Towards a new website

Towards a new website

My sincere apologies for not having posted anything since 2015. But as I announced 3 years ago, I've been very busy and finally have fallen into certain dose of exhaustion. But I am back on track.
So, Urban Lab Global Cities will no longer be hosted by blogger. This blog is clinically dead! I will keep it open a few while but will let blogger to close it.
I will be launching a new website. For now, I just posted its beta version . Tons of details are slowing me down but the link will provide the information you need to know about this new object of obsession. The blog (via wordpress) is online but, with patience and enthusiasm, the full website will be online very soon (still learning codes).
Farewell Blogger!

Some thoughts on a submission on Resource territories and climate change

My sincere apologies for not having been productive over these months but I was particularly busy.
This following text is notes and ideas for a text that I submitted (finally rejected), days ago, for an American journal of architecture on correlation between side effects of resource territories and the pressing question of climatic changing contexts in the context of architecture. What interested me was not so much the relation of climate and resource extraction. With a strong evidence, this issue of toxic emissions strongly contributes to change the biosphere's climatic and geological conditions. One of the central themes of my text was the emphasis placed on the objects generated by spatial and material destruction for extractive and processing purposes. What type of objects are they? And why do they matter? These objects are derelict, abandoned buildings, crumbling infrastructure, put it simply ruins. These very discrete material traces cannot capture our attention but are as toxic as the emission of contaminants, pollution and toxic waste that extractive and processing activities generate.
An abandoned well tested by researchers of the Princeton University, the Allegheny National Forest. Photo credit The Princeton University. Originally appeared on PhysdotOrg. 
I focused my submission on the transformation of Russian Arctic Circle's space during the Soviet era while I admit that I am not a specialist of this region (even of Russia). I view the Soviet era (in particular the Stalinist era in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s) as a good example of the limit and contradictions of the production of space for economical and technical purposes, in particular in extreme environments. For these notes on this text, however, I'll be expanding on the entire resource territory, at the scale of the planet. Some examples: the Niger Delta, Sumgayit (Azerbaijan), parts of United States (Pennsylvania, for instance), parts of France (mining regions) to name a few. A very vast geography of resource production-related ruins at the scale of the planet.
An abandoned, unplugged well near the Allegheny National Forest | Photo courtesy Scott Detrow/State Impact Pennsylvania. Originally appeared on State Impact, 2012
With regard to resource territories, as a technological space, we usually look at these spatial products, these platforms, tanks, storages, pipelines in activity. This, however, is a mistake to neglect those obsolete, crumbling infrastructures, those broken buildings, abandoned wells, destroyed pipelines due to lack of maintenance, to sabotage or as targets in warzones (we all know pipeline is a favorite target in war zones) since they provide us information of (1) the type, force, time, scale, and rhythm of spatial destruction related to the production of resource territories; (2) the lack of quality or, to put it simply, the obsolescence of many infrastructure as a legacy the 19th and 20th centuries; (3) as a result, they, simply, pollute soils, water and air affecting both environment and population.
Discharge from an abandoned well killed an acre of vegetation in Oneida County. Originally appeared on Tom Wilber's blog
The intention of my submission was not to deliver positive messages in the form of architectural scenarios to remediate these challenging issues. Neither was my intention — in the worse case — to formulate negative messages that would blame architecture for its contribution to the accelerating climate change. This submission situates within the following problematic: What can architecture do with the déjà-là ? Indeed it poses the question of the negative  déjà-là , these ruins that expand their territory into far beyond their location and beyond this, the role and position of design practices in creating these spatial products with lack of quality standards in such particular sites as extreme environments — the desert, the Amazon, the Arctic, the Ocean —, conflict-pattern regions, or primarily sparsely populated regions (villages or small-scaled human settlements) over the late 19th and the 20th centuries.
Abandoned Pipeline, near The Headland, Hartlepool, Great Britain | Photo courtesy Alison Rawson
According to Alison Rawson, "There are several of these rail topped pipelines heading out to sea. Once part of the now abandoned Steetley Magnesite Works."
Originally appeared on Geograph
With evidence these ruins pollute the territory they are shaping, the places where they have been erected in. But they also pollute the scale of the biosphere through the emission of toxic elements or oil and gas leakages. Most of these resource production-related infrastructures were built at a time when companies and governments did not take into consideration quality standards and, worse, side effects on both humans and nonhumans. In surveying these crumbling infrastructures, broken and collapsing buildings and factories, I attempted to look into the (in)direct correlation between the resource territories-related infrastructural space and climate change. It indeed is commonly admitted a direct correlation between resource extraction and climate change throughout emission of greenhouse gas, methane, sulfur dioxide, arsenic, oil leakage, and other negative by-products.
Abandoned pipeline in Tarraleah Power Station, Wellington, Australia | Photo courtesy Simon Cullen/ABC. Originally appeared on ABC
Yet what about those derelict infrastructures and buildings that are abandoned after mining and drilling operation shut down? My research led to state that the very political importance of these ruins has been neglected over decades certainly in order for capitalism not to confess its non-interest in detrimental impacts of this technological zone on space and bodies. Let me borrow this concept from Timothy Morton, wicked problem which strongly illustrates these ruins. A wicked problem , Timothy Morton writes, means "a problem that one can understand perfectly, but for which there is no rational solution. A super wicked problem , he continues, is "a wicked problem for which time is runni

