Critical urban theory in the Anthropocene

Critical urban thinkers often imagine urbanisation and the Anthropocene as inevitably being companion processes. But is planetary urbanisation the necessary telos and spatial limit of life in the Anthropocene? Is urban resilience the final form of urban responses to climate change? Will (or should) the urban (as either spatial form or process) survive the upending impacts of climate change or adaptation? Or, if the Anthropocene is a time of deep environmental and epistemological upheaval without historical precedent, might even more recently created spatial concepts of the planetary urban condition themselves soon be out of date? This article raises these questions for urban scholars via critical engagement with a proposal to retire Miami – considered climate change ‘ground zero’ in the US and doomed by rising seas – and repurpose it as fill for ‘The Islands of South Florida’: a self-sufficient territory of artificial high-rises delinked from global infrastructural networks. This vision of an ‘urbicidal Anthropocene’, the article argues, suggests that the injunction subtending planetary urbanisation work – to relentlessly question inherited spatial frameworks – has not been taken far enough. Still needed is Anthropocene critical urban theory, to consider urban forms and processes emerging via climate change and adaptation, but also how such mutations may point beyond the theoretical and spatial bounds of the contemporary urban condition itself.

Platform Urbanization and the Impact on Urban Transformation and Citizenship

Many of the defining characteristics of the urban are shifting to virtual platforms. This process imbues all dimensions of urban life, from governance to politics and participation. During the global pandemic and the lockdown in many countries, this shift has gathered speed and is changing the way we communicate and work, challenging the everyday life of our cities. As a result, we are confronted with a new topology of negotiation, participation, governance, and control in a virtual realm. With that, rights and duties of citizens are also being transformed, which creates a new dynamic that needs to be captured to ensure an alternative way to perform and enable citizenship. What we refer to as “platform urbanization” is a planetary phenomenon that needs to be investigated as a new driving force in the transformation of the urban condition and in terms of the impact it has on citizenship and the way cities are produced.

Some assembly required : an architectural systems approach to future requirements

This thesis examines how a building can respond to changes in user needs. Specifically, the research component of this publication seeks to understand how and why buildings change, using primarily a typomorphological based approach to the urban condition. Research methods used in this thesis include literature reviews, case studies, and design experimentation. The design portion of this thesis responds by taking a systems approach to architecture that can be used to deal with user issues of program and form over time. The design proposal utilizes a prefabricated system that is comprised of 5 main elements. Combined, these elements produce multiple design opportunities that allow for future changes through the standardization of fabrication and construction techniques. The system is designed for future modifications through modular structure and elements. This allows for the addition, replacement, and upgrade of rooms, floors, walls, or entire buildings as its user needs change.

Some assembly required : an architectural systems approach to future requirements

This thesis examines how a building can respond to changes in user needs. Specifically, the research component of this publication seeks to understand how and why buildings change, using primarily a typomorphological based approach to the urban condition. Research methods used in this thesis include literature reviews, case studies, and design experimentation. The design portion of this thesis responds by taking a systems approach to architecture that can be used to deal with user issues of program and form over time. The design proposal utilizes a prefabricated system that is comprised of 5 main elements. Combined, these elements produce multiple design opportunities that allow for future changes through the standardization of fabrication and construction techniques. The system is designed for future modifications through modular structure and elements. This allows for the addition, replacement, and upgrade of rooms, floors, walls, or entire buildings as its user needs change.

Study of Different Carbon Bond 6 (CB6) Mechanisms by Using a Concentration Sensitivity Analysis

Since the year 2010, different versions of the Carbon Bond 6 (CB6) mechanism have been developed, to accurately estimate the contribution to the air pollution by the chemistry. However, the discrepancies in simulation results brought about by the modifications between different versions of the CB6 mechanism are still not fully understood. Therefore, in the present study, we investigated the behavior of three different CB6 mechanisms (CB6r1, CB6r2 and CB6r3) in simulating ozone (O3), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and formaldehyde (HCHO) under an urban condition, by applying a concentration sensitivity analysis in a box model. The results show that when the surface emission is excluded, the O3 level predicted by CB6r1 is approximately 6 % and 8 % higher than that predicted by CB6r2 and CB6r3, specifically due to the change in the sink of CXO3 in the mechanism. In contrast, the levels of NOx and HCHO estimated by these three CB6 mechanisms are mostly similar, when the surface emission is turned off. After adding the surface emission, the simulated profiles of O3, NOx and HCHO obtained by CB6r2 and CB6r3 are similar. However, the deviation between the O3 levels provided by CB6r1 and the other two CB6 mechanisms (i.e. CB6r2 and CB6r3) is enlarged, because of the weakening of the ozone dependence on the emission of isoprene in CB6r1. Moreover, HCHO predicted by CB6r1 is found larger than that predicted by CB6r2 and CB6r3, which is caused by an enhanced dependence of HCHO on the emission of isoprene in CB6r1. Regarding to NOx, it was found that CB6r1 gives a higher value during the daytime and a lower value during the nighttime than the other two mechanisms, which is caused by the relatively stronger connection between the NOx prediction and the local chemistry in CB6r1, so that more NOx is consumed and converted to PANX (peroxyacyl nitrate with three and higher carbons) in the nighttime and more NOx is reformed by the photolysis of PANX in the daytime.

Hong Kong on display: Things, time and urban space

Despite, and due to, its culture of consuming ‘the new’, Hong Kong contains an expansive second-hand world that encourages preoccupation with the past through pre-owned ‘things’ and related practices of displaying and collecting. This article takes on a visual approach to understanding (fragments of) Hong Kong’s urban condition by considering its second-hand world. Following an established tradition of revaluing second-hand objects (economically and otherwise), the sites where these objects are temporarily ‘exhibited’ form stages for the emergence of stories about the city, through practices of exchanging, collecting and displaying. Focusing on a selection of these objects, displayed in particular locations, an attempt is made at understanding the significance of their persistence in Hong Kong.

New directions in the theorisation of temporary urbanisms: Adaptability, activation and trajectory

This article rethinks processes and practices of urban temporariness in a more agile, localised and context-specific way, where rhythms and dynamics of the everyday are clearly acknowledged. It discusses the directions of research required to theorise ‘temporary urbanisms’. To do so, three overlapping literatures are used: Lefebvrian conceptualisations of rhythms and the everyday; evolutionary analyses of path of change and path creation; and geographies of architecture. This article recognises that although temporariness is (evidently) a universal urban condition, diverse discursive and practical dynamics exist directing urban temporariness along particular channels and shaping space significantly while impacting people’s living environments.