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Terra Forma Speculative Mapping: Paris Watershed and Underground Environment
Full text linkThis visual essay discusses an object-map of Paris basin soil and subsoil, commissioned for the Element Terre exhibition within the Architecture and Landscape Biennial 2022 (Versailles, France). To create this map, we contacted actors and researchers whose work is related to soil: earth scientists, materials specialists, and human habitat specialists. Using a model from the book Terra Forma: A Book of Speculative Maps, we designed a specific reference system, the ‘soil’ model, to map entities, movements and conflicts in the underground environment(s). The resulting map aims to reveal what is going on beneath our feet, what is hidden from view, to go beyond representations that are limited to the surface
Comprehensive Survey and Heritage Value Evaluation of Weiyuan Settlement Remains on China’s Jianghan Plain
Full text linkThe Jianghan Plain in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River was covered mainly by the ancient Yunmeng Marsh for an extended period. Many primitive residential forms related to water, such as Ganlan (elevated sheds), Haopai (wormwood rafts), and Weiyuan (circular embankments), emerged as early humans developed this vast region. They used Ganlan to settle at the lake edges, Haopai to explore deeper waters, and eventually mastered Weiyuan construction techniques. They discovered that building Weiyuan embankments could permanently secure parts of the swamp, leading to the creation of early Weiyuan settlements. Over millennia, Weiyuan evolved from water conservancy structures in prehistoric settlements into complex residential units during the Ming and Qing dynasties. These units formed water conservancy commonwealths, developing into micro-hydraulic societies. Recent urbanisation has severely damaged Weiyuan, posing a risk of complete disappearance, necessitating urgent surveys and protection. The vast Jianghan Plain makes it challenging to discover Weiyuan remains. This study employed machine vision to identify 210 villages (towns) with potential Weiyuan remains. After comparing them with historical maps, 136 Weiyuan settlement samples were selected and classified into 4 grades (A, B, C, and D) based on their integrity. Field investigations identified six towns and seven villages with well-conserved Weiyuan remains. Specific measures for protecting and optimising contemporary Jianghan Plain villages and towns centred on “Yuan” are proposed
Building Tokyo by the Sea: Visions, strategies and projects on the edge of the water 1950-2020
Full text linkSince the time it became the new de-facto capital of Japan with the name of Edo in early XVII century, modern Tokyo has kept a special relationship with its waterfronts and on several occasions the expansion of the city has been pursued by looking at the sea as potential new habitat for growth and development. At the dawn of 20th Century, and especially in the aftermath of the end of the Pacific War, bold architectural ideas and city planning schemes were proposed and enacted to convey a phase of unprecedented economic resurgence and urban sprawl articulated by an impressive process of infrastructure build-up and industrial modernization. Looking at the different stages of city development in the 70 years from 1950 to 2020s, the paper will shed light on several aspects of the process of urban development of the waterfronts of Tokyo during this period. It will provide a critical account of the transformation of the city and the various innovative visions, ideas and projects from the initial stage of economic boom of the 1960s and 1980s, to the end of the “Bubble” in the 1990s, and the phase of relative decline at the start of the New Millennium, until the current new phase of urban regeneration and new wave of large-scale urban development projects driven by new national ambitions in the context of the competition with other East Asian megacities
From the City to the Shopping Mall and Back Again:: Design and Control in the Memphis Mid-America Pedestrian Mall
Full text linkVictor Gruen viewed the shopping centre as a perfected form of the city, one which brought together commercial, civic, and social activities without the undesirable aspects of the downtown central business district. The privately owned shopping centre offered an alternative to congestion and scarce parking, its highly regulated spaces omitted panhandlers, protestors and unruly youth. In response to the loss of business effected by suburban shopping malls, cities across America transformed their downtowns by installing pedestrian malls that closed streets to vehicular traffic and instead provided landscaping, fountains, and benches to create a more pleasant shopping environment. While the urban designers of pedestrian malls often cite historic European cities as their dominant influence, this paper investigates the extent to which their design and regulation was in fact shaped by the suburban shopping mall itself. Examining the Memphis Mid-America Mall designed by Gassner, Nathan and Browne and constructed in the mid-1970s, I reveal how the city sought to impose the spatial order, aesthetic regulation, and behavioural restrictions first developed in the shopping mall on the urban pedestrian mall in an attempt to curtail the freedoms associated with public space in favour of the restrictions of what legal scholars describe as quasi- or pseudo-public space
Milano and the role of parks in shaping its recent urban development
Full text linkIn the last decades, Milano has reinvented itself from industrial city to advanced tertiary global capital, more attentive to sustainable development, with a progressive change in the role and nature of planning tools and a controversial redefinition of the balance between public and private sectors in determining urban development through regeneration projects. Parks have a crucial role in this process, and landscape design has increased its importance in urban transformation projects, on the edge between fashionable greenification and the progressive affirmation of an ecological approach that interprets the landscape as a primary and structuring element of the urban and metropolitan sustainable development. A decisive milestone in this planning history, the project “Nine Parks for Milano”, envisaged in 1995 the launch of a broad strategy to restructure the city shape, starting from the configuration of nine urban parks. Moving from a historical overview on park-making in the city, the paper investigates some of the projects that were directly or indirectly generated by the “Nine Parks” vision, discussing planning tools, negotiation processes, design actions, and effective results, reflecting on the combined role of urban and landscape design and planning in shaping more sustainable and resilient metropolitan systems
Bridging the logistics divide with service inclusion for socially sustainable urban logistics services