Resource Territories and The Russian Far North: An Introduction

Land acquisition in remote areas: the case of Baku

This recent article written by The Guardian's critic of architecture Oliver Wainwright about Zaha Hadid's Baku Prize winner for the  Heydar Aliyev Center  raises a range of questions and concerns from land acquisition by dispossession for extractive operations, pipeline corridors, urban development, to the ethical stance of architecture. The aim of this text does not concern the Heydar Aliyev Center itself which, in my view, is a beautiful building, very Zaha-Hadid signature. I, however, will retain one but very essential question: land acquisition by dispossession. This issue of land acquisition by dispossession along with displacement and proletarianization of the very population that live in peripheral, remote locations is at core of the formation of frontier zones. Below is some hints, or short reflections on this practice.
Land acquisition by dispossession poses the question of the place and status of the body, those who live in these areas and are, consequently, affected by oil activities. Along with affected local residents is the question of land at issue illustrated by dispute, protests, sabotage or compromises as well as deterritorialization, reterritorialization in these exclusive territories. What I propose below is some glances from my ongoing research on urbanism, infrastructural design related to resource extraction — part of Contingency , the first volume of Uncertain Territories  —, more precisely on operationalized landscapes with this question in mind: what design opportunities for such peripheral regions? What can architecture do to tackle these complexities?
Re-Rigging. 2010 | © Lateral Office/Infranet Lab
Image originally appeared on Fei-Ling Tseng's website
" The government has pursued a programme of illegal expropriation and forced eviction across the city, without proper compensation of its residents ," Oliver Wainwright writes. On May 10, 2013, it has been reported that more than 3.641 apartments and private properties have been demolished in the center of Baku, a zone named as 'zone of illegal demolition .'
Shocking though this can be, land acquisition by dispossession, along with displacement and proletarianization of local populations, is a common practice in extractive regions. Extractive activities demand huge amounts of land for extraction, production and distribution of oil via the pipelines and other transportation networks.
Allow me for engaging in a more technical analysis of land acquisition before going any further. In her recent book  Subtraction ,  Keller Easterling has proposed this term 'subtraction' to explain the act of building removal. Land acquisition by dispossession can be associated with 'subtraction' as shown in regions affected by conflicts as well as in frontier zones. To limit the discussion to the frontier zones of resource extraction, this practice of subtraction consists in scraping buildings in order to acquire lands for, mostly, operationalization and reorganization of landscapes for corporate profits. In our case, this practice of land acquisition by dispossession provides a large amount of lands available for oil activities in which local residents are disallowed to live or cultivate. To facilitate such practice, the 'Resettlement Action Plan' has been implemented in order to compensate to the affected local landowners for the construction of pipeline corridors. If many landowners have received compensation, some complained to have lost their land by force or live near the pipelines.  James Marriott  and  Mika Minio-Paluello  have met many residents who have lost their lands accusing local authorities and multinational operators for having illegally purchased or forced people to sell their lands with no compensation despite the 'Resettlement Action Plan'. In some cases, corruption and lack of transparency can be a deep problem in frontier zones. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is an example among many others. Its function is to link three countries Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey to allow for the circulation and distribution of oil to terminals. A report notes that the construction of the BTC pipeline has affected about 4,100 households in Azerbaijan, about 1,800 in Georgia. In Turkey, approximately 296 villages and 13,000 parcels have been affected by the pipeline corridor (Starr and Cornell, 2005).
The 'Resettlement Action Plan' has been developed to cope with the population of these three countries affected by the construction of the BTC pipeline. The principle is to purchase or lease parcels of land for the project. In many cases, as have been said, tenants and land users have received a three-year compensation for the loss of their land. Yet, in some cases, local inhabitants living in Baku, Tbilisi, Ceyhan and along the pipeline share with the authors of  The Oil Road  the same statement of having been evicted from their land.
Another but significant factor is these enclaves are marked by poverty and unemployment. In the case of Azerbaijan, 42% of the population is below the poverty line. Moreover, labor protests increased with workers employed at the construction of the BTC pipeline, to continue with this example (but examples of poor labor conditions in oil regions are numerous), who have complained of being mistreated in terms of working conditions, inadequate housing and medical treatment (Mitchell, 2013).
As Marriott  and Minio-Paluello  show, the BTC pipeline is a fascinating example in terms of transparency and corporate social responsibility (CRS) (Barry, 2013, Marriott and Minio-Paluello, 2014). Allow me for a short moment to define this corporate social responsibility so that we will more easily attest its importance in frontier zones. A corporate social responsibility is an interesting tool for oil governance actors and institutions insofar as it allows to compensate and pacify affected communities and to scale up any concerns — environmental, countries, financial — related to oil production (Bridge and Le Billon, 2013). It is broadly employed everywhere a zone is constituted for exclusive operations.
Re-Rigging. 2010 | © Lateral Office/InfraNet Lab
"Project for a multifunctional offshore oil platform in the Caspian Sea. Can we learn from the Caspian Sea's non-human occupants to extend the momentum of oil operations into the post-oil future?"-  Maya Przybylski
Image originally appeared on e-flux
The construction of pipeline corridors should be considered in terms of their environmental and social impacts, more specifically, how these pipeline corridors affect local populations and environment. The small village of Qarabork, 187 kilometers along the pipeline from Sangachal Terminal is an example. Marriott and Minio-Paluello state "along the pipeline's route through Azerbaijan and Georgia, there were only two places w

