Drawing from case-study regions in Asia and Europe and specific sites within the Zurich region, the project aims at better understanding processes of extended urbanisation in agricultural territories.
What is the future of the manifold agricultural territories across the world that support contemporary cities? While discussions on urban sustainability have focused on cities and urban regions, many agricultural territories are equally exposed to rapid and far- reaching urban transformation processes with massive social and environmental implications, opening a research gap for ‘agri- urbanisms’. Drawing from case-study regions in Asia and Europe and specific sites within the Zurich region, the project aims at better understanding processes of extended urbanisation in agricultural territories. Building on these analytical investigations using qualitative and quantitative methods, the module aims to contribute to new conceptions of these territories in urban theory as well as develop largescale urban- territorial design strategies and governance models for ‘agri- urbanisms’, based on the principles of agroecology and sustainable urban development.
This exhibition presents processes of extended urbanization through four case studies of agrarian landscapes followed by a map of agri-territorial potentials in the metropolitan region of Zurich, an investigation of agroecological soil systems, an analysis of the various contributions to people from agricultural land, and examples of transformative practices and agroecological repair in the Canton of Zürich.
Through the analysis of case-studies, situated in different agrarian regions, the project aims at a better understanding of processes of extended urbanisation in agricultural territories, exploring their urban challenges and potentials of transformation. By analysing selected processes in these territories, namely 1) operationalization of agriculture; 2) peripheralisation of mountain regions; and 3) enclosure and fragmentation of agricultural landscapes, we aim to enrich the vocabulary with which we describe and conceive novel patterns and processes of extended urbanisation. The module combines detailed qualitative analysis with quantitative geospatial analysis and modelling, thereby linking the social, political and cultural aspects of urbanisation to transformations in land use patterns, soil ecosystems and ecosystem services.
Case Study: Johor State, Malaysia
Topic: Plantation agriculture and rural transformation
Keywords: Industrialisation of agriculture
Researcher: Hans Hortig (D-ARCH, FCL)
Oil palm plantations are agrarian monocultural territories organised through hierarchical top-down management practices to assemble land, labour, and capital for the extraction of resources. Over the past century, Malaysia and Indonesia have become global palm oil production hubs, comprising 85 per cent of the world’s output. In Johor State, Malaysia, – a core zones of palm oil production, refining, and trade – three-quarters of agrarian land are covered by oil palm monocultures. Those plantations shape socio-ecological spaces on a vast scale leading to soil depletion, habitat loss and a risk of ecological collapse.
This project investigates the entanglement of agro-industrial production and urbanisation focusing on oil palm plantations in Johor. We explore how these processes intersect, highlighting their mutual dependencies and complexities.
The research exposes the specificities of different modes of production – smallholders, state resettlement schemes and large-scale estates. The different ownership structures, plot sizes and productive arrangements facilitate distinct modalities of extended urbanisation. To unravel those processes, the research mobilises the notion of operationalisation of territory to bring discourses on the Plantationocene into a dialogue with critical urban studies.
Image: Sub-urban housing development on a oil estate estate in Johor, Malaysia, Hans Hortig, 2019
Map: Hans Hortig 2019
Case Study: Sakon Nakhon, Thailand
Topic: Contradictions of bioenergy production
Keywords: Dispersed smallholdership, resource frontiers
Researcher: Dr. Hiromi Inagaki (FCL)
A region far off distantiated from the political and economic centre of Bangkok, Northeast Thailand has long been dominated by smallholding rice cultivation. Since the 1990s, the region has witnessed a surge in sugar factory construction. Large-scale investments have targeted not just sugar production, but rather electricity generation with the use of its by-product, bagasse, as a fuel. The latter involves a fixed contract with electricity authorities regulating ‘power’ circulations. This, in turn, necessitates steady supplies of bagasse, that is, sugarcane.
Our research aims to better understand ways in which the diversified capitalist production of ‘sweet power’ is operationalised, conditioned or disrupted. In particular, the project investigates socio-spatial and techno-political practices of the farmers, bioenergy producers and energy authorities. It does so by engaging critical views on territory and ‘power’ circulations.
Initial findings suggest that the territory for sugarcane farming in the Thai-Lao borderland is expanding into topologically unsuitable land. The yield there is low there, but the number of smallholding tenancy is increasing. Those smallholders rely on loans from the capitalist producer for fertiliser and mechanical inputs.
