Cultivated Ecologies

Abstract

This thesis elaborates on a theoretical, epistemological and design research framework for the possibility of an operative synthesis of, on the one hand, climate-related risk management (primarily, flood exposure from multiple source, i.e. sea level rise and coastal/tidal flooding, fluvial flooding and pluvial flooding) and, on the other, the planning and design of operational landscapes of material production, as a means for sustainable ecological development. Contemporary practices of managing ecological, environmental and climatic risk rely heavily on a ‘mitigation’ approach, where the imperative is the restoration of a previous ‘natural’ order or the spatial planning of the next waves of development and urbanization according to the evaluation of the internal logics of natural processes. However, this line of thinking severely hinders the possibility of a creative and proactive reorganization of human processes of material production precisely because it presupposes a “nature-society rift” (Moore, 2014). Similarly, the negative externalities associated with the extensive and intensive operationalization of vast terrestrial terrains are viewed as singular phenomena to be addressed in situ and not as opportunities to fundamentally reconceptualize contemporary planetary urbanization (Brenner, 2016). The basis upon which this work is built, is that to properly address climate-related risk one has to, also, address unsustainable patterns of material production and the physical and functional organization of urbanization. Following the development of the concepts of "concentrated" and "extended urbanization" through the construction of gradients of "agglomeration" and "operational landscapes" (Brenner, 2013; Brenner and Schmid, 2014; Katsikis 2014; Katsikis 2018) and in contrast to the predominant approach of placing the emphasis on the agglomeration side of these gradients, this thesis attempts the opposite: shifting the analytical centrality from agglomerations to the operational landscapes that sustain them, we are able to formulate an urbanization hypothesis that addresses the requirements of the latter not as externalities of the former (thus hindering the capacity of the framework to be adequately socio-ecologically sustainable) but as the fundamental elements of the planning and design of the urban fabric. It is, thus, suggested that an incorporation of biophysical processes and ecosystem functions, which are central to the performance of operational landscapes, within the urbanized landscape would, at the same time, offer climate-related performance. Assuming, therefore, that this act is an act of construction of the urban landscape and, even further, it partakes in its economic activities, this work reformulates Lefebvre’s opening statement in “The Urban Revolution” (2003) as following: 'the urban has been completely operationalized', and attempts to elaborate on the coming-into-being of this reality, ‘the project of the cultivation of the urban’. As such, the objective of this thesis is to develop a framework for a design exercise that could inform a potential urban and territorial project. The design research proposal elaborated here is one that seeks to discuss the possibility that “agglomeration landscapes” become hybridized with “operational landscapes” (Katsikis, 2018). By that I mean that contemporary cities and urban regions renounce their sole correspondence with the secondary and tertiary sectors of economy and, in turn, take on the role of encompassing primary (i.e. material) production as well. In other words, this work assumes that there is a possibility that the various productive hinterlands of the planet be diffused within and throughout the urbanized landscapes that they sustain. By concurring with Moore (2014) that operational landscapes represent, essentially, the way that humanity interacts with nature, I evoke Foster (2000) to propose the possibility of retrofitting material production within the economies of agglomerations and, thus, operationalizing the urban.