On Architecture and the Greenfield

Affordable forms of residential urbanization raise a paradoxical question: On the one hand, cheap housing settlements worldwide devour thousands of hectares of arable fields at the periphery of growing cities. On the other hand, housing is a human right. This publication investigates complexities around the urbanization of agricultural land. For instance, while agrarian practices may be understood as a necessary yet endangered human activity, they also contain an imposing project aiming to subdue and control space, capital, resources, humans and non-humans through ideologies of ‘civilizing’ and productivity. “On Architecture and the Greenfield” is the second volume after “On Architecture and Greenwashing” (2023) in the series “The Political Economy of Space” edited by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology—EPFL. The collection of essays presents a cross-section of positions on architecture and its political economies from different perspectives. In this volume, Swarnabh Ghosh, Paulo Tavares, and others articulate stances forming broad theoretical frameworks around urbanization and agriculture—the so-called ‘Greenfield.’