Towards an Arctic Assemblage, the book

open access here: link


This book, funded by SUN, emerges as a disciplinary extension of the exhibition project Transforming Legacy: The Evolution of Extractive Cultures in the European Arctic, presented at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 2025.

The exhibited work explores the complex layering of extractive and traditional cultures in European Arctic and sub-Arctic environments. At the core of the project lies a tension between technologically advanced systems developed for resource extraction and long-term, traditional forms of knowledge and intelligence.

In the book, we show how the current model of Arctic urban development is reshaping territorial and social structures through centralized, smart urban logics. By contrast, we investigate how traditional Arctic intelligence offers alternative, rural, and dispersed approaches to sustainability that may hold renewed relevance for contemporary forms of inhabitation.

This evolution of Arctic and extractive culture reveals how advanced digital systems and AI are transforming human relationships with land, generating both conflict and unexpected intersections. In the book, we propose to examine these transformations through the theoretical lens of assemblage: a dynamic juxtaposition of elements and systems that are often distant or seemingly incompatible—automation and ancestral knowledge, industrial infrastructures and fragile ecosystems, remote sensing and embodied traditions.

Predatory cities, the book

Predatory Urbanism:
The Metabolism of Megaprojects in Asia
Agatino Rizzo (with Anindita Mandal)

Preview the book

Rizzo, A. (2021). Predatory Urbanism: The Metabolism of Megaprojects in Asia (with Mandal, A.). Edward Elgar. https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781800881068.xml

Book launch at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2021 (videos)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMN3zrKuLAbR_-h8Tl4QXrfbD7BL6BZcp

Buy the book

https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/predatory-urbanism-9781800881068.html

Book reviews

https://antipodeonline.org/2022/04/27/new-asian-capital-spectacular-developmentalist-urbanisms-in-action/

 

https://www.urbanstudiesonline.com/review/predatory-urbanism-the-metabolism-of-megaprojects-in-asia/

Synopsis

Resources in their various forms are at the basis of our urban economies. The extraction, alongside with the distribution, processing and disposal, of resources, being them natural, energy, or human, is a main driver for planetary urbanization. However, under a market-led economic regime, which is characterized by boom and bust cycles, the space produced by the resource-extraction economic model is from time to time discarded with huge environmental and social losses world wide.

 

"Predatory urbanism" is that condition by which tangible and intangible resource networks are cheaply exploited for the making of so-called competitive/attractive cities. Talking of predatory cities means studying the extended resource-urbanization nexus that underpins neoliberal city-making. Predatory urban making is not necessarily isolated, disconnected, and opportunistic but implies a relational connection, by virtue of tapping on the global production network of “cheap” resources, with other socially and environmentally troubled areas.

While recent concerns about climate change and urban resilience have emphasized resource efficiency i.e. consume less and use better each unit of resource, I think that this target alone isn't sufficient to truly transform society towards a more resilient horizon. We need to rethink the resource-urbanization nexus and the way it affects our lifestyle and cities. Therefore, smart cities and “green resilience” thinking does nothing to deal with the social and political aspects of human-nature exploitation at the planetary scale, i.e. where most of the Earth surface is affected by urban-led extraction processes of raw materials, goods, food, and human bodies for labor. Research shows that seldom smart experiments are able to transform society and their institutions

Tackling todays’ predatory "resource-urbanization nexus" means to go beyond periphery-centre or urban-rural or nature-human binaries and re-imagine society around the concept of resourcefulness. Resourceful communities are not only “ingenious, able, bright, talented, sharp, capable, creative, clever, imaginative, inventive, quick-witted” but are also communities that put the harnessing, caring, saving, and use of resources at the core of their civil statute. In my latest work I suggest resources in its various forms (natural and human) be intimately integrated with humanity and its built environment. To articulate such a vision, I am involved in a number of research projects that deal respectively with energy aesthetics and resource regions in Asia and Europe.

References to previous and ongoing work on Predatory Urbanism (complete list of publications)

 

Rizzo, A., Sjöholm, J., & Luciani, A. (2024). Smart (en) ing the Arctic city? The cases of Kiruna and Malmberget in Sweden. European Planning Studies, 32(1), 59-77.

https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2023.2217850

Rizzo, A., & Petruccioli, A. (2023). Khalifa versus Prometheus: Green ethics and the struggle for contemporary sustainable urbanism. Digest of Middle East Studies. https://doi.org/10.1111/dome.12291

Rizzo, A. (2021). Rethinking Resilience: Towards Resourceful Communities. In Melis, A., Medas, B., Pievani, T. (eds.). Resilient Communities. Catalogue Italian Pavilion, Biennale di Architettura di Venezia, 96-101. ISBN: 978-8894830682 (Academia) (RG)

Rizzo, A. (2020). The limits of green resilience in urban planning: two cases from the global South. Urban Studies (special issue). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098018812009

Rizzo, A., Sordi, J. (2020). Resources and Urbanization in the Global Periphery: perspectives from urban and landscape studies. Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning. DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2020.102647.

