Urban farming and agrarian struggles are reshaping cities and urbanising landscapes. In Zurich and beyond, agroecological initiatives, political food movements, and global urbanisation projects reveal how urban and agrarian worlds are entangled and enmeshed – offering new ways to rethink planning, property, urban ecology, and the future of More
New highway corridors are being implanted at various scales – local, metropolitan, regional, and interregional – often bypassing existing routes and opening new speculative frontiers for urban land markets. This article periodises the different stages of highway construction in India during the neo-liberal era.
In the context of the prevailing global rightward and populist shift, there exists a largely unexplored yet profound nexus between authoritarian neoliberalism and infrastructure-led extended urbanisation beyond the city. Drawing on insights from extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted along India’s highway corridors, this paper examines the authoritarianism and social More
For a century, highways have shaped cities, economies, and national identities. But in November 2024, Swiss voters rejected a CHF 5 billion highway expansion, signaling a shift away from infrastructure-led urbanisation. As nations worldwide double down on highway-driven growth, Switzerland’s moratorium invites us to rethink mobility, territorial organisation, More
The Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies is young and evolving. While it builds on a rich research history across various chairs, its identity still continues to take shape through its doctoral community, lecture series, and biannual research colloquia. In this context, it is particularly noteworthy that the More
Amid the ongoing transformation of agrarian territories in peripheral geographies across the world through extended urbanisation, this paper delves into the persistence of peasant and pastoral strategies amidst the closing down effects of land enclosure and fragmentation.
Multi-disciplinarity is on the agenda for the contemporary architectural debate, and Researching Otherwise – edited by ETH-based scholar Nitin Bathla – takes a broad look at the topic. Divided into three chapters dedicated to transdisciplinary, sensory, and restitutive methods, the book presents pluriversal research projects, which range from More
Methodological, epistemic, and ontological borders have long prevented landscape and urban studies from engaging in transdisciplinary dialogue, sensuousness, and affect. Researching Otherwise uncovers possibilities for deploying sensory, collaborative, and restitutive methodological tools to craft spaces for producing knowledge from pluriversal worlds. These methods connect researchers and their objects More
The website «Open Access ETH Studio Basel» presents a selection of publications by the ETH Studio Basel as open access. ETH Studio Basel, Contemporary City Institute, was founded in 1999 as an institute of urban research at the ETH Zürich Department of Architecture by architects Roger Diener, Jacques More
Sociology professor Christian Schmid will retire this year. In an interview with Andres Herzog, he looks back on his time at the ETH Studio Basel, which sparked discussions with the book “Switzerland: An Urban Portrait” and whose publications will be freely available online as Open Access from May.
You missed the keynote speech of Roberto Luís Monte-Mór about extended urbanisation in the Brazilian Amazonia? Or you would like to pick and see one of the panels only? The choice is: New Urban Vocabularies, Concepts of Extended Urbanisation, Agrarian Urbanisms, Urban Design and Territories of Extended Urbanisation, More
Die Departementsleitung Architektur der ETH Zürich hat Prof. Maria Conen und Prof. Dr. Elli Mosayebi ins Leitungsgremium des ETH Wohnforum – ETH CASE gewählt. Sie treten ihre Position am 1. November 2023 als Nachfolgerinnen von Prof. Hubert Klumpner und Prof. Dr. Christian Schmid, langjährige Mitglieder des Direktoriums, an.
Across the different vernaculars of the world’s urban majorities, there is renewed bewilderment as to what is going on in the cities in which they reside and frequently self-build. Prices are unaffordable and they are either pushed out or strongly lured away from central locations.
18, 19, 20 October 2023, colloquium and exhibition. Link to the video of this event The conference debates themes including patterns and processes of urbanisation in agricultural territories, processes of extractivism, and the role of infrastructure, movements of people, goods and resources, and the state space in relation More
29-31 May 2023 | ETH Zürich. Since 1991 the INURA conference has been combining urban research and action using a very successful format: A few days in a city guided by local groups, when the INURA conference creates opportunities for local and international exchanges, and a few days More
25 May, 18:30 – 20:00 (NEW TIME!) | Hochparterre Bücher AG, Schöneggstrasse 27, 8004 Zürich. Discussion with: Ileana Apostol, Stefan Kipfer, Alvaro Sevilla Buitrago, Christian Schmid, Nitin Bathla. This book presents an encompassing, detailed and thorough overview of Lefebvre’s theory of space and of the urban.
Sie haben das Kolloquium verpasst? Die Filmaufnahme ist jetzt online! Wir befinden uns in einer der grössten Abbruchwelle der Stadt Zürich. Diese dramatische Entwicklung polarisiert, die sozialen Auswirkungen auf die Stadt Zürich (und anderswo) muss diskutiert werden. Erreichen wir das erwünschte Ziel mit Abbrüchen von erschwinglichem Wohnraum? Wie More
A discussion with Shubhra Gururani, Christian Schmid, Michael Lukas, Giulia Torino, Metaxia Markaki, and Faiq Mari How do «peripheries» form? And how does urbanization generate processes of peripheralization? Today, novel patterns of urbanization are crystallizing in agricultural areas and in remote landscapes, challenging inherited conceptions of the urban More
20 October 2022, 18:30 (2 December: 17:30) | ETH Zürich, Neunbrunnenstrasse 50, ONA Fokushalle (E7), Zürich. This year, the LUS Talks will engage diverse perspectives from practitioners and theorists addressing South America’s complex social and ecological landscapes.
PROGRAMM GEÄNDERT! 22. September bis 8. Dezember 2022, jeweils Donnerstag, 13:45 – 15:30 | ETH Zürich, Hönggerberg, HIL E1. Diese Vorlesungsreihe vermittelt einen Rückblick auf die Arbeit der Dozentur Soziologie am D-ARCH und einen aktuellen Überblick über sozialwissenschaftliche Stadtforschung.
The SAH Award for Film and Video recognizes annually the most distinguished work of film or video on the history of the built environment. «Not Just Roads is a well-filmed, focused and nuanced take on the impact of highway building in contemporary India on the disenfranchised. The film brings More