July 8, 2025 • 41 mins
The ground beneath our cities is shifting—literally in coastal areas facing sea level rise, but also conceptually as we grapple with what urbanism means in an era of profound environmental, technological, and social transformation.
Stephanie Wakefield's provocative exploration of Miami as a laboratory for climate adaptation challenges us to completely rethink how we imagine urban futures. Moving beyond simplistic narratives of doom or technological salvation, she maps the competing "imaginaries" that shape Miami's development: the relatively recent framing of the city as "sea level rise ground zero" versus newer visions of Miami as a crypto-capital or tech hub. These aren't just abstract ideas but powerful frameworks that directly influence what infrastructure gets built and how resources are allocated.
For anyone interested in the future of cities, climate adaptation, or how we might begin to imagine new forms of urban life in the Anthropocene, Wakefield's analysis offers a challenging and thought-provoking perspective.
Show Notes:
- Further Reading:
- Metamorphosis of the City: On the Western Dynamic by Pierre Menot
- The Salty Urbanism: A Design Manual for Coastal Zones by Jeff Huber and Diana Mitsova
- To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book through our Amazon Affiliates page at https://amzn.to/4lkjw7G or even better, get a copy through your local bookstore!
- To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/
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Episode Transcript
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Stephanie Rouse (00:00):
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You're listening to the Bookedon Planning podcast, a project
(00:53):
of the Nebraska chapter of theAmerican Planning Association.
In each episode, we dive intohow cities function by talking
with authors on housing,transportation and everything in
between.
Join us as we get Booked onPlanning.
Welcome back, bookworms, toanother episode of Booked on
(01:15):
Planning.
In this episode, we talk withauthor Stephanie Wakefield on
her book Miami in theAnthropocene, rising Seas and
Urban Resilience.
We get into how Stephanie isusing the term Anthropocene, as
well as what an imaginary is, anew term that isn't used in
urban planning today.
Jennifer Hiatt (01:31):
This was a really interesting conversation
and, honestly, a book about aconcept that I was unfamiliar
with.
Stephanie is really pushing theboundaries of how we think
about and imagine the future ofall cities, even though the book
is focused primarily on Miami.
Stephanie Rouse (01:43):
One takeaway from our conversation was that
her book isn't intended to havea definitive answer the future
of all cities, even though thebook is focused primarily on
Miami.
One takeaway from ourconversation was that her book
isn't intended to have adefinitive answer or direction
for action, but is meant toprovoke thought on the concepts
of how we are imagining thefuture of cities like Miami that
are on the forefront of sealevel rise.
We end the conversation withthe topic she wants to see
researched further and expandedupon.
Jennifer Hiatt (02:03):
Yeah, I have to admit the fact that there was no
finality.
We were just supposed toimagine these things was a
little different for me.
So let's get into ourconversation with author
Stephanie Wakefield on her bookMiami and the Anthropocene
Rising Seas and Urban Resilience.
Stephanie Rouse (02:18):
Well, Stephanie , thank you for joining us on
Booked On Planning to talk aboutyour book Miami and the
Anthropocene, Rising Seas andUrban Resilience.
To start off, and make surewe're all on the same page with
our listeners, what do you meanwhen you use the terms
Anthropocene and imaginaries asit relates to your book?
Stephanie Wakefield (02:35):
Thank you so much for having me First of
all.
Yeah, just to start with theconcept of the Anthropocene.
So this is a term that becamevery widely used in many
different fields, startingaround, let's say, 2012, 2011,
and really picked up inpopularity over the years
subsequent to that time.
It comes from the EarthSciences.
(02:55):
It was coined by Paul Crutzen,a geologist, in 2000.
It means technically the epochof the human or the epoch of man
, let's be more specific, andit's usually used in a few
different ways.
It's used to describe massivetransformations of the earth by
man-led processes likeurbanization, different forms of
land use, things like this, andthere are kind of two different
(03:18):
ways that it's used in thesciences that I have found kind
of interesting.
There's a geological use ingeology and then sort of earth
systems science usage.
They're a little bit different,related, overlapping, but I
think it's helpful to take themapart a little bit.
In geology, the termAnthropocene is often taken up
in order to kind of lookbackwards historically and to
(03:40):
think about, like when this newepoch that we are in, you know,
the earth's new epoch when itbegan, and to go back and locate
that shifting point In Earthsystem sciences though,
interestingly, it's more aboutthe future of Earth and its
systems and thinking about howindustrial processes,
urbanization, land use, so onhave driven the Earth onto a new
(04:01):
trajectory, sort of like thisunknown new future trajectory
that we're just kind of startingto see ramp up right now.
I think those are both reallyinteresting.
In my own work, though, the waythat I use the Anthropocene was
to think about the idea that weas a civilization have entered
this sort of like new trajectory, this new epoch that both
pertains to maybe, like theearth systems the way that I
(04:22):
just described it anenvironmental question, but also
a social question, like thetransformation of culture, the
transformation of politics andof society, especially over the
last like 10 years, but I'd saylike probably like several
decades, where we're seeing thislike real, like unmooring of
the kind of like grounds thatwere, you know, previously in
the 20th century, there, to sortof like give sense to thought
(04:44):
and action, the way in whichpolitical boundaries don't
really like operate the way thatthey did a few decades ago, to
think about technologicaltransformations and so on.
So I've tried to use it in mywork to think about this moment
of like profound change andprofound transformation, in
which new thought is reallyrequired, and then to think
about how, particularly in theurban realm planners, designers
and urban thinkers how theAnthropocene is being imagined
(05:08):
and how it's being sort of likedeveloped in thought and
practice, and then how thoseimaginaries are being used as
sort of like the impetus orlegitimating ground for all
different kinds of interventionsinto urban space.
And so by talking aboutimaginaries there, I'm kind of
(05:32):
building on things about theimaginary, or imaginaries, not
as sort of like, oh, this otherrealm of like the unreal you
know it's like less real thanthe real but rather imaginaries
is something very real that arecreated across all different
forms, like discourse, mediavisualizations, images, map,
planning, documents, things likethis, that then circulate and
get reinforced throughrepetition and maybe reshaped
and remodulated through thatcirculation.
And then these imaginaries thatcome to sort of like structure,
how we think about and how weenvision the future of cities
(05:54):
and urban space.
And of course, like throughouthistory, cities have been
subject to and shaped by manydifferent kinds of imaginaries.
The Anthropocene has given riseto very specific ones, and so
what I've tried to do in thebook is map those and like where
they're coming from, how a citylike Miami, which is the focus
of the book came to be thoughtof as sea level rise ground zero
(06:18):
and like climate change groundzero, because this imaginary of
Miami is actually really new anddidn't even exist, let's say,
15 years ago.
So how now is it so commonplaceto hear people think of Miami in
this way, to imagine Miami asthe front lines of sea level
rise and a place that's in needof resiliency interventions, and
so what I do in the book is tryto trace those imaginaries,
specifically in media andacademic discourse and
(06:39):
visualizations, how those sortof fed back on one another and
then get drawn into actual urbanplanning proposals and actual
plans.
I think what's interesting is tounderstand this as an imaginary
that serves particular ends andit leads, and is taken to lead,
to very specific kinds ofinterventions in the urban form,
like resiliency infrastructure.
But it's also countered withother imaginaries, and so in the
(07:01):
book I look at this idea ofMiami as a sort of like new
crypto capital in the newSilicon Valley, as a warring
imaginary that kind of getsconstructed and that maybe
defeats the climate changeimaginary of Miami.
So it's a really interestingthing to look at how these
different imaginaries getcreated, but also how they can
fight each other and how theycan displace each other, and
things like that.
(07:21):
Another question, then, is likewell, what comes next?
You know, miami is really thislike place of the future and the
sort of this frontier ofimagination, because it's always
been shaped by imagination, andso I think what's interesting
is to explore, and maybe evencontribute to what imaginaries
still lie on the horizon for aplace like Miami.
Jennifer Hiatt (07:41):
So one of the things that kept striking me as
we were reading through the bookand all of these different
imaginaries that have beenplaced on Miami you know the
rich person's playground typething as it was first being
presented with the flyer of theguy on the elephant right or the
crypto capital or the groundzero for resiliency All of these
types of imaginaries kind ofseem to come top down to me
(08:04):
anyway.
So one of the questions youwere kind of raising, or I felt
you were raising in the book, iswho gets to imagine what kinds
of life can and will be lived inthe human epoch or in Miami.
And overall, like I said, itseems like it's a government
agency or big marketing firmsthat are kind of answering that
question for us and have in thepast, but I don't think it
necessarily has to be that way.
So how could everyday peoplestart helping to shape the
(08:26):
imaginaries of the city thatthey live in, instead of taking
this top-down force?
Stephanie Wakefield (08:31):
Yeah, I mean these are interesting
questions, and so one of thethings that I try to do in the
book, a bit provocatively, is toreally like rigorously question
the quality of imaginaries youknow that get forwarded from all
scales and all different typesof actors.
One of the things I try to do inthe book is to suspend some of
the assumptions that urbanthinking tends to rely on, and
(08:51):
one of those assumptions is asort of like built-in idea that
like good imaginaries come fromthe bottom up, right, and like
bad imaginaries come from thetop down, and it's like you have
to find one that you know rightand fight the other one.
And so I try to suspend thatassumption and even highlight it
a little bit and step back andsay like okay, where are the
actually like dynamicimaginaries if there are any
(09:11):
coming from?
And one thing that I do is sortof look at some of these more
grassroots imaginaries ofresiliency, preparedness too,
and say that they are alsolimited in their ability to
think beyond what are alreadysort of like commonplace ideas
of the human as a resilientinfrastructure in some ways.
And even actually, what I tryto highlight there is that you
(09:31):
actually see on the part of likereally large scale governmental
or corporate resiliencyplanning.
You actually see like prettytransformative thinking going on
, even if we can highlight likea lot of the limits of it.
Maybe it's very technocratic.
