Volume 29 thematic agenda
Volume 29
thematic agenda
territory, n the result of projection of labour - energy and information - by a community into a given space territoriality, n the ensemble of relations that a society maintains with exteriority and alterity for the satisfaction of its needs, toward the end of attaining the grreatrest possible autonomy compatible with the resources of the system reality, n 1. that which exists independently of human consciousness, i.e. objectively 2. that which is objective as perceived and, therefore, understood, ascribed meaning, represented, by an individual or collective consciousness, i.e. subjectively
Volume 29
thematic agenda
Traditional categories of spatiality are dying. Or rather, their inadequacies are rendering them obsolete and call for a restructuring of the framework of our worldview. The “unfixed” and the “foreverchanging”, the relationship between the “never-ending” and the “finite”, the “intertwined” and the “all-encompassing”, the “non-existence of the autonomous” and the “multi-scalarity”; all qualities of the nature of spatiality and, at the same time, constructions of our understanding of it, give rise to new conceptual tools. In keeping with the latest advances in our disciplines’ discourse, and building upon last year’s theme of “Action/Reaction:exploring challenges in practice”, we are now shifting our focus to the “object”. The object, though, is understood not as a “thing”;, but rather as a “field”: the area where actions and actors come together in a unity and, in essence, is created by and through that unity. An abstract and absolute space is constructed and transformed through activities, actions and practices that give it shape, content and meaning into a “territory”. Is this “;real” or “imaginary”, small or big? Does it conform with pre-existing conceptual and concrete borders? Do they pertain solely to human activities or to the untamable natural forces? Or both? These questions are, of course, relative. The important issue is that we are talking about the kind of processes that form the very notion which guides us in our understanding, approach and intervention. Hence the word: TERRITOR(E)ALITIES. This year, Atlantis | Magazine for Urbanism and Landscape Architecture will try to explore the concept of spatiality, focusing on the network of processes that give rise to places: what actions and which network of them makes a piece of land, however small or big, appear and act (or, at least, according to our view of it) as one. Territories are understood as spaces that are conceptually constructed by an agglomeration of practices (or, even, a single dominating action) and, in effect, become concrete and real. We will be zooming-in and zooming out, we will be isolating and unifying, all for an investigation of the content and meaning of Urbanism and Landscape Architecture in the 21st century and beyond.
Volume 29
thematic agenda
Issue 29.1 “Geographies of Labour” to territorialize is to exert a set of acts of (relative) violence upon a portion of space, making it perform according to specific cultural demands; in other words, to ‘construct’ As the “crystallization of artificial geography merging with natural geography” (Katsikis, 2014), territorialization is to be understood as a contextual projection of labour; contextual in that it is defined by a historically given space and a historically given form of social (re-)production, and a projection of labour in that it involves the manifestation of the deployment of “energy and information” (Raffestin, 2012), as well as people. This metaphor begs us to consider territorialization in terms of its effects, its ‘hows’ and ‘whys’: what emerges as important is the outcome or, rather, that territorialization be approached as an outcome itself; in other words, to apprach space in terms of ‘fields’ (Allen, 1985). The field produces ‘geographies of subjects’, able to be traced to ‘behavioural units’, that is, abstractions of territoriality. A shift from ‘object’ to ‘subject’ and, therefore, from the ‘itself’ to the ‘for itself’ (Hegel, 2015) is needed so as to uncover the internal logics at play within the act of territorialization. In this sense, what emerges is the individual and the collective ‘body’ and the actions it undergoes in relation to the land and to each other. Raffestin (2012) posits that “territorialities are characterized by specific functions that inscribe themselves in constructed territories”. The imperative words here are ‘function’ and ‘construction’. The particulaties of space and the particularities of function are embedded in the constructed territories: ‘embodied labour’, that is, the conscious and goal-oriented work that was carried out, and ‘deployed labour’, that is, the way cultural functions operate, are two sides of territorialization. In Issue 29.1, “Atlantis | Magazine for Urbanism And Landscape Architecture” will seek to explore the geographical manifestations of the act of constructing territories and the various ways in which territories and their respective territorializations perform.
Volume 29
thematic agenda
Issue 29.2 “Contested Domains” to territorialize is to (attempt to) ascertain sovereignty over the space required by a system of cultural (re-)production
Satisfying the necessary conditions of existence is a multi-faceted procedure, operating on multiple levels of abstraction, multiple faces of activity and multiple degrees of scale. Pertaining to the physical domains, authority over the resources needed for continued survival engenders political projects that both engrave themselves in the construction of physical space, as well as in the construcution of territorial narratives. Pertaining to the immaterial domains, authority operates under its attempt at self-realization: it is the process of establishing dominion as such, bringing forward imaginary and material political actions that affirm or reject supremacy and/or power. However, not all political actions are situated within the obvious, the official, the established or the mainstream borders of culture. Gated communities, slums, underground cultures, opressed and under-represented behaviours and identities, informal appropriations are all examples of processes that both challenge established territories together with being challenged by them, all the while operating within them. An outcast is, nevertheless, as much a statement as any, both from the point of view of the action of ‘casting aside’ and from the point of view of ‘being cast aside’. Societal shifts are viewed as proposing structural changes. In Issue 29.2, “Atlantis | Magazine for Urbanism and Landscape Architecture” will seek to explore the multitude of narratives and actions underway inside established territories and the geographies they engender; in other words, the ‘territories within’.
