This workshop was convened by Vanesa Castán Broto, Olivier Coutard (LATTS, CNRS) and Stefano Soriani (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) and gathered 30 scholars to discuss 18 papers on planet boundaries through an urban and infrastructural lens.
This conference sought to contribute to reopening the academic conversation on urban environmental issues and how they are examined through an infrastructural perspective that engages with both the question of planetary boundaries and the uncertainty and discomfort caused by living in critical zones. Specifically, papers were welcomed that had an inrerest in:
- the spatial and temporal aspects of how infrastructures reshape human relationships with their surroundings and what multiple futures become possible within constraints
- historical perspectives that envision the future and futurist outlooks that engage with memory and the past.
- the multidimensional nature of planetary boundaries within and beyond climate change, investigating connections and disconnections and how they are materialized in infrastructures and the built environment.
- the relationships between infrastructures, urbanization and soils and how transforming geological relations questions life on Earth
- in the new wide range of vocabulary that has been developed to address unevenness in Infrastructure coverage and resource access, including ideas of environmental, climate and energy justice and the material politics of the Earth.
These contributions will be published as a special issue with the aim of reopening the academic conversation on urban environmental issues and how they are examined through a spatial and infrastructural perspective.