Urbanisation processes are unfolding far beyond the realm of agglomerations, profoundly transforming agrarian areas, rain forests, deserts and oceans. Inextricably bound to the earth’s ecologies, these developments are causing manifold planetary crises which require urgent scrutiny and call for new conceptions and cartographies of the urban beyond-the-city.
Through detailed analysis and fieldwork captured in text, photographs and hand-drawn maps, the book portrays the effects of extended urbanisation in eight world regions. It offers a redefinition of the very notions of the “city”, “urban” and “urbanisation” and outlines new urban agendas developed to address planetary challenges.
This book decenters the perspective on the urban, foregrounds urban struggle, and transcends rural-urban and north-south divides.
| Title | Extended Urbanisation. Tracing Planetary Struggles |
| Authors | Nithin Bathla, Elisa T. Bertuzzo, Rodrigo Castriota, Nancy Couling, Alice Hertzog, Nikos Katsikis, Metaxia Markaki, Christian Schmid, AbdouMaliq Simone, Milica Topalović, Kit Ping Wong |
| Editors | Christian Schmid and Milica Topalović |
| Graphic Design | Goda Budvytytė, with assistance from Bernardo Rodrigues |
| Cartography | Philippe Rekacewicz, with assistance from Ece Emanetoglu, Aikaterini Katsuoli, and Jan Zimmermann |
| Publishers | Birkhäuser, 2023 |
| Meta | English Paperback 24 × 17 cm, 408 pages ISBN: 978-3-0356-2297-3 |
Migrant Journeys is a web documentation of the West African urban corridor – one of the fastest growing mega regions in the world. Along the Gulf of Guinea, spanning one thousand kilometres from Lagos in Nigeria to Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, passing though the Beninese cities of Porto Novo and Cotonou, the Togolese capital Lomé and the Ghanaian capital Accra, a number of urban areas are growing together to form a
remarkable polycentric corridor. Along the corridor people are on the move for all kinds of reasons. Some could be labeled refugees, economic migrants, seasonal workers or international students. But migrants are never just economic migrants or asylum seekers, rather their lives and trajectories are often a combination of both.
Four national borders cut across the Lagos-Abidjan
corridor, dividing the territory between five nations. In this context
national borders, drawn up by colonial powers, do not necessarily define
who is foreign or a stranger within a given community. Ethnic groups,
kinship groups and linguistic groups are spread over these lines. They
enable a form of continuity along the corridor, maintaining connections
across national borders.
“Migrant Journeys” draws on the research undertaken by Alice Hertzog in the context of her doctoral thesis “The Lagos-Abidjan Corridor - Migration Driven Urbanisation in West Africa” defended in 2020, supervised by Christian Schmid,
Pius Krütli and Armelle Choplin at the ETH Zürich, in partnership with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) Global Programme for
Migration and Development.
| Lead Researcher | Alice Hertzog |
| Support provided by | Global Programme of Migration and Development, SDC and Transdisciplinarity Lab, ETH Zürich |
The countryside is a term that deserves to be troubled. By using the tools of world-ecology, it is possible to understand non-urban land as profoundly implicated in multiple urban projects and spatial fixes. Examining Yanomami territory in what is currently northern Brazil and southern Venezuela demonstrates the complex politics of late capitalism that make and unmake this frontier as countryside.
Raj Patel, Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, will discuss the Yanomami territory and expound the concept of countryside,
followed by a discussion with Christian Schmid and Debjani Bhattacharyya.
| Location | ETH Zürich D-ARCH Architecture of Territory, Assoc. Prof. Milica Topalović https://ethz.zoom.us/j/65584019673 |
| Date | 28th February 2022, 16.00-18.00 |
| Speaker and Respondants | Raj Patel with Christian Schmid and Debjani Bhattacharyya. |
| Published in | Urban Studies 55/1 , pp. 19-52 |
| Authors | Christian Schmid, Ozan Karaman, Naomi Hanakata, Pascal Kallenberger, Lindsay Sawyer, Monika Streule, Anne Kockelkiorn, Kit Ping Wong |
| Year | 2018 |
Throughout history, cities have functioned as centres of political and economic power, from which the agricultural and resource-rich hinterlands were controlled. From the nineteenth century onward, new technologies, transportation modes and the opening of trade have introduced a remarkable complexity to the relationship between cities and territories. Today, it is often thought that cities rely decreasingly on surrounding territories for supply and subsistence. Instead, they seem emancipated from the constraints of geography, operating in a global web of dependencies. By contrast, the research presented in this book is based on a hypothesis that an understanding of the city-territory relationship, the ability to conceptualize it in qualitative terms, and to influence it by means of planning and design strategies, is central in addressing urban sustainability.
| Title | HINTERLAND – Singapore, Johor, Riau. A Studio Report |
| Authors | Milica Topalovic, Martin Knüsel, Marcel Jäggi, Ahmed Belkhodja, Desiree Damport, Pascal Deschenaux, Martin Garcia, Giulia Luraschi, Livio de Maria, Lino Moser, Magnus Nickl, Saskja Odermatt, Gabriela Schär, Stephanie Schenk, Caroline Schillinger, Karl Wruck, Simon Zemp |
| Edited by | Milica Topalovic, Martin Knüsel, Marcel Jäggi, Stefanie Krautzig |
| Publisher | Architecture of Territory, 2013 |
| Meta | English Hardcover, 21 × 27 cm, 788 pages ISBN 978-3-906031-37-8 |