We can also see that it'sgeared towards this like pretty
large transformation of how wethink about cities and how how
they're designed and adapting tolike a what is imagined, at
(09:54):
least, to be like a reallyradically transformed
environment.
On the other hand, with some ofthe grassroots ones, what we
actually see is what I try toshow in the book is a loss of
that transformative dimensionand more this sort of like
dwelling in the ruins, kind oflike life should be it said in a
lot of these imaginaries, sortof like survival infrastructure
for dealing with disasters, youknow, recovering from them and
(10:16):
things like this.
And so what I think is kind ofinteresting there is to say,
okay, if we jettison thatassumption that's really baked
into so much urban thought thatbottom up is good, top down is
bad, ok, if we get rid of that,then where do we find the
interesting, compelling, dynamic, pathbreaking imaginaries?
In some ways I actually try toargue that the crypto capital of
(10:37):
the world, miami, imaginary, isitself pretty interesting and
quite novel in its own rightpretty interesting and quite
novel in its own right and thatthere's something to it that has
a power actually to think aboutMiami as a place that is worth
saving and propelling into thefuture.
It's an imaginary that doesn'tgive into this climate change
hysteria that is built into thesea level rise, ground zero
imaginary right.
(10:57):
So I try to kind of actuallyhighlight that as what I think
is a bit counterintuitive for alot of maybe like critical urban
thinkers, but to say thatthere's actually something
really compelling there.
The book's real big argument,overarching argument, is can we
untether from these baked inideologies and baked in
assumptions that are in so muchof urban thought and kind of
(11:17):
like look at the thingsthemselves as they are emerging?
Stephanie Rouse (11:21):
So in one chapter you talk about this
concept of backloop urbanization, which was a new concept for me
.
What is this and how does itimpact cities?
Stephanie Wakefield (11:31):
dominant in urban planning and design.
The idea is that essentiallyall systems, including cities,
according to resilienceecologists, go through sort of
(11:51):
like two phases of life frontloop and back loop.
The front loop is sort of thismovement from rapid growth and
rapid transformation to a sortof stability phase, like a
mature forest, let's say.
And so in the 70s this was kindof like the dominant idea of
systems and they kind ofbelieved that ecosystems stayed
in that state.
But then one of theinterventions of resilience in
complex systems thinkers was tosay well, actually systems also
(12:12):
pass through a back loop as well, and a back loop in the sinking
is the release space this timeof all the energies and the
elements that were previouslysort of captured in the
conservation stage getting setfree.
So a back loop is a time ofextreme transformation, maybe
collapse, maybe confusion, maybedestruction and renewal.
And I found this concept to bepretty useful as a heuristic
(12:33):
only in my own work for thinkingabout the time that we're
living in, because we are livingamidst so many rapid and
cascading and difficult tocomprehend transformations in
the realm of thought, thecategories that were previously
used in the 20th century tounderstand and to stabilize
being spatially in the realm ofthought, the categories that
were previously used in the 20thcentury to understand and to
stabilize, being spatially inthe realm of, let's say,
creative destruction.
Politically, you know, reallyin all domains we're seeing
(12:54):
these rapid unmoorings andmoments of chaos and confusion,
and this is not coming from likea single disaster, like a
forest fire, although that isthe example that's often used by
resilience ecologists to sortof illustrate the back loop.
This is more of like an ongoingsort of civilizational
transformation, and a back loopit's this like moment that we're
in is maybe quite long, but tome what's really interesting is
(13:15):
to think about okay, if you lookat our moment through that lens
, how does that change what yousee as the possibilities for
thought and for even design andplanning?
Or how does it change how youinterpret what's already
happening?
One of the things I suggest inthe book is that a lot of these
sort of like attempts to adaptcities through infrastructure in
the name of resilience, some ofthese are what we might
consider forms of backloopurbanization, a particular form
(13:37):
of urbanization proper to thisbackloop moment, because they
identify these rapid shifts inthe baselines for urban planning
and thought.
They identify these shifts interms of whether it's climate
change, changing post lines andchanging environmental
conditions, or, in the realm oflike, how we even conceptualize
the city.
More and more, it's thought ofthis complex adaptive system,
(13:58):
equal cybernetic system maybeand even the role of planning is
now being transformed toconform to that image of the
city and to be much more aboutthese sort of like emergent,
even living, infrastructures,and so I describe this as the
kind of backloop urbanizationthat emerges in response to a
perception of extreme change, atime of extreme change, and that
(14:18):
tries to build for a time ofextreme change.
Jennifer Hiatt (14:21):
I work in urban development and land
redevelopment and an observationyou make is that the majority
of resilience infrastructurethat's being built especially in
Miami but probably everywhereisn't necessarily actually to
save people or certain human wayof life, but actually to
stabilize the real estatemarkets and credit ratings,
which honestly kind of piercedmy heart and like you're not
(14:41):
wrong, but when you put it sobluntly it's like, oh gosh,
that's kind of awful.
How and I'm thinking more inMiami but how do we move past
thinking about stabilizing realestate markets and whether or
not we can get good creditratings and actually begin to
develop for people and community, when you're thinking about
resiliency or just in general?
Stephanie Wakefield (14:58):
Yeah, this is a great question.
I think this is a reallyinteresting topic.
So, again, like going back toimaginaries and how they get
taken up, and they're actually aterrain of, let's say, even
battle and you know strategy.
So what I try to do isunderstand and map, like, really
, what is the role of the sealevel rise imaginary in Miami
and how do different, likemunicipal actors respond to it?
(15:18):
On what real grounds?
Like, what really areresilience interventions?
What do they mean?
And again, I try to step backand take a non-ideological
perspective on this and try tosuspend some of the knee-jerk
assumptions that I think a lotof critical urban thought would
have about this and to say, okay, let's just see what it's doing
rather than just saying fromthe get-go that it's bad, right,
and just notice that it is andfirst understand it right.
It is really interesting in andof itself as a fact that
(15:40):
Moody's, like credit ratingagencies, like Moody's, have
decided that resilience buildingand mitigating climate change
risk are key indicators of agood credit rating in the first
place.
I think it's just, it's feltvery, very fascinating because
it shows the extent to which theclimate change sea level rise
imaginary has been accepted andpermeated even that sort of
(16:01):
realm of finance and likeinternational lending and
municipal bonds and all thatcredit rating.
So it's a powerful imaginary.
Even if it came fromjournalists writing in Rolling
Stone magazine and somescientists publishing some
papers and the circulationbetween them, it's now more
widespread, right.
That fact alone to me is reallyinteresting to note.
The geographer, samantha Cox,has written a lot about this,
(16:22):
about finance and resilience inMiami.
I have drawn on her work in thebook to understand this and she
kind of just shows thatbasically what's going on is
that climate risk projectionsfor a given city will be
compared with resilienceinitiatives on the part of, like
credit rating agencies,specifically infrastructure
building.
She shows that sort of like ifthere's an absence of resilience
infrastructure initiatives,this is seen as making you more
vulnerable, right to what thescience is saying is the risk.
(16:46):
So built in right there isalready like a set of accepted
assumptions about climate changerisk rate and all that by the
credit rating agencies and thenessentially, if they see a
mismatch between what the citydoes and the risk, the risks are
said to be and how they'reperceived locally and how
governments are responding tothem, so it's not just like
(17:19):
scientific articles, butactually media stories around
2014, there was this outpouringof media pieces about goodbye
Miami.
Like Miami is doomed,millennials are all moving to
Miami where they're going todrown soon.
Like these are literalheadlines that were all in a
bunch of stories.
There was just rapid firepublication of these stories in
2013, 2014.
And around that same time thenyou start to see a huge
(17:40):
investment in resiliencebuilding on the part of the city
of Miami Beach, especially roadelevations and like flood
mitigation infrastructures,miami Beach rising above
Eventually.
Later on you see in some of thereports sent by Moody's to
Miami Beach on there, the creditratings they get like a very
high grade, and part of thereport specifies these
resilience building activitiesas justification.
(18:03):
So there's this reallyinteresting circular kind of
like dynamic going on that I tryto follow in the book between
media pieces, academic discourse, literal municipal
interventions into urban space,like elevating roads several
feet and things like this, andthen you know credit ratings,
and so this is a reallyinteresting logic where the
imaginary is very powerful.
(18:23):
I think I'm not necessarily inthe book trying to say that this
is bad or good or just that itis, and I think one of the
things that's interesting is toreally be aware of this, of the
imaginary and the imagination,as a terrain of strategy, really
, and manipulation and creation,and then to think about well,
what would it mean to you know,if you want to produce better
imaginaries, if you want toproduce other futures, how do
(18:44):
you actually intervene on thatterrain?
You know, it's kind of one ofthose like understand the
battlefield kind of things inorder to fight well on it.
So I think that's like aninteresting consideration.
If the question is how do youmove past this circular dynamic
where you're just producinginfrastructure to keep the
economy going?
Could there be a higher aim forinfrastructure building?
What would the highest aim befor a city and its people to
(19:07):
think about in terms of whatinfrastructure is built, what
infrastructure is removed?
What are the higher aims beyondeconomic considerations?
And I'm not sure it's evenclear that those conversations
are happening necessarily, atleast in those terms, right, but
it would be very interesting tohave them and I think that's
where urban design and planningshould be focused.
Jennifer Hiatt (19:25):
Right, well, one of the things that just really
struck me was that you mentioneda project, and I think that's
ultimately not helping anyoneoverall, and so that was the
(19:50):
storyline that got me thinkingabout that question.
Stephanie Wakefield (19:54):
Well, yeah, that brings up another
interesting thing about Miamiand these adaptation
infrastructures, which is thatthey're talked about as like an
experimental process on thebasis of the idea that, well, a
city has never dealt with risingseas before and tried to adapt
to it in real time, and sothey're like an experiment
playing out in real time to seewhat works and what doesn't, and
(20:15):
being sort of like refined andmodulated as step by step
through trial and error, whichis interesting.
You know, this is talked aboutsort of like it's incremental
adaptation in Miami, sort oflike try it, see what happens.