Fulcrum #93 Transformations

My apology for this long absence. With these recent busy weeks, I, shamefully, have not been able to find a moment to share my research.
I recently wrote a short piece for the 93rd issue of the excellent little publication Fulcrum edited by the very prolific Jack Self (co-editor of  Real Estates: Life without Debt  with Shumi Bose ). Neither will I discuss this short piece. Nor will I post an abstract as you can download it on Fulcrum . I let you read it and that of Oscar Johanson Battersea Recuperated  that composed this Fulcrum #93 Transformations .
I, however, will merely share the books that helped me write this essay.
I have been engaged for a long while in a very long research on what is related to operational landscapes, precisely negative impacts marked by the extent of the industrialization and the urbanization of the Earth: wasted landscapes, toxic materials, pollution, resource extraction, and so on. There is a long list of books that can help the architect, landscape architect, planner as well as the historian of architecture, the critic, the editor, the curator and the theorist to pave her way for a better understanding of and developing new methods and techniques to apprehend these landscapes .
This shorter essay was an opportunity to explore, albeit rapidly, one of my great interests, namely Levi Bryant 's account of machine. A very complex concept that, in contrast with that of object, allows for more precision to what things are doing and how things interact . Two books, as precious help, are The Democracy of Objects  and Onto-Cartography. I include Levi Bryant 's blog Larval Subjects in which you can find loads of texts that illustrate his research and interests from onto-ecology, science to ethics. Bryant 's account of machine helps me to build an understanding of toxic materials' characteristics, their timescale, how toxic materials, as nonhuman beings, interact with other beings, humans including. Should we learn to live with them? Or would we be able to recalibrate these toxic landscapes? Two questions that will dominate this new era.
With a strong evidence, Timothy Morton 's hyperobject reinforces my study of Levi Bryant' s machine. His three books Ecology without Nature , The Ecological Thought and Hyperobject are three important guidances. Not to mention other books such as Stacy Alaimo 's Bodily Natures , Jane Bennett 's Vibrant Matter , Lateral Office 's Coupling , and The Petropolis of Tomorrow edited by Neeraj Bhatia and Mary Casper . The Petropolis of Tomorrow , for example, includes two series of photographs, namely, on the one hand those of filmmaker Peter Mettler 's Petropolis , or aerial pictures of the Alberta Tar Sands and, and on the other, those of Photographer Garth Lenz 's The True Cost of Oil , again aerial photographs of the Alberta Tar Sands, have guided our steps in our research.
This energy we can find in the field of philosophy, in particular ecological philosophy, ontology or onto-ecology, but also the field of science, provides new trajectories and perspectives for the ecological theory and design. I'm working on two large-scaled research. The first one, as you know, is Uncertain Territories ' first volume titled Contingency programmed for 2015. The second one is a series of events in the form of conversations part of Uncertain Territories that will be exploring consequences of operational landscapes and the role of ecological and infrastructural design in problem-forming these shifting environments. This includes wasted landscapes, resource extractive territories, extreme territories, ocean-turn. Consequently, these authors, mentioned above, are, in my view, of great importance to mobilize the production of knowledge we need to gain in understanding of this ecological turn.
I hope you will like this short piece.