Planetary Cities: Fluid Rock Foundations of Civilization

Abstract

Whereas recent framings of planetary urbanization stress the planet-scaled impacts of contemporary urban processes, we might also conceive of cities as being constitutively ‘planetary’ from their very outset. This article looks at two ways in which the earliest urban centres or ‘civilizations’ on the floodplains of the Fertile Crescent harnessed the deep, geological forces of the Earth. The first is the tapping and channelling of sedimentary processes, central to what Wittfogel referred to as hydraulic civilizations (1963). The second is the use of high-heat technologies to smelt and forge metals, which can be construed as a capture of igneous processes. What both sets of practices have in common is that they involve skilled intervention in fluid-solid phase transitions between solid rock and flowing particulate matter. Viewing cities as constitutively geological or planetary in this way can help us reimagine the challenges posed to urban spaces by looming transformations in Earth systems.

Navigating Uncertainties in the Built Environment: Reevaluating Antifragile Planning in the Anthropocene through a Posthumanist Lens

“…The history of human settlements has been marked by both the exploitation and actualization of various bio-and geopowers. According to Clark [141], understanding phase transitions between different states of matter and energy in Earth processes can shed light on how dense human settlements are playing a fundamental role in such activities. Precisely by enforcing hybrid biogeomorphic processes [75], cities play a significant role in mobilizing what planetary urbanists refer to as "operational landscapes" [142], and the spatiotemporal dynamics of vast non-urban spaces that are deeply embedded in political-economic relations, land-use patterns, and overall logistics that sustain urban metabolism.…”