I mean, this is also the logicof adaptive management from
ecology and like ecologicalmanagement, the idea of adaptive
management where you trysomething, see what works, you
(20:37):
recalibrate, you keep going.
You know, and I actually thinkthis is itself a really good
methodology for thought as welland for practice, because it is
sort of a rejection of the modelthat you already have the
answers, like a pre-existing setof answers or solutions, and
then you just impose them onwhat is actually a dynamic and
changing reality, whether thoseare conceptual tools or design,
and so I actually I think thisis a useful approach to think
(20:58):
experimentally and to be willingto say, oh, it didn't work, and
then to try something new,instead of just continuously
doing the same thing over andover?
Stephanie Rouse (21:06):
So one of the more futuristic imaginaries that
you cover in the book is thisidea that relates to managed
retreat and kind of demolishingareas of Miami to create these
islands.
Do you think these extreme newimaginaries have merit or are
these ideas that are kind ofone-off will move past them
pretty quickly?
Stephanie Wakefield (21:24):
one of the more controversial ideas in the
book, but I think it's the mostinteresting really.
I mean there are many differentsimilar kind of visions
proposed or circulated aroundabout Miami that you basically
bulldoze the whole thing andlike build new elevated islands,
and this sort of idea.
It's islandization imaginary.
That's what I call it in thebook.
To me, I think, like you saidbefore, I think there is a need
(21:45):
to go beyond just like purelyeconomic considerations when
we're thinking about urbanfutures and urban design.
Right, I mean, we are capableof producing incredible works of
art when we build cities, whenwe design cities.
Like the city can be a work ofart.
We always hear that quote fromJane Jacobs like the city is not
a work of art.
But I think that's false.
It is and it can be and itshould be, especially now we are
(22:07):
looking at a lot of the urbandevelopment interventions of the
20th century and we're kind ofable to try to take stock and
see what was good and what wasreally bad.
I love florida but likeeverybody involved in any kind
of urban planning in floridaknows that it's also a bit of an
urban planning disaster in manyareas, whether we're talking
about suburbanization or kind oflike sprawl or paving over
paradise.
A lot of I think big mistakeshave been made when it comes to
(22:28):
developing South Florida.
There's something to be saidfor the idea.
There's something compelling, Ithink, in the idea of just
ripping it out and tryingsomething different, and that's
kind of behind some of thesevisions.
I mentioned this one in thebook from Tom Gustafson.
He was a former speaker of theHouse of Representatives in
Florida, a lawyer, and has donea lot of work around like
sustainable futures for SouthFlorida, and I think he has some
(22:50):
incredibly interesting ideasand one of them is this idea of
the islands of South Floridawhich I've talked about a lot
and it's in the book which isessentially, yeah, bulldozing
the whole thing, using it asfill to build these different
islandized settlements, linkedby new bridges, self-driving
cars, local forms of powergeneration and production, but
interlinked like regionally withtheir own forms of defense on a
(23:12):
library of Alexandria, thissort of like.
There's a big, you know.
It's kind of returned to thissort of like utopian vision, but
with a creative destructionelement built in.
And I think it's reallycompelling because, even if you
think it's totally unrealistic,even if you think it's laughable
, even if you think it's evil oryou assume that it's evil, you
have to admit that it's likepretty audacious and hubristic
and thinks beyond the dominantsort of like economistic or
(23:35):
resiliency as survival kind oflogics that do dominate the
fields of planning and urbanthought, and there's a lot of
other versions of this islandvision to a lesser degree.
Jeff Huber and Diana Mitsova anda team of other faculty and
practitioners from FAU, which iswhere I work, did a really cool
project that I also really likecalled Salty Urbanism and it
was about kind of creatingdesign and architecture
(23:57):
proposals for a Florida that'slike very flooded, a very
amphibious, water-centricurbanism, and it also had like
unplanning Miami to it, and thisis then a later project.
That architect Jeff Huber alsoproposed Unplanning Miami, an
unplanning division tocomplement planning divisions,
to take out like outdated 20thcentury infrastructure and to
adapt to an aquatic environment.
I think these are likeincredibly like visionary,
(24:18):
interesting, thought-provokingdesign proposals that go beyond
the standard, just elevatethings.
And I don't think there'snecessarily something wrong with
the just elevate things kind ofinfrastructure intervention
either, because on the otherhand you could say the idea that
you're going to elevate all theroads in all of Miami Beach and
even if the extreme projectionsof sea level rise are real,
(24:39):
come to fruition, let's say,because we don't know, we're not
in it yet.
Right, even if that came tofruition, it is a pretty
hubristic, compelling idea tosay, well, we can just elevate
the city and continue to livearound and with this water.
I mean, that is also itselfreally interesting experimental
process.
Anyway, with these likeislandizing visions of South
Florida, I think what'sinteresting is the possibility
(25:00):
of, like really radicallytransforming urban form and
urban space itself in a regionthat really could be, I think,
more interlinked with itsenvironment and wilder and their
visions of how you might dothat.
Jennifer Hiatt (25:11):
Somewhat.
To that end, you present a newconcept the anthropocentric
infrastructural nature.
So can you explain what this isand how it could be
transformative, in a way ofthinking about nature as
infrastructure, as opposed toputting in new islands too?
Stephanie Wakefield (25:25):
Well, actually, yeah, I mean so some
of those island visions alsohave this idea of incorporating
nature-based infrastructure likeliving infrastructure, and so
this idea that ecosystemsthemselves living organisms
oysters or the whole ecosystemof an oyster, reef or wetlands,
things like this, the idea thatthese are themselves
infrastructure and can bedesigned and harnessed for use
(25:47):
by cities to provide servicesthis is something I've analyzed
a lot in my work over the lastlike 10 years in New York and in
Miami.
What I kind of have traced isthe way in which nature has come
to be defined in a new way asinfrastructure and then like
built and designed as accordingto that imaginary.
So it's again a question ofimaginary, where maybe this like
(26:08):
modern stereotype of the ideathat urban planners may have had
, that like nature was thisinert thing or like a waste or a
dump or something like thatoutside the city.
We're now in response to whatare seen as like the perceived
urgencies of the Anthropocene.
We see this turn towardsembracing nature and like
bringing it in and imagining itas something like very dynamic
and alive and like full ofcapacities.
(26:30):
And I think that we have tothink about this as I call it
Anthropocenic infrastructuralnature and imagining it as
something like very dynamic andalive and like full of
capacities.
And I think that we have tothink about this, as I call it
anthropocenic, infrastructuralnature, not because it's like
environmental and not becauseit's just about climate change,
but to get at this idea that theAnthropocene itself is taken as
a call and I'm not saying Iagree with this, but it's being
seen and defined as a callreconnect the human and nature
and like bring nature in,transform even the very basic
(26:54):
fundamental categories of likeWestern metaphysics, like
subject, object, city nature,things like human nature, things
like this.
It's really taken as thisimpetus to redefine the basic
categories of urban planning andthen to do urban planning
differently.
So anthropocenic has thatmeaning here.
Basically, this idea now thatyou see developed and then now
being brought into fruition inNew York, is that you can
(27:14):
restore something like theoyster reefs that once were mile
long around Manhattan.
You can engineer them andrestore them and then harness
their capacity to act as likebreakwaters to buffer the
effects of like storm surge froma hurricane or something like
that along the coast of a placelike Staten Island.
So this is an interestingproject by Scape Landscape
Architecture, kate Orff's firm,to build experimental sort of
(27:36):
like two-mile oyster reef off ofStaten Island, and this was one
of those rebuild by designcompetition awardees from
Hurricane Sandy back in, I think, 2013.
And it's now been completed, asfar as I understand, the
construction is fully done andthis is a really like
pathbreaking, really interestingproject the thinking about city
and nature, and infrastructuretoo because the idea is that,
(27:56):
like through their life cycle,oysters build these reefs, they
accumulate on top of each otherand provide this living
infrastructure that in some waymaybe offers a better buffer to
storm surge than a concreteseawall might, while at the same
time providing like habitat fororganisms and things like this.
And in a similar way, we seethe Everglades in South Florida
being talked about as aninfrastructure that could, if
(28:16):
it's restored to its pre-modernhydraulic flows, could act as
like a buffer on the saltwaterintrusion into the drinking
water supply in Miami's aquifer.
So these are very differentecosystems oyster reefs and the
Everglades, right but they'reboth being thought about as
infrastructures that can be likeredesigned and reengineered so
that they serve these functionsfor, ultimately, the survival of
(28:38):
the urban form that existsright now.
Stephanie Rouse (28:41):
It's an interesting new definition of
nature and infrastructure thefloating islands concept is
disconnecting from globalnetworks, and the weakness of
our global interconnectednesshas really been made apparent in
recent years with COVID andmany of the big hurricanes.
Is this a future that we'd beseeing even beyond Miami?
Do you think that othercommunities need to start maybe
(29:03):
taking more?
Stephanie Wakefield (29:03):
seriously.
I think it's definitely thezeitgeist, this like de-linking
impetus.
Of course, there's neverdelinking without relinking in
new ways.
Right, it's like creativedestruction.
You know, I mean, we can eventhink back to this sort of like
older ideas of magic, like, youknow, Giordano Bruno, or like
older ideas of linking andbinding reality as a process
that actually involves delinkingand then like selecting which
(29:26):
elements you want to piecetogether.
I mean, this is not somethingyou might normally hear talked
about in the urban design realm,but I think it's actually
pretty relevant here.
You know, I think there's apretty widespread sense that the
globalization model has been afailure on many different scales
and we can see that supplychain disruptions are only one
manifestation of that and itseems like a big movement away
from that global infrastructuraland governmental network model
(29:50):
is emergent in a lot ofdifferent ways.
I mean, the Trumpadministration's tariffs are
part of this.
You know, the idea ofrelocalizing manufacturing is
certainly part of this, but thisalso combines up with recent
efforts to build new cities, togenerate new cities, whether
these are like the networkstates, Balaji's network states
idea built on, like crypto andDAOs, or the idea of frontier
(30:11):
cities.
