From Ecocide to Repair?

Introduction

What role do spaces beyond the city play in urbanisation? How is the metabolism of cities being transformed in an era of climate breakdown and how is it bound to the extended spatialities of social and ecological inequality?

Cities have always depended on more-than-city landscapes for resources and waste absorption. Under conditions of planetary urbanisation, however, the scale and intensity of these dependencies have increased. The hinterlands that sustain urban life are no longer the agricultural fields, forests and quarries immediately surrounding the city. Instead, they encompass vast, interconnected geographies stretched across the planet: agro-industrial zones, mining regions, energy corridors, logistical networks, infrastructural systems and waste landscapes.

These operational landscapes form the metabolic bases of contemporary urbanisation. They sustain urban life while bearing the disproportionate burdens of extraction, dispossession, ecological degradation, pollution and uneven spatial development. Yet they remain largely invisible in mainstream urban discourse, which continues to equate the urban with dense populations and vertical infrastructure.

Against this backdrop, this public talk reflects on the hinterland question under planetary urbanisation. As capitalist supply chains, energy systems and waste flows weave cities into multiscalar networks of more-than-city geographies, the conceptual and representational tools through which we understand the urban must be fundamentally rethought.

Making these planetary entanglements visible – and therefore contestable – is among the most urgent challenges for urban theory, research, design and policy in the face of the accelerating socio-ecological crises of our time.

Programme

Welcome and Introduction

Dunya Bouchi, Aedes, Berlin
Philipp Misselwitz, Habitat Unit, TU Berlin

Impulse Talks

Neil Brenner and Nikos Katsikis, Urban Theory Lab, University of Chicago / TU Delft
Anke Hagemann and David Bauer, Habitat Unit, TU Berlin
Elia Apostolopoulou, Imperial College London
Angelos Varvarousis, Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autonomy de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB)

Panel Discussion

with the contributors, moderated by Dunya Bouchi

Contributors

Elia Apostolopoulou is an Associate Professor at Imperial College London working across political ecology and urban geography. Her research examines the social, spatial and environmental injustices of urban infrastructural expansion and the role of grassroots activism in contesting them and opening pathways toward radically different futures. She is also a Senior Associate at the University of Cambridge and an editor at Dialogues in Human Geography.

David Bauer is an architect and urban researcher. He has been an associate at the Habitat Unit, where he taught urban design and architecture with a strong focus on infrastructure regimes and system design as a critical lever for the transformation towards sustainability and resilience. David is co-author of the book Power, Flows, and Transformation – Portraits of Berlin-Brandenburg Energy Spaces (2025).

Neil Brenner is the Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology and Director of the Urban Theory Lab (UTL) at the University of Chicago. His writing and teaching focus on the challenges of reinventing our approach to urbanisation in relation to the planetary socio-environmental crises of our time.

Anke Hagemann is an architectural and urban researcher and acting professor at Habitat Unit, the Chair of International Urbanism, Technische Universität Berlin. Her current research topics include global commodity circulation and urban space, urban-rural metabolisms, extended urbanisation and co-creation in strategic planning processes.

Nikos Katsikis is Assistant Professor of Urbanism at TU Delft and researcher at the Urban Theory Lab (UTL). His work operates at the intersection of urbanisation theory, design and geospatial analysis, examining the spatial dimensions of urban metabolism under planetary urbanisation.

Philipp Misselwitz holds the Chair of International Urbanism at Habitat Unit, Technische Universität Berlin, and serves as Executive Director at the non-profit think tank Bauhaus Earth. He analyses options for actor-based urban development and rural urbanisation processes as well as climate restoration in the building sector.

Angelos Varvarousis is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autonomy de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and director of the master’s programme Degrowth: Ecology, Economics, Policy. His work examines post-growth transitions in Mediterranean regions, focusing on undoing harmful spatial relations and achieving high social wellbeing and ecological sustainability within the limits.

Publications

The discussion draws on two recent publications by the protagonists. A related book launch will take place on Tuesday, 9 June, at 19:30 at Pro qm.

Neil Brenner, Swarnabh Ghosh, Nikos Katsikis
Environments of Planetary Urbanization
Jovis, 2025, 978-3-98612-209-6

Grga Bašić, Neil Brenner, Mariano Gomez-Luque, Nikos Katsikis
Data-Spheres of Planetary Urbanization
Jovis, 2025, 978-3-98612-270-6