From Oil to Soil

Time-space speculations for ecological regeneration in operational landscapes

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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.