So there are all these newprojects in that kind of vein.
So there's, like California,forever, the line to Lhasa city,
this practice.
There's all these differentefforts to generate these new
cities that are kind of likeoperating on their own
governmental logics, their ownterritories, their own
infrastructural networks, and Ithink there's something very
interesting going on.
There's a lot of potentialthere to do interesting things.
A lot of this is couched in thisfrontier question.
(30:33):
There was once this drive tobuild cities in the wild
frontier and many cities werebuilt that way, which is, of
course, a very complexhistorical process, right.
But today there's been thissaturation of space and there's
this sense at least this is whatis described by a lot of
proponents of these projects isthe sense that to revive the
sort of like spirit or likereignite American imagination
(30:54):
this is what they say.
Trump says that you need tohave another sense of the
frontier, of the openness andthis like experimental freedom
to innovate spatially.
So a lot of these new citiesare couched in that thinking,
which I think is veryinteresting.
This has come up again with theproposal to sell a lot of
federal lands in response to thesort of housing shortages.
A lot of questions there, likewell, did.
(31:15):
Would the cities that you buildlook like?
Are we building just more likesprawl and strip malls, or are
we capable again of having likea massive process of
experimentation in urban form?
Could we take this moment, theneed to even like respond to
questions of housing andsomething like that?
Could it be an opportunity?
And also, could we take theopportunity of needing to
(31:36):
relocalize a lot ofmanufacturing and to innovate
and to think about technologicalexperimentation in the realm of
, like, space explorationmaterials, things like this?
Could we take all these newinnovations and new needs and
use that as an opportunity tokind of like generate new cities
that really are experimentingin the forms and the processes
of urbanization themselves?
I think that's an interestingprospect.
I don't know what it'll looklike and I don't think that it's
happening, and I'm not evensure that that's what's being
(31:56):
said per se or proposed, but Ithink it is an interesting
horizon to aim for and to thinkabout what that might mean.
I think what's going on in ElSegundo is kind of interesting
in this regard, because there'sa lot of experimentation in hard
tech manufacturing and thinkingabout can you really
manufacture drones in Americacompletely again, or what is the
infrastructure needed for Marscolonization and what cities can
(32:17):
support that kind ofmanufacturing.
So it's kind of like a 21stcentury experimental urbanism
which I think is playing outright now.
Jennifer Hiatt (32:25):
And switching from building new cities to
killing old ones.
I guess Herbicide hastraditionally been a
capitalistic restructuring offorestry development and I think
most of our listeners will bemost familiar with herbicide as
used during wartime.
But the book proposes a new wayof thinking about herbicide.
Can you explain what you werethinking there and how we could
(32:45):
reframe it and take it from sortof a mass destruction to an
opportunity for build?
Stephanie Wakefield (32:50):
This is another example of where I kind
of in the book, try to suspendthe assumptions that are built
into a lot of like urbanthinking and consider other
possibilities for some of theseconcepts that circulate, you
know.
So here with herbicide, I'mlooking at it in the context of
some of those islandizingprojects that we were talking
about a second ago and drawingon some of this more conceptual
work from the French philosopherAlexander Monin, and he has
(33:11):
written quite a bit about theidea of design as depresencing
or dismantling.
You know we tend to think ofdesign as like a creative
activity, but he suggests thatin the Anthropocene, in the 21st
century, we inherit these arehis terms, we inherit a world of
pretty negative faces.
Let's say, we inherit a lot oflike terrible urban planning.
We inherit a lot of terribleurban planning.
(33:32):
We inherit a lot ofinfrastructure that is
saturating the soil with poison,among other examples.
Right, perhaps moving forwardand revitalizing space and even
life has to also be a questionof dismantling a lot of that, a
lot of those forms, a lot ofthose infrastructures, even
those spaces, cutting out thedead weight like a forest fire
so that new life and new spacecan emerge.
And so I try to think aboutherbicide in that context.
(33:52):
Maybe there are some urbanforms that need to be killed and
destroyed so that new life canemerge.
And I talk about this in thecontext of that islandization
proposal, the islands of SouthFlorida because a big part of it
is actually like this delinkingprocess, like you were saying
before, delinking fromglobalization, from the global
political order, but also theglobal infrastructural network,
(34:13):
society, order, and so thinkingabout delinking as that process
that's really essential tocreating space for other forms
of life to emerge.
Herbicide is also something Itry to conceptualize as cutting
those ties.
So it's not just demolishinglike with a bulldozer, but it's
also cutting the ties of 21stcentury, like planetary
urbanization, which is thisplanetary network.
Stephanie Rouse (34:35):
And you talked a little bit earlier about
bottom-up imaginaries tending tobe a little more limited in
their ideas and dwelling in theproblems of the day.
How can we reclaim urbanimagination in the Anthropocene
in order to identifypossibilities for extreme
climate adaptation that abandonsthe frameworks and the
structures that we have today,that are really pretty limiting,
(34:56):
that are really pretty limiting, I think it's like the question
.
Stephanie Wakefield (34:58):
It's like we are totally in a crisis of
imagination.
It seems really obvious to alot of people, I think in
different domains.
And how do you break throughthat?
The number one reason, I think,that I ever tried to use this
concept of the Anthropocene inmy work was because it seemed
like a way to situate ourselvesand our thought and our practice
in the now and to say we are ina new epoch, the situation has
(35:21):
radically changed, we're not inthe 20th century anymore and so
therefore, our imaginaries, theyshould emerge from the now,
they should emerge from thesenew conditions and they should
respond to these new conditions.
So really, what I'm advocatingand have always advocated with
the Anthropocene is this ideathat we need an avant-garde for
urban thought and practice, kindof like an experimental,
future-oriented approach tourban thought and design.
(35:42):
And I think one of the greatvoices calling for something
similar is Neil Brenner.
I kind of refer to his work alot in this book because he made
this famous, maybecontroversial, claim and
argument for urban thought.
He was like we are stuck in the20th and maybe even the 19th
century, using these outdatedspatial concepts to describe a
radically new urban condition.
(36:04):
He said that, like urbanthought needs to let go of these
what he called inheritedcognitive maps of the urban
condition and enter into like anexperimental process of
thinking about what is actuallyemerging in the post-1970s
restructuring of the urbanglobal order, and to always be
rigorously forcing ourselves toquestion those assumptions and
(36:25):
those imaginaries that we'rejust sort of like dragging along
by rote.
And so I think just even beingattentive to that and always
seeing ourselves in andunderstanding ourselves in this
epochal new moment is reallyhelpful.
And beginning from the real,the real transformations
happening around us, rather thanvisions of them, maybe from
another century, can be veryhelpful, rather than like sort
of deductive analyses, you know,based on like old concepts.
(36:46):
Challenging ourselves togenerate our own is, I think,
the right methodological stance,but that doesn't mean I have
the answer.
But I think it's an attitudeand an orientation that's not
ideological and it's sort oflike free and experimental.
I think that's what's neededand from that I think that's
where the fresh and the reallyvital ideas and practices will
come.
Jennifer Hiatt (37:06):
And speaking of not having all the answers
because we all never should likeany good research-based book
you lay out new concepts andleave readers with questions for
further consideration.
So what major concepts are youactually hoping that your book
will help further and somebodywill take up and run with and
work into their own research?
Stephanie Wakefield (37:26):
What I call it in the book, the main like
argument, main concept that Iput out in the book is
Anthropocene urban theory,practice I think that's what I
put it or you might say, like21st century urban thought and
practice, and by that I meanwhat I was just describing this
experimental pre-orientation tounderstanding and intervening by
design in the present right.
(37:46):
I think we're in a time ofincredible transformations and
we talk about, like, the housingcrisis.
There's a lot of talk aboutthis in the news, but we might
remember what Martin Heideggersaid, like 70 years ago, that
even talk about housingshortages in post-war Europe
really obscured other questions,which are more even spiritual
and philosophical, that we mightwant to consider, about the
relationship between, like thehuman and space.
(38:06):
I think we're in a time wherewe want to retake that question
and really consider it on ourown terms, in our own 21st
century context.
We're living in a time ofprobably real profound
environmental transformations,but we're also living in a time
of great political upheaval, forsure, wherever you stand on
that, as well as a time when, inthe next few years, we're going
(38:27):
to send human beings to Mars.
We're thinking abouturbanization of Mars and so, to
kind of paraphrase, jg Ballard,the first city designed off
Earth will be probably not thatfar off and it will probably be
an American city.
Who will be the not that faroff?
And it will probably be anAmerican city who will be the
Robert Moses or Le Corbusier ofMars.
You know, I think these are thequestions that we want to have
in front of us, big, audacious,future-oriented questions, and I
(38:47):
think we want to approach themwith, like I said, experimental
openness to see what can come.
Stephanie Rouse (38:53):
And as this is booked on planning, what books
would you recommend our readerscheck out?
Stephanie Wakefield (39:04):
I've been reading a couple I really like
Pierre Menon Metamorphoses ofthe City, thinking about the
Greek project of the polis asthe foundational element of
Western civilization and whatspirit and like what orientation
to a higher human life wasimbued in the polis and did the
polis serve?
And how might returning to thatkind of thinking in our own
context actually help us movebeyond what we were describing
as basically like economic,uniform urbanism.
Think about what are theheights that urban design could
(39:26):
aspire to now, spiritually andphilosophically and even
aesthetically.
I also really love the SaltyUrbanism book by Jeff Huber and,
like I said, Diana Mitzoverfrom FAU, I think the most
interesting, coolest adaptationdesign proposal that I've seen
for living with water, you know,because there's always this
sense that South Florida couldbe a much wilder, more vibrant
place.
(39:46):
And maybe it was and that'sbeen paved over and in some ways
adaptation to sea level riseactually seems almost
paradoxically to open thepossibility of rewilding Florida
and I think their book kind ofbarks the imagination in that
way.
Stephanie Rouse (39:59):
I always love a good book on rewilding.
Yeah, so many interestingconcepts that come out of it.
