

Steve’s Website. Retrieved November 11, 2021, from http://spicerweb.org/Miller/ MillerHistory/AetnaPowderCo-Maps.aspx.

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Tsing, Anna L., Jennifer Deger, Alder Keleman Saxena, and Feifei Zhou. Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene, Redwood City: Stanford University Press 2021, http://doi.org/10.21627/2020fa “United States Steel Corporation (X) Stock Price & News.” Google Finance.

Google, 2021.

“United States Steel - Gary Works (1971).” Youtube. britishpathe, April 13, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcLeGhTNFc4.

Wall, Ed, and Tim Waterman. 2018. Landscape and agency: critical essays.

QUESTIONS & CURIOSITIES

011

GEOGRAPHIES How does one define / draw the boundary of the “Rust Belt” ?

Which characteristics or conditions mark the edge of this geo-politcal region?

How do we visualize the global economies that are tethered to the Rust Belt?

How does one represent material in the economies of this project?

Where are the visual hierarchies in cartography that need to break for this project?

How have previous cartographies promoted systemic racism, exclusion,

and displacement?

Who will learn from the speculative maps of the Rust Belt?

Where are the obstacles to accessibility or legibility?

ECOLOGIES How do the infrastructures in decay impact the local urban ecologies today?

What are the waste economies generated from post-industrial landscapes?

Who are the non-human actors in this post-industrial landscape?

How do non-human actors respond to conditions of contamination / danger?

Who are stewards over their environments?

Who are the non-human stewards who care for their environments?

What are distinguishing inputs of climate justice vs. environmental justice?

Who draws history?

Who generates, collects, or surveys these sites?

Who edits, updates, or vetoes collected information of these sites?

post - SCRIPT

012

[ text to be included following the formal discussion on december 14 ]

[

Thank you to Chris Reed and the entire

Ecologies cohort for endless generosity and encouragement this semester.

]