Fall 2019

Edited by Nicholas Pevzner & Stephanie Carlisle

Infrastructure is always political, and energy transitions have always been contested, pitting established players against upstart technologies and new coalitions. How can a radical reimagining of energy infrastructure create opportunities for an inclusive and participatory conversation about climate change and social justice? Who has the power to talk about infrastructure, and who gets left out?
Introduction: Power
Community Power As Provocation: Local Control For Resilience And Equity
Our Energy For Our Country
Speculative Designs For Energy Democracy
The TVA, Fuzzy Spaces Of Power, And Other Purposes
The Missouri River Basin: Water, Power, Decolonization, And Design
Power Plant Power
Arctic Present: The Case Of Teriberka
Coal Ash Wastescapes: The Byproduct Of Our Coal-Fired Power Dependency
Biomass For All: Designing An Inclusive Biomass Infrastructure
China’s Giant Transmission Grid Could Be The Key To Cutting Climate Emissions
2050 – An Energetic Odyssey: Persuasion By Collective Immersion
The Blue Lagoon: From Waste Commons To Landscape Commodity
Territory Of Extraction: The Crude North
Daylighting Conflict: Board Games As Decision-Making Tools

Popular

    Made in Australia: The Future of Australian Cities

    by Richard Weller & Julian Bolleter

    The Australian population is increasing at a rate of one person every 84 seconds. Taking population growth seriously means planning for an extra 40 million Australians by century’s end.

    Landscape Urbanism: Definitions & Trajectory

    by Christopher Gray

    Long described as an “emerging” practice, landscape urbanism—with all of its ambiguity and complexity—has in fact already emerged and represents a significant 21st century design and planning ethos.

    The Performative Ground: Rediscovering The Deep Section

    by Stephanie Carlisle and Nicholas Pevzner

    The landscape we see happens above ground, yet much of its true intelligence lies beneath the surface.

    Urban Forests as Landscape Artifacts

    by Brian Davis & Jamie Vanucchi

    The urban forest can’t pretend to be ‘natural’; it’s a construction that relies on both ecological processes as well as human ingenuity to survive. It marries the technical with the material, and expands the range of social experience and ecological resilience.

    Gold Mining Exploits and the Legacies of Johannesburg's Mining Landscapes

    by Guy Trangos & Kerry Bobbins

    An extensive network of abandoned mine shafts and tunnels exist beneath Johannesburg. Today, these spaces are lost to time, long forgotten and abandoned below the surface of the Earth.

    On Landscape, Ecology, and Other Modifiers to Urbanism

    by Charles Waldheim

    Ecological urbanism reveals the need for re-qualifying urban design while acknowledging that the discourse around landscape urbanism is entering a mature phase of its development.

    The Blue Lagoon: From Waste Commons to Landscape Commodity

    by Catherine De Almeida

    Waste legibility can be an asset shared by active power generating operations, a novel ecological community, and recreational uses. At the Blue Lagoon, the formalization of a wasteland commons created instead a high-end, privatized spa that conceals the underlying landscape and its unique conditions.

    Living with Water

    by Stephanie Carlisle

    Living With Water, is paradigm shift from a drain-pipe-pump mentality toward a system that values water as an asset.

    Building the Urban Forest

    by Stephanie Carlisle, Nicholas Pevzner & Max Piana

    The forest carries deep cultural significance. Within the urban landscape, this ecologically complex system is also understood to perform a wide range of essential ecosystem services, from increasing property values to mitigating climate change. Reforesting cities is one of the defining trends of twenty first century urbanism, but there is little agreement about how our urban forests are to be designed, planned and managed.

    Coding Flux: Redesigning the Migrating Coast

    by Fadi Masoud

    As sea levels and groundwaters rise, 20th-century planning practices no longer suffice. Innovative planning approaches that embraces dynamic water levels and changing weather patterns are sorely needed.