Well, stephanie, thank you somuch for joining us on the show
to talk about your book Miamiand the Anthropocene, rising
Seas and Urban ResilienceTotally Thank you so much for
having me.
Stephanie Wakefield (40:13):
It was great talking to you.
Jennifer Hiatt (40:16):
We hope you enjoyed this conversation with
author Stephanie Wakefield onher book Miami and the
Anthropocene Rising Seas andUrban Resilience.
You can get your own copythrough the publisher at the
University of Minnesota Press orclick the link in the show
notes to take you directly toour affiliate page.
Remember to subscribe to theshow wherever you listen to
podcasts and please rate, reviewand share the show.
Thank you for listening andwe'll talk to you next time on
(40:37):
Booked, on Planning you.
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(00:53):
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In each episode, we dive intohow cities function by talking
with authors on housing,transportation and everything in
between.
Join us as we get Booked onPlanning.
Welcome back, bookworms, toanother episode of Booked on
(01:15):
Planning.
In this episode, we talk withauthor Stephanie Wakefield on
her book Miami in theAnthropocene, rising Seas and
Urban Resilience.
We get into how Stephanie isusing the term Anthropocene, as
well as what an imaginary is, anew term that isn't used in
urban planning today.
Jennifer Hiatt (01:31):
This was a really interesting conversation
and, honestly, a book about aconcept that I was unfamiliar
with.
Stephanie is really pushing theboundaries of how we think
about and imagine the future ofall cities, even though the book
is focused primarily on Miami.
Stephanie Rouse (01:43):
One takeaway from our conversation was that
her book isn't intended to havea definitive answer the future
of all cities, even though thebook is focused primarily on
Miami.
One takeaway from ourconversation was that her book
isn't intended to have adefinitive answer or direction
for action, but is meant toprovoke thought on the concepts
of how we are imagining thefuture of cities like Miami that
are on the forefront of sealevel rise.
We end the conversation withthe topic she wants to see
researched further and expandedupon.
Jennifer Hiatt (02:03):
Yeah, I have to admit the fact that there was no
finality.
We were just supposed toimagine these things was a
little different for me.
So let's get into ourconversation with author
Stephanie Wakefield on her bookMiami and the Anthropocene
Rising Seas and Urban Resilience.
Stephanie Rouse (02:18):
Well, Stephanie , thank you for joining us on
Booked On Planning to talk aboutyour book Miami and the
Anthropocene, Rising Seas andUrban Resilience.
To start off, and make surewe're all on the same page with
our listeners, what do you meanwhen you use the terms
Anthropocene and imaginaries asit relates to your book?
Stephanie Wakefield (02:35):
Thank you so much for having me First of
all.
Yeah, just to start with theconcept of the Anthropocene.
So this is a term that becamevery widely used in many
different fields, startingaround, let's say, 2012, 2011,
and really picked up inpopularity over the years
subsequent to that time.
It comes from the EarthSciences.
(02:55):
It was coined by Paul Crutzen,a geologist, in 2000.
It means technically the epochof the human or the epoch of man
, let's be more specific, andit's usually used in a few
different ways.
It's used to describe massivetransformations of the earth by
man-led processes likeurbanization, different forms of
land use, things like this, andthere are kind of two different
(03:18):
ways that it's used in thesciences that I have found kind
of interesting.
There's a geological use ingeology and then sort of earth
systems science usage.
They're a little bit different,related, overlapping, but I
think it's helpful to take themapart a little bit.
In geology, the termAnthropocene is often taken up
in order to kind of lookbackwards historically and to
(03:40):
think about, like when this newepoch that we are in, you know,
the earth's new epoch when itbegan, and to go back and locate
that shifting point In Earthsystem sciences though,
interestingly, it's more aboutthe future of Earth and its
systems and thinking about howindustrial processes,
urbanization, land use, so onhave driven the Earth onto a new
(04:01):
trajectory, sort of like thisunknown new future trajectory
that we're just kind of startingto see ramp up right now.
I think those are both reallyinteresting.
In my own work, though, the waythat I use the Anthropocene was
to think about the idea that weas a civilization have entered
this sort of like new trajectory, this new epoch that both
pertains to maybe, like theearth systems the way that I
(04:22):
just described it anenvironmental question, but also
a social question, like thetransformation of culture, the
transformation of politics andof society, especially over the
last like 10 years, but I'd saylike probably like several
decades, where we're seeing thislike real, like unmooring of
the kind of like grounds thatwere, you know, previously in
the 20th century, there, to sortof like give sense to thought
(04:44):
and action, the way in whichpolitical boundaries don't
really like operate the way thatthey did a few decades ago, to
think about technologicaltransformations and so on.
So I've tried to use it in mywork to think about this moment
of like profound change andprofound transformation, in
which new thought is reallyrequired, and then to think
about how, particularly in theurban realm planners, designers
and urban thinkers how theAnthropocene is being imagined
(05:08):
and how it's being sort of likedeveloped in thought and
practice, and then how thoseimaginaries are being used as
sort of like the impetus orlegitimating ground for all
different kinds of interventionsinto urban space.
And so by talking aboutimaginaries there, I'm kind of
(05:32):
building on things about theimaginary, or imaginaries, not
as sort of like, oh, this otherrealm of like the unreal you
know it's like less real thanthe real but rather imaginaries
is something very real that arecreated across all different
forms, like discourse, mediavisualizations, images, map,
planning, documents, things likethis, that then circulate and
get reinforced throughrepetition and maybe reshaped
and remodulated through thatcirculation.
And then these imaginaries thatcome to sort of like structure,
how we think about and how weenvision the future of cities
(05:54):
and urban space.
And of course, like throughouthistory, cities have been
subject to and shaped by manydifferent kinds of imaginaries.
The Anthropocene has given riseto very specific ones, and so
what I've tried to do in thebook is map those and like where
they're coming from, how a citylike Miami, which is the focus
of the book came to be thoughtof as sea level rise ground zero
(06:18):
and like climate change groundzero, because this imaginary of
Miami is actually really new anddidn't even exist, let's say,
15 years ago.
So how now is it so commonplaceto hear people think of Miami in
this way, to imagine Miami asthe front lines of sea level
rise and a place that's in needof resiliency interventions, and
so what I do in the book is tryto trace those imaginaries,
specifically in media andacademic discourse and
(06:39):
visualizations, how those sortof fed back on one another and
then get drawn into actual urbanplanning proposals and actual
plans.
I think what's interesting is tounderstand this as an imaginary
that serves particular ends andit leads, and is taken to lead,
to very specific kinds ofinterventions in the urban form,
like resiliency infrastructure.
But it's also countered withother imaginaries, and so in the
(07:01):
book I look at this idea ofMiami as a sort of like new
crypto capital in the newSilicon Valley, as a warring
imaginary that kind of getsconstructed and that maybe
defeats the climate changeimaginary of Miami.
So it's a really interestingthing to look at how these
different imaginaries getcreated, but also how they can
fight each other and how theycan displace each other, and
things like that.
(07:21):
Another question, then, is likewell, what comes next?
You know, miami is really thislike place of the future and the
sort of this frontier ofimagination, because it's always
been shaped by imagination, andso I think what's interesting
is to explore, and maybe evencontribute to what imaginaries
still lie on the horizon for aplace like Miami.
Jennifer Hiatt (07:41):
So one of the things that kept striking me as
we were reading through the bookand all of these different
imaginaries that have beenplaced on Miami you know the
rich person's playground typething as it was first being
presented with the flyer of theguy on the elephant right or the
crypto capital or the groundzero for resiliency All of these
types of imaginaries kind ofseem to come top down to me
(08:04):
anyway.
So one of the questions youwere kind of raising, or I felt
you were raising in the book, iswho gets to imagine what kinds
of life can and will be lived inthe human epoch or in Miami.
And overall, like I said, itseems like it's a government
agency or big marketing firmsthat are kind of answering that
question for us and have in thepast, but I don't think it
necessarily has to be that way.
So how could everyday peoplestart helping to shape the
(08:26):
imaginaries of the city thatthey live in, instead of taking
this top-down force?
Stephanie Wakefield (08:31):
Yeah, I mean these are interesting
questions, and so one of thethings that I try to do in the
book, a bit provocatively, is toreally like rigorously question
the quality of imaginaries youknow that get forwarded from all
scales and all different typesof actors.
One of the things I try to do inthe book is to suspend some of
the assumptions that urbanthinking tends to rely on, and
(08:51):
one of those assumptions is asort of like built-in idea that
like good imaginaries come fromthe bottom up, right, and like
bad imaginaries come from thetop down, and it's like you have
to find one that you know rightand fight the other one.
And so I try to suspend thatassumption and even highlight it
a little bit and step back andsay like okay, where are the
actually like dynamicimaginaries if there are any
(09:11):
coming from?
And one thing that I do is sortof look at some of these more
grassroots imaginaries ofresiliency, preparedness too,
and say that they are alsolimited in their ability to
think beyond what are alreadysort of like commonplace ideas
of the human as a resilientinfrastructure in some ways.
And even actually, what I tryto highlight there is that you
(09:31):
actually see on the part of likereally large scale governmental
or corporate resiliencyplanning.
You actually see like prettytransformative thinking going on
, even if we can highlight likea lot of the limits of it.
Maybe it's very technocratic.
We can also see that it'sgeared towards this like pretty
large transformation of how wethink about cities and how how
they're designed and adapting tolike a what is imagined, at
(09:54):
least, to be like a reallyradically transformed
environment.
On the other hand, with some ofthe grassroots ones, what we
actually see is what I try toshow in the book is a loss of
that transformative dimensionand more this sort of like
dwelling in the ruins, kind oflike life should be it said in a
lot of these imaginaries, sortof like survival infrastructure
for dealing with disasters, youknow, recovering from them and
(10:16):
things like this.
And so what I think is kind ofinteresting there is to say,
okay, if we jettison thatassumption that's really baked
into so much urban thought thatbottom up is good, top down is
bad, ok, if we get rid of that,then where do we find the
interesting, compelling, dynamic, pathbreaking imaginaries?