Volume 29
thematic agenda
3. Challenged Realms to territorialize is to respond to forces originating from exteriority and alterity, seeking to undermine autonomy and to substitute, replace and/or displace an existing order Artificially constructed and maintained relations are constantly faced with risk. The very act of managing the conditions of existence depends largely on establishing the notion of selfhood and independency. Surfacing by their contradictions, these concepts are defined through what they are not: the other and the outside are the borders that limit and, thus, define the self and the inside. The act implied and inferred here is one of ‘responding’. Responding, however, can take on a series of meanings and call forth a corresponding series of actions. ‘Protection from’, ‘adaptation to’, ‘resisting to’, ‘integration’, ‘subsumption’ and ‘elimination’ are just a set of possible scenarios or response. A traditional understanding of the border, however, proves inadequate in the face of a forever-changing world. It is not a line per se, able to be erased and redrawn easily, but a zone of effects and affected. A catalogue of potentially challenging zones of effects and affected realms would prove to be inexhaustible. Climate change, processes of ethnogenesis (literally and figuratively in regard to any identity, hence, in more senses than pure ethnicity) and political and social emancipation, resource depletion, cultural colonization are all phenomena that posit themselves at the forefront of shifting boundaries of existing territorialities. By enforcing and/or imposing new territorializations they present themselves as imminent and emminent causes and forms of response. In Issue 29.3, “Atlantis | Magazine for Urbanism and Landscape Architecture” will seek to explore geographies of challenge, their corresponding territorialities and territorializations and the shifts they bring forth to existing spatial organizations.
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thematic agenda
4. Emerging Appropriations to territorialize is to transgress the (perceived as) fixed in light of new possibilities, hypotheses, demands and desires
“What is still contemporary in the past processes of rationalization?” (Renzoni, 2017). The contemporaneity of the past and its relevance for the present and the future is always under question. The fluidity and flexibility associated with modern worldviews and evidenced by extreme and radical shifts and techonology, labour and economy put our etsablished modes of territorialization and their respective territories under scutiny. The new relations that technological advancements, changes in production, logistics and mobility, new economic patterns and altered forms of labour bring forward are accompanied by the need for new territorial narratives and formations. Raffestin (2012) understands that “Our current society inherited constructed territories that lag behind the satisfaction of the contemporary needs that must be satisfied within territorial frameworks. These frameworks are, in part, maladapted and, consequently, in need of accommodation – that is, transformation”. The emergence of new territorialities in need of new territories requires a “reshuffling or abandonment of certain (territorial) ‘constructs’ to permit the insertion of other activities linked to new or transformed relations. (…) Two processes come together: deterritorialization and reterritorialization. For there will be two possibilities: either there is a space immediately available or territory is recycled, creating landscape to meet demand.” (Raffestin, 2012). Under this line of thought, the geographical project becomes an evaluation of the possibility that territories and territorializations be metabolized. In Issue 29.4, “Atlantis | Magazine for Urbanism and Landscape Architecture” will seek to explore the geographies of new modalities of living and their effects on the appropriation and organization of territories.
Volume 29
Publication Schedule
Issue 29.1 Submission Deadline: 04/10/2018 Issue 29.2 Submission Deadline: 06/12/2018 Issue 29.3 Submission Deadline: 07/03/2018 Issue 29.4 Submission Deadline: 02/05/2018
thematic agenda
Volume 29
thematic agenda
References
Allen, S. (1985). Points + Lines. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press. Hegel, G. W. (2015). Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Science of Logic. (G. d. Giovanni, Ed., & G. d. Giovanni, Trans.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Katsikis, N. (2014, April). On the Geographical Organization of World Urbanization. MONU(20). Raffestin, C. (2012). Space, Territory, and territoriality. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30(1), 121-141. doi:10.1068/d21311 Renzoni, C. (2017). Water and asphalt. The Project of Isotropy in the metropolitan Region of Venice. (M. Hebbert, Ed.) Planning Perspectives, 32(2), 302-303. Vigano, P., Secchi, B., & Fabian, L. (Eds.). (2016). Water and Asphalt: The Project of Isotropy. Zurich: Park Books.