Map: Tiantong Gu, Naomi Hanakata, Hiromi Inagaki, Chairat Khamha, 2023
Image: Hiromi Inagaki 2023
Case Study: Delhi, India
Topic: Agrarian land and infrastructure expansion
Keywords: Restorative commoning, wasteland governmentality
Researcher: Dr. Nitin Bathla (D-ARCH)
Demographically, the extended metropolitan region of Delhi is one of the largest and most extensive urban conurbations in the world. Set within a fertile and productive agrarian hinterland and criss-crossed with agrarian infrastructure such as irrigation canals, the conurbation stretches out for hundreds of kilometres along highway corridors. Although the region is already extremely densely connected, there are attempts at introducing further highway corridors in the region bypassing the existing network. These state-led corridor projects are promoted as harbingers of prosperity, connectivity, and economic development in previously bypassed agrarian hinterlands. However, the extended urbanisation of these corridors instead enforces a form of wasteland governmentality enabling the enclosure and environmental pillaging of agrarian land and environmental commons.
This research finds how such processes of state-led extension are inherently incomplete and uncertain allowing contesting claims and alternative futures to emerge over the urbanisation that these corridors seek to forge. This research identifies how subaltern groups and communities and their non-human companions resist the closing down effects of enclosure through transient and restorative commoning.
Image: A transhumant pastoral herd occupies an urban fallow on the peripheries
Map: Nitin Bathla, 2019
Case Study: Arcadia,Greece
Topic: Mountainous region, land struggles and extended citizenship
Keywords: Land-grabbing, energy landscapes, socio-ecologies of care
Researcher: Metaxia Merkaki (D-ARCH)
This research revisits the mythicised landscapes of Arcadia in Greece, framing a contemporary mountainous region undergoing significant depopulation. It reveals that beneath the image of a rural and bucolic backdrop, social struggles and dispossessions occur. Moreover, recent economic, environmental and energy crises have resulted in socio-ecological raptures, land dispossessions and the enclosure of commons and agricultural land, outlining a broader process of peripheralisation.
The work employs a transductive and transdisciplinary research approach. It unfolds through oral and embodied ways of learning, engaging in qualitative, ethnographic analysis of the everyday lived experience of mountainous regions. It is conducted through multi-sited fieldwork on Mount Mainalon, encompassing pastures, olive groves, and the forest.
The research finds that in this landscape, peripheralisation emerges as a process of extended urbanisation, a dynamic multi-scalar process shaped by uneven urbanisation, prominently manifesting through moments of “crisis”. This observation advocates for the radical reconceptualization of the experience of periphery at various spatial scales, exploring both the socioecological implications of peripheralisation, as well as the emancipatory potential latent in ex-centric territories.
map: Philippe Rekacewicz, 2021
Image: “Grazing on pastoral commons before land is enclosed for the installation of a wind-turbin park”, Metaxia Markaki, 2018
The study proposes a new territorial concept for Zürich as an “Agroecological Region,” encompassing various population densities, infrastructures, production surfaces, natural resources, and ecological features, striving to balance urbanization with agriculture and natural environments, promoting sustainable and ecologically production and lifestyles. As a framework, it enables the development of regional research approaches and hybrid design agendas within identified “Agriterritories of Potentials” by highlighting existing opportunities. The project aims to emphasise nature-based design solutions that counter the prevailing reliance on technological fixes and challenge the attempts of agroecological priorities in spatial planning and equitable governance across the functional and ecological metropolis.
Case Study: Agriterritories Zurich
Topic: Potentials for an Agroecoligical Region
Keywords: Critical cartography, agriculture territories, framework of design agendas in emerging land typologies
Researcher: Karoline Kostka (D-ARCH, ETHZ)
The research conceptualises seven composite urbanisation typologies in agricultural land. These novel hybrid land categories have emerged as a result of comprehensive regional fieldwork. They were developed incrementally through cartography, utilising a non-automated quantitative and qualitative multi-criteria analysis alongside scholarly, empirical, and ethnographic investigations. The approach links over two hundred indicators, including relational, physical, geomorphological, ecological, social, political, and cultural factors, and links them to changes in land use patterns, soil functionality, and ecosystem services, covering both high and low-density areas. The devised Agriterritories consolidate specific agroecological potentials, address challenges, and outline actionable areas within each composite category. Operating integratively across multiple scales, they emphasise critical territorial transformation and design objectives stemming from their identified inherent potential.
Seven Agriterritories of Potentials, Chair of Architecture and Territorial Planning and Chair of Urban Sociology, ETH Zurich D-ARCH and ETH Future Cities Lab Global, Karoline Kostka and Muriz Djurdjevic, 2020–23.
Working with new land typologies enables well-informed and practical approaches to regional development, considering resource management, biodiversity, and urbanisation while emphasising socio-ecological strategic decision-making. The suggested level of cartographic precision is a deliberate methodological aspect of the critical territorial approach.