In some ways I actually try toargue that the crypto capital of
(10:37):
the world, miami, imaginary, isitself pretty interesting and
quite novel in its own rightpretty interesting and quite
novel in its own right and thatthere's something to it that has
a power actually to think aboutMiami as a place that is worth
saving and propelling into thefuture.
It's an imaginary that doesn'tgive into this climate change
hysteria that is built into thesea level rise, ground zero
imaginary right.
(10:57):
So I try to kind of actuallyhighlight that as what I think
is a bit counterintuitive for alot of maybe like critical urban
thinkers, but to say thatthere's actually something
really compelling there.
The book's real big argument,overarching argument, is can we
untether from these baked inideologies and baked in
assumptions that are in so muchof urban thought and kind of
(11:17):
like look at the thingsthemselves as they are emerging?
Stephanie Rouse (11:21):
So in one chapter you talk about this
concept of backloop urbanization, which was a new concept for me
.
What is this and how does itimpact cities?
Stephanie Wakefield (11:31):
dominant in urban planning and design.
The idea is that essentiallyall systems, including cities,
according to resilienceecologists, go through sort of
(11:51):
like two phases of life frontloop and back loop.
The front loop is sort of thismovement from rapid growth and
rapid transformation to a sortof stability phase, like a
mature forest, let's say.
And so in the 70s this was kindof like the dominant idea of
systems and they kind ofbelieved that ecosystems stayed
in that state.
But then one of theinterventions of resilience in
complex systems thinkers was tosay well, actually systems also
(12:12):
pass through a back loop as well, and a back loop in the sinking
is the release space this timeof all the energies and the
elements that were previouslysort of captured in the
conservation stage getting setfree.
So a back loop is a time ofextreme transformation, maybe
collapse, maybe confusion, maybedestruction and renewal.
And I found this concept to bepretty useful as a heuristic
(12:33):
only in my own work for thinkingabout the time that we're
living in, because we are livingamidst so many rapid and
cascading and difficult tocomprehend transformations in
the realm of thought, thecategories that were previously
used in the 20th century tounderstand and to stabilize
being spatially in the realm ofthought, the categories that
were previously used in the 20thcentury to understand and to
stabilize, being spatially inthe realm of, let's say,
creative destruction.
Politically, you know, reallyin all domains we're seeing
(12:54):
these rapid unmoorings andmoments of chaos and confusion,
and this is not coming from likea single disaster, like a
forest fire, although that isthe example that's often used by
resilience ecologists to sortof illustrate the back loop.
This is more of like an ongoingsort of civilizational
transformation, and a back loopit's this like moment that we're
in is maybe quite long, but tome what's really interesting is
(13:15):
to think about okay, if you lookat our moment through that lens
, how does that change what yousee as the possibilities for
thought and for even design andplanning?
Or how does it change how youinterpret what's already
happening?
One of the things I suggest inthe book is that a lot of these
sort of like attempts to adaptcities through infrastructure in
the name of resilience, some ofthese are what we might
consider forms of backloopurbanization, a particular form
(13:37):
of urbanization proper to thisbackloop moment, because they
identify these rapid shifts inthe baselines for urban planning
and thought.
They identify these shifts interms of whether it's climate
change, changing post lines andchanging environmental
conditions, or, in the realm oflike, how we even conceptualize
the city.
More and more, it's thought ofthis complex adaptive system,
(13:58):
equal cybernetic system maybeand even the role of planning is
now being transformed toconform to that image of the
city and to be much more aboutthese sort of like emergent,
even living, infrastructures,and so I describe this as the
kind of backloop urbanizationthat emerges in response to a
perception of extreme change, atime of extreme change, and that
(14:18):
tries to build for a time ofextreme change.
Jennifer Hiatt (14:21):
I work in urban development and land
redevelopment and an observationyou make is that the majority
of resilience infrastructurethat's being built especially in
Miami but probably everywhereisn't necessarily actually to
save people or certain human wayof life, but actually to
stabilize the real estatemarkets and credit ratings,
which honestly kind of piercedmy heart and like you're not
(14:41):
wrong, but when you put it sobluntly it's like, oh gosh,
that's kind of awful.
How and I'm thinking more inMiami but how do we move past
thinking about stabilizing realestate markets and whether or
not we can get good creditratings and actually begin to
develop for people and community, when you're thinking about
resiliency or just in general?
Stephanie Wakefield (14:58):
Yeah, this is a great question.
I think this is a reallyinteresting topic.
So, again, like going back toimaginaries and how they get
taken up, and they're actually aterrain of, let's say, even
battle and you know strategy.
So what I try to do isunderstand and map, like, really
, what is the role of the sealevel rise imaginary in Miami
and how do different, likemunicipal actors respond to it?
(15:18):
On what real grounds?
Like, what really areresilience interventions?
What do they mean?
And again, I try to step backand take a non-ideological
perspective on this and try tosuspend some of the knee-jerk
assumptions that I think a lotof critical urban thought would
have about this and to say, okay, let's just see what it's doing
rather than just saying fromthe get-go that it's bad, right,
and just notice that it is andfirst understand it right.
It is really interesting in andof itself as a fact that
(15:40):
Moody's, like credit ratingagencies, like Moody's, have
decided that resilience buildingand mitigating climate change
risk are key indicators of agood credit rating in the first
place.
I think it's just, it's feltvery, very fascinating because
it shows the extent to which theclimate change sea level rise
imaginary has been accepted andpermeated even that sort of
(16:01):
realm of finance and likeinternational lending and
municipal bonds and all thatcredit rating.
So it's a powerful imaginary.
Even if it came fromjournalists writing in Rolling
Stone magazine and somescientists publishing some
papers and the circulationbetween them, it's now more
widespread, right.
That fact alone to me is reallyinteresting to note.
The geographer, samantha Cox,has written a lot about this,
(16:22):
about finance and resilience inMiami.
I have drawn on her work in thebook to understand this and she
kind of just shows thatbasically what's going on is
that climate risk projectionsfor a given city will be
compared with resilienceinitiatives on the part of, like
credit rating agencies,specifically infrastructure
building.
She shows that sort of like ifthere's an absence of resilience
infrastructure initiatives,this is seen as making you more
vulnerable, right to what thescience is saying is the risk.
(16:46):
So built in right there isalready like a set of accepted
assumptions about climate changerisk rate and all that by the
credit rating agencies and thenessentially, if they see a
mismatch between what the citydoes and the risk, the risks are
said to be and how they'reperceived locally and how
governments are responding tothem, so it's not just like
(17:19):
scientific articles, butactually media stories around
2014, there was this outpouringof media pieces about goodbye
Miami.
Like Miami is doomed,millennials are all moving to
Miami where they're going todrown soon.
Like these are literalheadlines that were all in a
bunch of stories.
There was just rapid firepublication of these stories in
2013, 2014.
And around that same time thenyou start to see a huge
(17:40):
investment in resiliencebuilding on the part of the city
of Miami Beach, especially roadelevations and like flood
mitigation infrastructures,miami Beach rising above
Eventually.
Later on you see in some of thereports sent by Moody's to
Miami Beach on there, the creditratings they get like a very
high grade, and part of thereport specifies these
resilience building activitiesas justification.
(18:03):
So there's this reallyinteresting circular kind of
like dynamic going on that I tryto follow in the book between
media pieces, academic discourse, literal municipal
interventions into urban space,like elevating roads several
feet and things like this, andthen you know credit ratings,
and so this is a reallyinteresting logic where the
imaginary is very powerful.
(18:23):
I think I'm not necessarily inthe book trying to say that this
is bad or good or just that itis, and I think one of the
things that's interesting is toreally be aware of this, of the
imaginary and the imagination,as a terrain of strategy, really
, and manipulation and creation,and then to think about well,
what would it mean to you know,if you want to produce better
imaginaries, if you want toproduce other futures, how do
(18:44):
you actually intervene on thatterrain?
You know, it's kind of one ofthose like understand the
battlefield kind of things inorder to fight well on it.
So I think that's like aninteresting consideration.
If the question is how do youmove past this circular dynamic
where you're just producinginfrastructure to keep the
economy going?
Could there be a higher aim forinfrastructure building?
What would the highest aim befor a city and its people to
(19:07):
think about in terms of whatinfrastructure is built, what
infrastructure is removed?
What are the higher aims beyondeconomic considerations?
And I'm not sure it's evenclear that those conversations
are happening necessarily, atleast in those terms, right, but
it would be very interesting tohave them and I think that's
where urban design and planningshould be focused.
Jennifer Hiatt (19:25):
Right, well, one of the things that just really
struck me was that you mentioneda project, and I think that's
ultimately not helping anyoneoverall, and so that was the
(19:50):
storyline that got me thinkingabout that question.
Stephanie Wakefield (19:54):
Well, yeah, that brings up another
interesting thing about Miamiand these adaptation
infrastructures, which is thatthey're talked about as like an
experimental process on thebasis of the idea that, well, a
city has never dealt with risingseas before and tried to adapt
to it in real time, and sothey're like an experiment
playing out in real time to seewhat works and what doesn't, and
(20:15):
being sort of like refined andmodulated as step by step
through trial and error, whichis interesting.
You know, this is talked aboutsort of like it's incremental
adaptation in Miami, sort oflike try it, see what happens.
I mean, this is also the logicof adaptive management from
ecology and like ecologicalmanagement, the idea of adaptive
management where you trysomething, see what works, you
(20:37):
recalibrate, you keep going.
You know, and I actually thinkthis is itself a really good
methodology for thought as welland for practice, because it is
sort of a rejection of the modelthat you already have the
answers, like a pre-existing setof answers or solutions, and
then you just impose them onwhat is actually a dynamic and
changing reality, whether thoseare conceptual tools or design,
and so I actually I think thisis a useful approach to think
(20:58):
experimentally and to be willingto say, oh, it didn't work, and
then to try something new,instead of just continuously
doing the same thing over andover?
