Resource Extraction Urbanism II: Recasting the South American Hinterland

As current development pressures continue to transform the hinterlands at an unprecedented rate, it has become more crucial than ever for the design disciplines to actively engage and conceptualize alternative futures for decentralized geographies and unbound territories. This faculty research seminar will utilize the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) as a lens to investigate the potential role that trans-national mobility infrastructure can play as the backbone for a more integral mode of urbanization within South America’s hinterland.

This advanced research seminar will serve as a platform to investigate the physical inscriptions of the most salient resource extraction industries, and its affiliated infrastructures, which have reconfigured the South American hinterlands throughout the twentieth century and the diverse models of urbanism these industries have generated. Furthermore, the seminar will use this twentieth century overview as a point of reference in order to better understand the physical effects of the IRSA initiative throughout the South American hinterland, in order to conceptualize urbanization models that can in a more integral manner, synthesize the relationships across resource extraction, infrastructure, landscape and urbanism.