Case Study: Canton of Zurich, Switzerland
Topic: Soil Quality. Potentials for Multifunctional Soil
Keywords: Soil ecology and multifunctionality, urbanisation`s effect on agricultural soil function, soil degradation, replenishing soil potentials
Researcher: Dr Kevin Vega (D-USYS, ETHZ)
Agroecological systems are built upon their soils. Yet, soil quality is often ignored outside of agricultural production. Even there, soils are unsustainably degraded by intensive agriculture while their shortcomings are temporarily mitigated by inputs. Soils are multifunctional systems determined by their physicochemical properties, histories, and management. We expanded upon existing rural soil functional assessments to determine how urbanisation has affected soil function. Six soil functions were estimated from soil properties (Water Regulation, Carbon Sequestration, Pollution Regulation, Nutrient Retention, Agricultural Potential, and Biodiversity Support). While no soil can be best at providing every function, degraded, stony, and compacted soils are limited in which functions they can supply. Below is a comparison of extremes. Soil A is a high quality agricultural soil from the Limmattal threatened by urban expansion. Its balanced texture, low compaction, and stone content allow for both nutrient and water regulation while still being excellent agricultural soils. Soil B is from the rugged Toggenberg hills. These soils provide limited functions due to their high stone content and slope with minimal topsoil due to persistent erosion.
1. Graph of soil function between soils with (Data from NABO and Dr. Lucie Greiner) very high quality (Soil A- Limmattal) low quality (Soil B- Toggenberg)
2-4 Sampling forest, suburban, and urban soils in the Zurich region (Kevin Vega, 2022–2023)
Case Study: Canton of Zurich
Topic: Designing Agroecological Visions for the Zurich Territory
Students of D-ARCH, ETHZ and ENAC, EPFL MAS in Urban and Territorial Design (MAS UTD, FS 2022-2023)
Teaching Team: Assoc. Prof. Milica Topalović (D-ARCH, ETHZ), Dr Nancy Couling (D-ARCH, ETHZ), Alice Clarke (D-ARCH, ETHZ) Karoline Kostka /D-ARCH, ETHZ) Muriz Djurdjevic (D-ARCH, ETHZ) Nazli Tumerdem (D-ARCH, ETHZ)
The Masters in Advanced Studies, beginning in 2021, is taught by EPFL and ETH Zürich bridging a link between the two schools on urban and territorial design under Professor Paola Viganò and Ass.Prof Milica Topalović. The research focuses on transformative practices and agroecological repair in the Canton of Zürich. The students challenged the current agricultural system of Switzerland that is depleting the soil, draining the wetlands, reinforcing monocultural crops and reducing the biodiversity both in urban and rural territories.The studios titled “The Fabric of Agroecology” and “Agroecological Repair” produced projects focusing on, amongst others, regenerative practices and social networks of communities under different “Agriterritories” of the canton such as wetlands, crop rotation plains, pasturelands and vital streams.
1. The Milky Way by Elvira Kinzner, Ji Min An, Thomas Gruber. (MAS UTD, FS 2023)
2. A Fantasy of Pastoral Diversity by Akshar Gajjar, Alice Clarke, Chaido Kaproulia (MAS UTD, FS 2022)
3. Soil as Public Good by Ece Emanetoglu, Nadia Nika (MAS UTD, FS 2022)
4. Tasting Grounds by Xiang Lin, Nabila Larasati Pranoto, Maria Jose Castañeda Valbuena, and Emma Kaufmann LaDuc (MAS UTD, FS 2023)
5. Hydroecological Landscapes by Dylan Torri (MScLA, FS 2023) Viviane Viniarski, and Sonia Simone (MAS UTD, FS 2023)
Coming Soon: Video
ETH MAS Urban and Territorial Design, 2022 and 2023,
Food and Territories / [NEW] New Urban Agendas under Planetary Urbanisation
Principal Investigators: Asst. Prof. Dr Naomi C. Hanakata (NUS, CDE), Prof. Dr Christian Schmid (D-ARCH, ETHZ), Assoc. Prof. Milica Topalović (D-ARCH, ETHZ)
Co-Investigators: Prof. Dr Adrienne Grêt-Regamey (D-BAUG, ETHZ), Prof. Dr Christoph Kueff er (HSR/ D-USYS, ETHZ), Prof. Dr Johan Six (D-USYS, ETHZ)
Researchers: Dr Nitin Bathla (D-ARCH, ETHZ), Hans Hortig (FCL/ D-ARCH, ETHZ), Dr Hiromi Inagaki (FCL), Karoline Kostka (FCL/ D-ARCH, ETHZ), Metaxia Markaki (D-ARCH, ETHZ), Matteo Riva (D-BAUG, ETHZ), Dr Kevin Vega (D-USYS, ETHZ)
Coordinator: Dr Nancy Couling (D-ARCH, ETHZ)