Stephanie Rouse (21:06):
So one of the more futuristic imaginaries that
you cover in the book is thisidea that relates to managed
retreat and kind of demolishingareas of Miami to create these
islands.
Do you think these extreme newimaginaries have merit or are
these ideas that are kind ofone-off will move past them
pretty quickly?
Stephanie Wakefield (21:24):
one of the more controversial ideas in the
book, but I think it's the mostinteresting really.
I mean there are many differentsimilar kind of visions
proposed or circulated aroundabout Miami that you basically
bulldoze the whole thing andlike build new elevated islands,
and this sort of idea.
It's islandization imaginary.
That's what I call it in thebook.
To me, I think, like you saidbefore, I think there is a need
(21:45):
to go beyond just like purelyeconomic considerations when
we're thinking about urbanfutures and urban design.
Right, I mean, we are capableof producing incredible works of
art when we build cities, whenwe design cities.
Like the city can be a work ofart.
We always hear that quote fromJane Jacobs like the city is not
a work of art.
But I think that's false.
It is and it can be and itshould be, especially now we are
(22:07):
looking at a lot of the urbandevelopment interventions of the
20th century and we're kind ofable to try to take stock and
see what was good and what wasreally bad.
I love florida but likeeverybody involved in any kind
of urban planning in floridaknows that it's also a bit of an
urban planning disaster in manyareas, whether we're talking
about suburbanization or kind oflike sprawl or paving over
paradise.
A lot of I think big mistakeshave been made when it comes to
(22:28):
developing South Florida.
There's something to be saidfor the idea.
There's something compelling, Ithink, in the idea of just
ripping it out and tryingsomething different, and that's
kind of behind some of thesevisions.
I mentioned this one in thebook from Tom Gustafson.
He was a former speaker of theHouse of Representatives in
Florida, a lawyer, and has donea lot of work around like
sustainable futures for SouthFlorida, and I think he has some
(22:50):
incredibly interesting ideasand one of them is this idea of
the islands of South Floridawhich I've talked about a lot
and it's in the book which isessentially, yeah, bulldozing
the whole thing, using it asfill to build these different
islandized settlements, linkedby new bridges, self-driving
cars, local forms of powergeneration and production, but
interlinked like regionally withtheir own forms of defense on a
(23:12):
library of Alexandria, thissort of like.
There's a big, you know.
It's kind of returned to thissort of like utopian vision, but
with a creative destructionelement built in.
And I think it's reallycompelling because, even if you
think it's totally unrealistic,even if you think it's laughable
, even if you think it's evil oryou assume that it's evil, you
have to admit that it's likepretty audacious and hubristic
and thinks beyond the dominantsort of like economistic or
(23:35):
resiliency as survival kind oflogics that do dominate the
fields of planning and urbanthought, and there's a lot of
other versions of this islandvision to a lesser degree.
Jeff Huber and Diana Mitsova anda team of other faculty and
practitioners from FAU, which iswhere I work, did a really cool
project that I also really likecalled Salty Urbanism and it
was about kind of creatingdesign and architecture
(23:57):
proposals for a Florida that'slike very flooded, a very
amphibious, water-centricurbanism, and it also had like
unplanning Miami to it, and thisis then a later project.
That architect Jeff Huber alsoproposed Unplanning Miami, an
unplanning division tocomplement planning divisions,
to take out like outdated 20thcentury infrastructure and to
adapt to an aquatic environment.
I think these are likeincredibly like visionary,
(24:18):
interesting, thought-provokingdesign proposals that go beyond
the standard, just elevatethings.
And I don't think there'snecessarily something wrong with
the just elevate things kind ofinfrastructure intervention
either, because on the otherhand you could say the idea that
you're going to elevate all theroads in all of Miami Beach and
even if the extreme projectionsof sea level rise are real,
(24:39):
come to fruition, let's say,because we don't know, we're not
in it yet.
Right, even if that came tofruition, it is a pretty
hubristic, compelling idea tosay, well, we can just elevate
the city and continue to livearound and with this water.
I mean, that is also itselfreally interesting experimental
process.
Anyway, with these likeislandizing visions of South
Florida, I think what'sinteresting is the possibility
(25:00):
of, like really radicallytransforming urban form and
urban space itself in a regionthat really could be, I think,
more interlinked with itsenvironment and wilder and their
visions of how you might dothat.
Jennifer Hiatt (25:11):
Somewhat.
To that end, you present a newconcept the anthropocentric
infrastructural nature.
So can you explain what this isand how it could be
transformative, in a way ofthinking about nature as
infrastructure, as opposed toputting in new islands too?
Stephanie Wakefield (25:25):
Well, actually, yeah, I mean so some
of those island visions alsohave this idea of incorporating
nature-based infrastructure likeliving infrastructure, and so
this idea that ecosystemsthemselves living organisms
oysters or the whole ecosystemof an oyster, reef or wetlands,
things like this, the idea thatthese are themselves
infrastructure and can bedesigned and harnessed for use
(25:47):
by cities to provide servicesthis is something I've analyzed
a lot in my work over the lastlike 10 years in New York and in
Miami.
What I kind of have traced isthe way in which nature has come
to be defined in a new way asinfrastructure and then like
built and designed as accordingto that imaginary.
So it's again a question ofimaginary, where maybe this like
(26:08):
modern stereotype of the ideathat urban planners may have had
, that like nature was thisinert thing or like a waste or a
dump or something like thatoutside the city.
We're now in response to whatare seen as like the perceived
urgencies of the Anthropocene.
We see this turn towardsembracing nature and like
bringing it in and imagining itas something like very dynamic
and alive and like full ofcapacities.
(26:30):
And I think that we have tothink about this as I call it
Anthropocenic infrastructuralnature and imagining it as
something like very dynamic andalive and like full of
capacities.
And I think that we have tothink about this, as I call it
anthropocenic, infrastructuralnature, not because it's like
environmental and not becauseit's just about climate change,
but to get at this idea that theAnthropocene itself is taken as
a call and I'm not saying Iagree with this, but it's being
seen and defined as a callreconnect the human and nature
and like bring nature in,transform even the very basic
(26:54):
fundamental categories of likeWestern metaphysics, like
subject, object, city nature,things like human nature, things
like this.
It's really taken as thisimpetus to redefine the basic
categories of urban planning andthen to do urban planning
differently.
So anthropocenic has thatmeaning here.
Basically, this idea now thatyou see developed and then now
being brought into fruition inNew York, is that you can
(27:14):
restore something like theoyster reefs that once were mile
long around Manhattan.
You can engineer them andrestore them and then harness
their capacity to act as likebreakwaters to buffer the
effects of like storm surge froma hurricane or something like
that along the coast of a placelike Staten Island.
So this is an interestingproject by Scape Landscape
Architecture, kate Orff's firm,to build experimental sort of
(27:36):
like two-mile oyster reef off ofStaten Island, and this was one
of those rebuild by designcompetition awardees from
Hurricane Sandy back in, I think, 2013.
And it's now been completed, asfar as I understand, the
construction is fully done andthis is a really like
pathbreaking, really interestingproject the thinking about city
and nature, and infrastructuretoo because the idea is that,
(27:56):
like through their life cycle,oysters build these reefs, they
accumulate on top of each otherand provide this living
infrastructure that in some waymaybe offers a better buffer to
storm surge than a concreteseawall might, while at the same
time providing like habitat fororganisms and things like this.
And in a similar way, we seethe Everglades in South Florida
being talked about as aninfrastructure that could, if
(28:16):
it's restored to its pre-modernhydraulic flows, could act as
like a buffer on the saltwaterintrusion into the drinking
water supply in Miami's aquifer.
So these are very differentecosystems oyster reefs and the
Everglades, right but they'reboth being thought about as
infrastructures that can be likeredesigned and reengineered so
that they serve these functionsfor, ultimately, the survival of
(28:38):
the urban form that existsright now.
Stephanie Rouse (28:41):
It's an interesting new definition of
nature and infrastructure thefloating islands concept is
disconnecting from globalnetworks, and the weakness of
our global interconnectednesshas really been made apparent in
recent years with COVID andmany of the big hurricanes.
Is this a future that we'd beseeing even beyond Miami?
Do you think that othercommunities need to start maybe
(29:03):
taking more?
Stephanie Wakefield (29:03):
seriously.
I think it's definitely thezeitgeist, this like de-linking
impetus.
Of course, there's neverdelinking without relinking in
new ways.
Right, it's like creativedestruction.
You know, I mean, we can eventhink back to this sort of like
older ideas of magic, like, youknow, Giordano Bruno, or like
older ideas of linking andbinding reality as a process
that actually involves delinkingand then like selecting which
(29:26):
elements you want to piecetogether.
I mean, this is not somethingyou might normally hear talked
about in the urban design realm,but I think it's actually
pretty relevant here.
You know, I think there's apretty widespread sense that the
globalization model has been afailure on many different scales
and we can see that supplychain disruptions are only one
manifestation of that and itseems like a big movement away
from that global infrastructuraland governmental network model
(29:50):
is emergent in a lot ofdifferent ways.
I mean, the Trumpadministration's tariffs are
part of this.
You know, the idea ofrelocalizing manufacturing is
certainly part of this, but thisalso combines up with recent
efforts to build new cities, togenerate new cities, whether
these are like the networkstates, Balaji's network states
idea built on, like crypto andDAOs, or the idea of frontier
(30:11):
cities.
So there are all these newprojects in that kind of vein.
So there's, like California,forever, the line to Lhasa city,
this practice.
There's all these differentefforts to generate these new
cities that are kind of likeoperating on their own
governmental logics, their ownterritories, their own
infrastructural networks, and Ithink there's something very
interesting going on.
There's a lot of potentialthere to do interesting things.
A lot of this is couched in thisfrontier question.
(30:33):
There was once this drive tobuild cities in the wild
frontier and many cities werebuilt that way, which is, of
course, a very complexhistorical process, right.
But today there's been thissaturation of space and there's
this sense at least this is whatis described by a lot of
proponents of these projects isthe sense that to revive the
sort of like spirit or likereignite American imagination
(30:54):
this is what they say.
