‘it is important to realise that the truth of the Anthropocene is less about
what humanity is doing, than the traces that humanity will leave behind’ (Bronislaw Szerszynski)
Humans are now primarily an urban species, with about 55% of the population living in urban areas. By mid-century, about 7 out of 10 people are expected to live in cities and towns. In terms of urban land area, this is equivalent to building a city the size of New York City every 8 days. Cities account for about 70% of CO2 emissions from final energy use and the highest emitting 100 urban areas for 18% of the global carbon footprint. The accelerated growth of cities is perhaps now the most characteristic geo-physical feature of the so-called Anthropocene-in-the-making. Although it is the infrastructure of cities, including its road and electricity networks that are the most visible expression of human influence and inhabitation on the Earth from space, the most visible constructions on land may nevertheless be the most transient when subject to forces of erosion Like a giant footprint or burrow preserved in the rock record the massive trace fossils of cities will probably be made up of the subways, sewers, conduits and infrastructures presently below ground. (see technofossils) As sociologist Bronislaw Szerszynski sums it up: ‘it is important to realise that the truth of the Anthropocene is less about what humanity is doing, than the traces that humanity will leave behind’
In Provisional Cities, Renata Tysczcuk “touches on what it means to dwell within an unfolding disaster of human making, a world without stability — and yet continue to attempt the fiction of a settled life.” (p.8)
Philippe Petit 1974
The type of rock that makes up Manhattan Island is more intrinsic to its existence than anything else. Without Manhattan’s stable bedrock, the looming skyscrapers that are often conceived of as an integral part of its identity would not be supported enough to exist. Knowing that Philippe Petit walked between the towers and survived, but that the towers subsequently collapsed adds poignancy to this image. Perhaps it illustrates Tysczuk’s argument about provisional cities and the “shaking of being:” How should humans act when they have so little stability on offer?
In Provisional Cities, Tysczcuk calls the Anthropocene a period of greater unsettlement than our species has ever known. “This unsettlement refers not only to the fracturing and displacement of human lives, but also to the disjunctures and shifts of a dynamic Earth.” (p.223) “Urban poverty”, she goes on to explain, “magnifies geological, technological, and climatic hazards — these are disasters waiting to happen”
Makeshift Cities in the Desert
”In the Middle East, we were building camps: storage facilities for people. But the refugees were building a city. These are the cities of tomorrow. The average stay today in a camp is 17 years. That’s a generation. Let’s look at these places as cities.” Killian Kleinschmidt, UNHCR. (quoted in Tyszschuk, p.239)
Zaatari Camp Jordan
above: The subversion of Zaatari camp's plan through daily urban practices initiated by refugees
“Strategies of resistance, cooperation, adaptation, and resourcefulness may prove to be especially important in a fragile and fraught world of both diminished human agency and more-than-human agency gone awry.” Recent convulsions of earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, wildfires, drought, and conflict across the world have demonstrated the convergence of two different earthly mobilities: people moving across the Earth’s surface through economic and forced migrations, and the shifting ground beneath our feet. (Nigel Clark)