The concentration of human populations in dense settlements, from small towns, to cities, to metropolitan and post-metropolitan formations and diffuse agglomeration zones, lies at the core of the urbanization process. But these high concentrations of people, economic activities, capital, structures, and infrastructures that characterize urban life are impossible to be sustained without a much more geographically extensive web of landscapes of primary production, circulation and waste disposal that form the other side of the urbanization process. In fact, cities due to their high densities, cover no more that 3% of the planetary terrain, while these “other” landscapes that support these high densities, activate more than 70% of the earth’s land surface. In the context of accelerated environmental crises and transition planning efforts, addressing these indirect consequences of urbanization (e.g. pollution, environmental degradation, or biodiversity loss) on more than city, more-than-human landscapes is conditioning the planning of future urban and infrastructural developments. This contribution aims to interrogate the condition of urban density in this broader perspective, illustrating how the densification of human populations in cities, constructs more-than-human densification patterns across more-than-city environments. Specifically, we situate our investigation in the Dutch context and its more-than-city environments. We explore how, in this respect, densification can be conceived as a broader characteristic of the urbanization process, not just the city. Industrial agricultural systems pack plants together in extreme densities, as do large scale Confined Animal Feeding Operations with livestock. We use this framework to examine the country’s long history of agricultural modernization, intensification, and crises, highlighting the convoluted interdependencies between more-than-city landscapes and dense cities. Through historical, conceptual and cartographic exploration, this contribution aims to help reveal the mirror image of urban densities, extending the scope of the conference’s theme of the dense city to include the dense more-than city in planning history.@en

In recent decades, the field of urban studies has neglected the question of the hinterland: the city's complex, changing relations to the diverse noncity landscapes that support urban life. Neil Brenner and Nikos Katsikis argue that this ‘hinterland question’ remains essential, but must also be radically reimagined under contemporary conditions.@en

Wildfires are widely viewed as key evolving inputs of Mediterranean ecosystem. But anthropogenic climate changes and other socioecological recessions have transformed normal wildfire into megafire. The paradigm shift is needed since the suppression capacity has been increasingly overcome from the fire department. This research is aiming to integrate diverse landscape dynamics and fire regimes, to interpret the interactions between them and identify a series of heterogeneous fire typologies in the Mediterranean region in order to support the application of landscape-based approaches. By classifying the land system dynamics into meteorologic, physiographic, biological and anthropogenic indicators (in relation with wildfire ignition and propagation), geographic information system based approaches and statistic analysis are applied to create diagnostic mappings. The results establish 10 types of landscape-based fire typologies which can be used as the decision support tool to prioritize risk mechanism and then lead to mitigate wildfire risk by changing contextual territorial elements in landscape system in order to create an integral long time territorial design.

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This issue of Footprint explores specific spatialities and materialities found across those operational landscapes of primary production that constitute the metabolic basis of urbanisation. To the extent that these landscapes are increasingly automated and digitised, production and circulation practices are becoming more capital intensive and even less labour-intensive. While amplifying the precarity of human labour, this process relies on appropriating the work of more-than-human assemblages of machines, plants, animals and microorganisms. Central to the focus of this issue is understanding the way these processes are grounded in specific architectural and landscape configurations. In this way, we also aim to complement the debates on past issues of Footprint, offering an investigation of the impact of technological transformations beyond the concentrated landscapes of human inhabitation.@en

Contemporary conceptualizations of the urban condition emphasize the specific geographies, dynamics and consequences of city-building processes, whether in specific regional contexts or as a national, continental or global aggregation. The urban is conceived with reference to the conditions, morphologies and transformations of the city, a specific type of human settlement or techno-infrastructure that is contrasted to other, putatively non-urban spaces. Prior to the 1970s, the field of urban studies devoted extensive attention to the role of non-city landscapes in the urbanization process. The major contemporary counterpoints to this hegemonic, city-centric approach to urban studies are associated with various streams of urban ecological thought.@en

How can the geographical organization of the planet be conceived beyond the spatial dimension? Can zoning, a familiar planning tool for shaping cities, be a relevant device for organizing the non-city landscapes that support urban life? What kind of zoning would that be?@en

The Mississippi River Basin is a vast near-planar surface, an area upon which sunlight falls and wind flows. Its gently banked geomorphology channels precipitation, sediment, biota, and human activity into a dynamic locus of regional Earth system interactions. This paper describes the major features of this region’s energy exchanges from a thermodynamic Earth systems perspective. This analysis is combined with descriptions of the historical and socio-political contexts that have helped shape energy use. In doing so, the paper contrasts the region’s available energy exchanges and flows with their anthropogenic diversion, providing an account of human impact at a regional scale. It also offers theoretical estimates of the potential availabilities of renewable energy. This is contrasted with a description of the geological formation of stocks of fossil energy in the region. On these bases, a number of maps are presented and an assessment of the region’s energy flows is offered. These exercises point to significant affordances for achieving regional de-fossilisation at the river basin scale.

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In recent decades, the field of urban studies has neglected the question of the hinterland: the city's complex, changing relations to the diverse noncity landscapes that support urban life. Neil Brenner and Nikos Katsikis of the Urban Theory Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Design argue that this ‘hinterland question’ remains essential, but must also be radically reimagined under contemporary conditions.

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Urbanization organizes the planetary terrain—not just through cities and agglomeration zones, but also through the totality of diffused production areas and global commodity chains. On the basis of a metageographical analysis, urbanist Nikos Katsikis portrays the extensive transformation of the planetary terrain through the assembly of operational landscapes into a functional “Hinterglobe."@en

This essay aims to challenge the definition of the Horizontal Metropolis. It starts with an understanding of urbanization as a process of generalized geographical organization, where variegated forms of agglomerations (from the city to the metropolis and the various forms of post-metropolitan urbanization patterns) are only the focal points in the utilization of the whole earth by humans. The essay will try to investigate how the global system of agglomerations, although occupying no more than 5% of the planetary terrain, is responsible for the (re)organization of most of the 70% of the earth’s surface currently used by humankind. By introducing the concept of the ‘operational landscapes’, as the total system of specialized areas used for primary production, circulation and waste disposal, upon which dense agglomerations, or ‘agglomeration landscapes’, are dependent for their subsistence, the aim of this contribution is to reframe the dimensions of contemporary urbanization beyond agglomeration, and explore novel concepts, spatial categories and cartographies. Where does the horizontal metropolis end?@en

The hypothesis of seeking to understand the city by examining the criteria of hierarchy and regularity of its urban infrastructures and transformations may help us to a different understanding of the decisions leading to the construction of the present-day city. Manhattan’s development is based on the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, the second centenary of which was marked by a research project. The precision of layout, the judicious definition of avenues and streets, and the geometry of the city blocks are still interesting and thought-provoking@en