From Oil to Soil

Abstract

Extractive and productive landscapes are the backbone to contemporary
urban life. However, they are commonly overlooked by the fields of spatial
studies and practices. One amongst many, Cubatão’s petrochemical hub
reveals the systematic ecological degradation resulting from resourceintensive
commodified politics, couched in the widely diffused rhetoric
of development and progress and distinctly linked to events of the Global
North. Impending global shifts, such as the retreat of fossil fuels and the
increase in renewable energy sources, raise questions on the vulnerability of
these places and on their abilities to evolve spatially, ecologically and socially.
Through a critical review of what has been conducted so far in terms of
design, planning and policies and a reflection on the agency of Architecture,
the research speculates over new forms of space production that engages
with the complex spatial conditions and the diversity of agents on site.