Urban Theory Lab

05/20/2021

How can we map the urbanization of the planet? This exhibition explores this question through a series of experimental visualizations of the worldwide urban fabric. Twelve globes serve as “data-spheres” that depict the urban world on the basis of important indicators related to the spatial imprint of cities, the geographies of their supply zones and the logistics networks that connect cities to one another and to diverse regional hinterlands. Reversing the mainstream, city-centric metageography of urbanization, the data-spheres reveal the importance of operational landscapes beyond the city (zones of agriculture, extraction, forestry and fishing), as well as planetary logistical infrastructures, that directly support urban life.

From this point of view, the world of contemporary urbanization encompasses much of the planet, including apparently remote areas, wildlands and oceans. Cities are not only producers of value, but entropic black holes that consume surpluses produced elsewhere. Non-city spaces are, correspondingly, the metabolic bases of planetary urbanization.

These visual speculations are offered as an exploration of the analytical and imaginative work that can be done with geospatial data. By illustrating how radically divergent cartographies of an urbanized planet can be constructed on the basis of different indicators, the data-spheres interrupt the authoritative, scientific “aura” that often pervades geospatial information. Rather than offering a photographic, objective “capture” of ground-conditions, the data-spheres invite viewers to question their own cognitive maps of contemporary urbanization, and to imagine new urban worlds that might more fully embody our collective aspirations.

Urban Theory Lab
Grga Bašić, Neil Brenner, Mariano Gomez-Luque, Daniel Ibañez, Nikos Katsikis, Adam Vosburgh, with Clay Lin and Wenjia Zhang

Exhibited at the 2021 La Biennale di Venezia

22.05 - 21.11 2021

10/02/2018

Energetics of urbanization: final Harvard Graduate School of Design student projects from Spring '18 research practicum co-taught with Kiel Moe now posted on UTL website:
http://www.urbantheorylab.net/projects/energetics-of-urbanization/

05/03/2018

Urban Theory Lab Spring 2018 research practicum, "The energetics of urbanization": end of semester workshop. Thanks to Kiel Moe for a fabulous collaboration and much respect to our amazing students for their hard work this term.

02/14/2018

New Geographies 09 / POSTHUMAN now published--a fascinating, systematic and beautifully designed volume edited by UTL doctoral students Mariano Gomez-Luque and Ghazal Jafari: Much respect!

Based at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Urban Theory Lab is a research team concerned to rethink the basic categories, methods and cartographies of urban theory in order to better understand and influence emergent forms of planetary urbanization.

11/11/2017

My very crowded history/theory of urban interventions classroom this past week @ Harvard Graduate School of Design: I wish we could be allocated a space in which all students can see the slides and are not improvising seating each week.

09/19/2017

UTL researcher + architect Daniel Ibañez at the Boston Design Biennial: "Ways of Wood":

Based at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Urban Theory Lab is a research team concerned to rethink the basic categories, methods and cartographies of urban theory in order to better understand and influence emergent forms of planetary urbanization.

09/15/2017

New article by Martín Arboleda: “La naturaleza como modo de existencia del capital,” published in Anthropologica:

Based at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Urban Theory Lab is a research team concerned to rethink the basic categories, methods and cartographies of urban theory in order to better understand and influence emergent forms of planetary urbanization.

08/16/2017

Bravo to David Wachsmuth and team--crisp summary of an empirically complex and theoretically ambitious investigation. Respect!

07/13/2017

Neil Brenner / "Debating planetary urbanization: towards an engaged pluralism" / UTL working paper / Summer 2017

Based at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Urban Theory Lab is a research team concerned to rethink the basic categories, methods and cartographies of urban theory in order to better understand and influence emergent forms of planetary urbanization.

02/19/2017

Critical urban theory and the politics of scale / Spanish translation of texts by Neil Brenner / Many thanks to editor Álvaro Sevilla Buitrago

Based at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Urban Theory Lab is a research team concerned to rethink the basic categories, methods and cartographies of urban theory in order to better understand and influence emergent forms of planetary urbanization.

02/18/2017

Stato, Spazio, Urbanizzazione sulla Rivista Geografica Italiana

Sito di segnalazioni bibliografiche e di recensioni a saggi di interesse geografico a cura della Rivista Geografica Italiana