#urbantheory — Public Fediverse posts

can we think of venice as a sentient ruin — not dead matter, but a third landscape where water, stone, tourism, memory and climate interweave?
what does it mean to inhabit a ruin that is still alive?
when does preservation become anticipation?
are we witnessing decay — or transition?

below, two vedute by canaletto and bellotto, but stripped of people, boats, and movement (modified with AI).

#venice #ruins #anthropocene #slowsublime #psychogeography #urbantheory #architecture #thirdlandscape

"The mid-twentieth-century dream that #LosAngeles is America’s Eden, celebrated by Reyner Banham as he tooled around its freeways, has been superseded by the dark reality envisioned by Mike Davis, who foretold with uncanny accuracy what the other side of paradise would be like."

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/03/13/eden-on-fire-los-angeles-martin-filler/
https://archive.ph/PVJpm
#CaliforniaWildfires #LAwildfires #LAfires #CaliforniaFires #California #urbanism #UrbanTheory #FireEcology #ecocide #LA #cities

MEP webinar with journalist/scholar Dennis Broe

#LosAngeles is Burning

"[I]n the spirit of Mike Davis, Broe will take us deep into #LA's geology, #ecology, neoliberal politics, and the sedimented #inequalities of class and race."

description: https://marxedproject.org/event/la-is-burning-with-dennis-broe/

replay: https://youtu.be/O4oHeJboBXw
#LAwildfires #CaliforniaWildfires #LAfires #CaliforniaFires #FireEcology #ecocide #urbanism #UrbanTheory #politicalTheory #socialEcology #inequality #cities

"The loss of more than 90 per cent of #SouthernCalifornia’s agricultural buffer zone is the principal if seldom mentioned reason #wildfires increasingly incinerate such spectacular swathes of luxury real estate. [...] what makes us most vulnerable is the abruptness of what is called the ‘wildland-urban interface’, where real estate collides with #FireEcology." - #MikeDavis

#California Burns (2007)

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n22/mike-davis/california-burns
#CaliforniaFires #LAFires #ecocide #ecology #urbanism #UrbanTheory

"From the mixed pine and oak forest in the Klamath Mountains to the Mojave Desert, Sierra Foothills, there is not an inch of California that is not now part of this conflagration and it's true throughout the American West of course"

2 great interviews from 2018 & 2021 on KPFK with the late Angeleno essayist #MikeDavis about #urbanism, "#FireEcology," colonial capitalism & #ecocide in #California

https://player.fm/series/kpfk-beneath-the-surface-2605305/beneath-the-surface-sunday-january-12-2025
#CaliforniaFires #ForestFires #ecology #UrbanTheory #LosAngeles

Hi, I'm an #urban researcher interested in how #comparative approaches can reshape the ways we understand #place, #urbantheory & theory-making. This led me to study art spaces & #biennials in cities like #Beijing #Berlin #Dakar #Taipei. I also find #urbanChina research a perennial curiosity in terms of its relationship to exceptionalism & urban canon. Currently reading #crueloptimism, thinking about #everydaycrisis & employed at Dept of #Geography, University of #Zurich.
@geography #introduction

#helloworld

I am associate professor at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. My work sits at the intersection of #urbantheory, #criticalgeography and #planninghistory. I'm interested in the history of spatial struggles around the #commons and the nexus of urban processes and political economy more generally.

I just published Against the Commons: A Radical History of Urban Planning (U. Minnesota Press, 2022 - https://bit.ly/3EITzMh).

Links to some of my publications:
https://bit.ly/3EeWBGK