Full text linkThe rise of e-commerce over the last decade has increased the pressure on urban logistics and highlighted important sustainability challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this trend and underscored the need to address social sustainability challenges with e-commerce. In particular, the pandemic drew attention to the uneven access to home deliveries and the importance of having a logistic system that is aligned with the principles underlying society and sustainable development goals. The purpose of this paper is to identify urban logistics services that emerged in response to access limitations linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to analyse how these services can enhance inclusivity and fair access to goods. We adopt an exploratory and qualitative research design based on a deductive content analysis approach. This method aims to systematize, objectively analyse, and draw assumptions from secondary evidence and semi-structured interviews with key actors. We identified several urban logistics innovations that spanned organizational, transportation modal shift, informational and technological approaches to face existing restrictions. The findings indicate a deficiency in inclusivity and equitable access to logistics innovations, prompting ad-hoc organization by citizens and private initiatives in response to the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic. We introduced the concept of logistics divide to analyse the inequalities on who benefits from logistics innovations. This divide is a consequence of the uneven ability of different consumer segments to get access to those services either due to digital mastery, geographical barriers, legal barriers, or to economic reasons. The findings also showed that urban logistics actors have started to innovate to increase access to goods after the pandemic disclosed this logistics divide. In essence, this paper shows the importance of integrating transport and logistics research with transformative service research to decrease the logistics divide and achieve more equitable urban logistics
Cyborg-Technology Relations
Full text linkWe advocate for a philosophizing of cyborg-technology relations that takes account disabled technology users. First, we sketch out how tech-driven ableism (“technoableism”) is present in most discourse about technology, and then address how ableism has shaped accounts of disability in philosophy more broadly too. We examine this in historical and media context, then turn to what an unapologetic disability-forward approach to cyborg-technology relations looks like, and what it means to listen to the cyborgs we know and love. This work draws from the interdisciplinary field of disability studies and STS work on crip technoscience. We situate this work mostly within North American media and history of disability and Silicon Valley boosterism on tech, but accounts of technology and of disability are not unique to these locations
Adaptation to Flooding in St. Augustine, USA
Full text linkWhile sea level rise is usually considered as a problem that will be faced in the future, the cumulative effect of decades of slowly rising water levels have meant that many low-lying communities around the planet are already experiencing an increased frequency in tidal flooding. This includes many communities in the United States, such as the city of St. Augustine, in Florida, which has also been devastated by several hurricanes in the early 21st century. The process of how communities will adapt or relocate is notably complicated, and in the present work the authors outline an improved framework that can help to explain the process which individuals undergo as a consequence of individual stressors caused by climate change. Particularly, the feelings of individuals has so far not been studied in detail, and the authors thus conducted a qualitative analysis of the adaptation response by interviewing 20 individuals in two different neighborhoods of St. Augustine, focusing on how “eco-anxiety” might influence them. The results suggest that adaptation countermeasures have been implemented at the city, and sometimes individual level, though community-level strategies have so far been lagging. While short-term adaptation strategies to flooding might be adequate even if individuals are not aware -or deny- long-term climate change, it is unclear whether long-term adaptation by such retroactive approaches might lead to maladaptation practices. 
Near Real-time Flood Risk Modelling in Response to Increasing Uncertainties in Flood Predictions: Insights from the Kakhovka Dam Breach in Ukraine
Full text linkIn the face of increasing uncertainties and the expected rise in flood events worldwide, this technical note presents an innovative approach for enhancing rapid response capabilities, exemplified during the Kakhovka Dam breach in Ukraine. Utilizing the Tygron Model, our methodology combines open-source data with high performance computing for swift hydrodynamic simulations—a departure from traditional flood risk management techniques. Central to this approach is the strategic use of social media to gather crowd-sourced feedback during the emergency, enhancing the precision and relevance of flood risk information.
During the Kakhovka Dam event, our model processed extensive datasets, enabling effective predictions of flood impacts, including extents, velocities, depths, and arrival times. The near real-time modeling capability allowed for dynamic updates using social media inputs, which were of value for emergency responders to optimize response strategies for relief coordination.
While the underlying technology is used for flood simulations, its application in emergency response is novel and promising for more adequate disaster response coordination. However, further research and applications are necessary to refine the approach that can ensure real-time flood risk information during a emergency situations
System-Phenomenology: The empirical case for collectives in mediation theory
Full text linkPostphenomenology and mediation theory strongly explain the micro-level interactions between human individuals and objects. Recently, humans as a collective have been added to the theory at the political macro-level, which we argue that is an important contribution. However, the enlargement of the theory would also merit a meso-level explanation of the role of collectives, in between the micro- and the macro-level. For this purpose, we introduce the mediation triangle, illustrating three bidirectional relations, all mediated by technology: human-object, human-collective, and collective-object. The mediation triangle we combine with three borrowed concepts from systems philosophy to aid in our framework design: differentiality, emergence, and irreducibility. This approach, named system-phenomenology, can explain the interaction between objects, individuals, collectives, political levels, and technology. We illustrate this using an empirical case of boarding and deboarding at train stations. We conclude that system-phenomenology is promising, but further research is needed to develop this theory conceptually