Trump says that you need tohave another sense of the
frontier, of the openness andthis like experimental freedom
to innovate spatially.
So a lot of these new citiesare couched in that thinking,
which I think is veryinteresting.
This has come up again with theproposal to sell a lot of
federal lands in response to thesort of housing shortages.
A lot of questions there, likewell, did.
(31:15):
Would the cities that you buildlook like?
Are we building just more likesprawl and strip malls, or are
we capable again of having likea massive process of
experimentation in urban form?
Could we take this moment, theneed to even like respond to
questions of housing andsomething like that?
Could it be an opportunity?
And also, could we take theopportunity of needing to
(31:36):
relocalize a lot ofmanufacturing and to innovate
and to think about technologicalexperimentation in the realm of
, like, space explorationmaterials, things like this?
Could we take all these newinnovations and new needs and
use that as an opportunity tokind of like generate new cities
that really are experimentingin the forms and the processes
of urbanization themselves?
I think that's an interestingprospect.
I don't know what it'll looklike and I don't think that it's
happening, and I'm not evensure that that's what's being
(31:56):
said per se or proposed, but Ithink it is an interesting
horizon to aim for and to thinkabout what that might mean.
I think what's going on in ElSegundo is kind of interesting
in this regard, because there'sa lot of experimentation in hard
tech manufacturing and thinkingabout can you really
manufacture drones in Americacompletely again, or what is the
infrastructure needed for Marscolonization and what cities can
(32:17):
support that kind ofmanufacturing.
So it's kind of like a 21stcentury experimental urbanism
which I think is playing outright now.
Jennifer Hiatt (32:25):
And switching from building new cities to
killing old ones.
I guess Herbicide hastraditionally been a
capitalistic restructuring offorestry development and I think
most of our listeners will bemost familiar with herbicide as
used during wartime.
But the book proposes a new wayof thinking about herbicide.
Can you explain what you werethinking there and how we could
(32:45):
reframe it and take it from sortof a mass destruction to an
opportunity for build?
Stephanie Wakefield (32:50):
This is another example of where I kind
of in the book, try to suspendthe assumptions that are built
into a lot of like urbanthinking and consider other
possibilities for some of theseconcepts that circulate, you
know.
So here with herbicide, I'mlooking at it in the context of
some of those islandizingprojects that we were talking
about a second ago and drawingon some of this more conceptual
work from the French philosopherAlexander Monin, and he has
(33:11):
written quite a bit about theidea of design as depresencing
or dismantling.
You know we tend to think ofdesign as like a creative
activity, but he suggests thatin the Anthropocene, in the 21st
century, we inherit these arehis terms, we inherit a world of
pretty negative faces.
Let's say, we inherit a lot oflike terrible urban planning.
We inherit a lot of terribleurban planning.
(33:32):
We inherit a lot ofinfrastructure that is
saturating the soil with poison,among other examples.
Right, perhaps moving forwardand revitalizing space and even
life has to also be a questionof dismantling a lot of that, a
lot of those forms, a lot ofthose infrastructures, even
those spaces, cutting out thedead weight like a forest fire
so that new life and new spacecan emerge.
And so I try to think aboutherbicide in that context.
(33:52):
Maybe there are some urbanforms that need to be killed and
destroyed so that new life canemerge.
And I talk about this in thecontext of that islandization
proposal, the islands of SouthFlorida because a big part of it
is actually like this delinkingprocess, like you were saying
before, delinking fromglobalization, from the global
political order, but also theglobal infrastructural network,
(34:13):
society, order, and so thinkingabout delinking as that process
that's really essential tocreating space for other forms
of life to emerge.
Herbicide is also something Itry to conceptualize as cutting
those ties.
So it's not just demolishinglike with a bulldozer, but it's
also cutting the ties of 21stcentury, like planetary
urbanization, which is thisplanetary network.
Stephanie Rouse (34:35):
And you talked a little bit earlier about
bottom-up imaginaries tending tobe a little more limited in
their ideas and dwelling in theproblems of the day.
How can we reclaim urbanimagination in the Anthropocene
in order to identifypossibilities for extreme
climate adaptation that abandonsthe frameworks and the
structures that we have today,that are really pretty limiting,
(34:56):
that are really pretty limiting, I think it's like the question
.
Stephanie Wakefield (34:58):
It's like we are totally in a crisis of
imagination.
It seems really obvious to alot of people, I think in
different domains.
And how do you break throughthat?
The number one reason, I think,that I ever tried to use this
concept of the Anthropocene inmy work was because it seemed
like a way to situate ourselvesand our thought and our practice
in the now and to say we are ina new epoch, the situation has
(35:21):
radically changed, we're not inthe 20th century anymore and so
therefore, our imaginaries, theyshould emerge from the now,
they should emerge from thesenew conditions and they should
respond to these new conditions.
So really, what I'm advocatingand have always advocated with
the Anthropocene is this ideathat we need an avant-garde for
urban thought and practice, kindof like an experimental,
future-oriented approach tourban thought and design.
(35:42):
And I think one of the greatvoices calling for something
similar is Neil Brenner.
I kind of refer to his work alot in this book because he made
this famous, maybecontroversial, claim and
argument for urban thought.
He was like we are stuck in the20th and maybe even the 19th
century, using these outdatedspatial concepts to describe a
radically new urban condition.
(36:04):
He said that, like urbanthought needs to let go of these
what he called inheritedcognitive maps of the urban
condition and enter into like anexperimental process of
thinking about what is actuallyemerging in the post-1970s
restructuring of the urbanglobal order, and to always be
rigorously forcing ourselves toquestion those assumptions and
(36:25):
those imaginaries that we'rejust sort of like dragging along
by rote.
And so I think just even beingattentive to that and always
seeing ourselves in andunderstanding ourselves in this
epochal new moment is reallyhelpful.
And beginning from the real,the real transformations
happening around us, rather thanvisions of them, maybe from
another century, can be veryhelpful, rather than like sort
of deductive analyses, you know,based on like old concepts.
(36:46):
Challenging ourselves togenerate our own is, I think,
the right methodological stance,but that doesn't mean I have
the answer.
But I think it's an attitudeand an orientation that's not
ideological and it's sort oflike free and experimental.
I think that's what's neededand from that I think that's
where the fresh and the reallyvital ideas and practices will
come.
Jennifer Hiatt (37:06):
And speaking of not having all the answers
because we all never should likeany good research-based book
you lay out new concepts andleave readers with questions for
further consideration.
So what major concepts are youactually hoping that your book
will help further and somebodywill take up and run with and
work into their own research?
Stephanie Wakefield (37:26):
What I call it in the book, the main like
argument, main concept that Iput out in the book is
Anthropocene urban theory,practice I think that's what I
put it or you might say, like21st century urban thought and
practice, and by that I meanwhat I was just describing this
experimental pre-orientation tounderstanding and intervening by
design in the present right.
(37:46):
I think we're in a time ofincredible transformations and
we talk about, like, the housingcrisis.
There's a lot of talk aboutthis in the news, but we might
remember what Martin Heideggersaid, like 70 years ago, that
even talk about housingshortages in post-war Europe
really obscured other questions,which are more even spiritual
and philosophical, that we mightwant to consider, about the
relationship between, like thehuman and space.
(38:06):
I think we're in a time wherewe want to retake that question
and really consider it on ourown terms, in our own 21st
century context.
We're living in a time ofprobably real profound
environmental transformations,but we're also living in a time
of great political upheaval, forsure, wherever you stand on
that, as well as a time when, inthe next few years, we're going
(38:27):
to send human beings to Mars.
We're thinking abouturbanization of Mars and so, to
kind of paraphrase, jg Ballard,the first city designed off
Earth will be probably not thatfar off and it will probably be
an American city.
Who will be the not that faroff?
And it will probably be anAmerican city who will be the
Robert Moses or Le Corbusier ofMars.
You know, I think these are thequestions that we want to have
in front of us, big, audacious,future-oriented questions, and I
(38:47):
think we want to approach themwith, like I said, experimental
openness to see what can come.
Stephanie Rouse (38:53):
And as this is booked on planning, what books
would you recommend our readerscheck out?
Stephanie Wakefield (39:04):
I've been reading a couple I really like
Pierre Menon Metamorphoses ofthe City, thinking about the
Greek project of the polis asthe foundational element of
Western civilization and whatspirit and like what orientation
to a higher human life wasimbued in the polis and did the
polis serve?
And how might returning to thatkind of thinking in our own
context actually help us movebeyond what we were describing
as basically like economic,uniform urbanism.
Think about what are theheights that urban design could
(39:26):
aspire to now, spiritually andphilosophically and even
aesthetically.
I also really love the SaltyUrbanism book by Jeff Huber and,
like I said, Diana Mitzoverfrom FAU, I think the most
interesting, coolest adaptationdesign proposal that I've seen
for living with water, you know,because there's always this
sense that South Florida couldbe a much wilder, more vibrant
place.
(39:46):
And maybe it was and that'sbeen paved over and in some ways
adaptation to sea level riseactually seems almost
paradoxically to open thepossibility of rewilding Florida
and I think their book kind ofbarks the imagination in that
way.
Stephanie Rouse (39:59):
I always love a good book on rewilding.
Yeah, so many interestingconcepts that come out of it.
Well, stephanie, thank you somuch for joining us on the show
to talk about your book Miamiand the Anthropocene, rising
Seas and Urban ResilienceTotally Thank you so much for
having me.
Stephanie Wakefield (40:13):
It was great talking to you.
Jennifer Hiatt (40:16):
We hope you enjoyed this conversation with
author Stephanie Wakefield onher book Miami and the
Anthropocene Rising Seas andUrban Resilience.
You can get your own copythrough the publisher at the
University of Minnesota Press orclick the link in the show
notes to take you directly toour affiliate page.
Remember to subscribe to theshow wherever you listen to
podcasts and please rate, reviewand share the show.
Thank you for listening andwe'll talk to you next time on
(40:37):
Booked, on Planning you.
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