 

Rizzo, A., Ekelund, B., Bergström, J., Ek, K. (2020). Participatory Design as a Tool to Create Resourceful Communities in Sweden. In C. Smaniotto Costa, M. Mačiulienė, M. Menezes, B. Goličnik Marušić (Eds.), Co-Creation of Public Open Places. Practice - Reflection - Learning, Lusófona University Press, Lisbon, 95-107. DOI: 10.24140/2020-sct-vol.4-1.6.

Rizzo, A., 2019. Predatory cities: Unravelling the consequences of resource-predatory projects in the global South. Urban Geography, 40(1), pp.1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2018.1505156

Time Capsule (2023, Venice Architecture Biennale)

Architecture and design play a crucial role in the current energy transition. On one hand, a sound and aware architecture design process can greatly reduce the embodied and operational energy of our living space while, on the other hand, users’ experience and behavior must be considered to ensure their engagement and wellbeing. 

We used this approach as a starting point for our submission to the Biennale. Our artifact displays the results of two combined courses in architecture and design, which were included as part of an ongoing research project (Nordic Innovative Living) at LTU funded by the Swedish Energy Agency. 

The project's vision was a smart home where people live in symbiosis with the surrounding nature and use attractive solutions for a zero-climate footprint. The goal was to co-design a future model for smart homes built in Swedish Lapland, with smart solutions and services for effective and lasting behavioral changes and,  through this, to spread knowledge about how people of different ages, abilities, social strata and gender can live more sustainably. 

The project/course used a trans-disciplinary and co-creative design approach to explore people's behaviors with, and barriers to, smart energy technology. The students of architecture and design cooperated in creating solutions for sustainable housing and living in and through the co-creation of a smart home.

Our artifact collects a selection of proposals developed by students involved in this project/course. It takes the form of an archival storage drawer unit, where the work of the students is stored, presented, and shared with the public. A reference for this concept is the exhibition "A is for Archive" at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, which exhibits the contents of Warhol’s so-called time capsules. Similarly, the artifact will embody this concept to offer the visitors an interpretation on how the future sustainable living could look like.

 

read more ...

Collaboration with the University of Hiroshima in architecture

The research subject in architecture at Luleå University of Technology and Hiroshima University have been granted a seed collaboration project to study urban sustainability in small towns.

The project is funded by MIRAI 2.0, a collaboration programme between Japanese and Swedish Universities.

"For this pilot work, the case studies will be municipalities in northern Sweden (Norrbotten, Västerbotten) and Japan (Higashi-Hiroshima and Fukuyama), says Agatino Rizzo, professor and Head of Subject in Architecture at Luleå University of Technology

 link...

Arctic Five Chair in Architecture

Luleå University of Technology is pleased to announce the appointment of three Chairs to The Arctic Five network: Christina Allard, Agatino Rizzo and Karolina Parding. 

 The Arctic Five is a partnership between Luleå University of Technology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Umeå University, the University of Lapland and the University of Oulu, whom together aim to lead the way on key Arctic issues. The mission of the alliance is to advance and share knowledge, develop education, and create innovations for the advancement of our region and a sustainable Arctic. 
As part of the Arctic Five’s flagship Chairs & Fellows programme, the Chairs initiative represents a group of scholars with the will and capacity to form original research and education alliances. Thus today, the Arctic Five institutions have collectively appointed 15 Arctic Five Chairs – all of whom are highly ranked scholars from across the human, social, natural and technical sciences.

 Agatino Rizzo, Professor in Architecture, whose research interest include urban sustainability, smart urbanism, Arctic towns, climate goals, urban planning, and carbon neutral society. 
– The Arctic Five Chair will be an invaluable opportunity to get access to a prestigious network of scholars, institutions, and networks that will enable me to develop further my studies in urban sustainability in the Arctic region, says Agatino Rizzo.

Arctic chair results:

• MIRAI collaboration with University of Hiroshima (prof. A. Sharifi), Q method workshops in Umeå and Luleå (link)
• Arctic hypothesis exhibition and catalogue (link)
• Special issue on ordinary cities (link)
• Interreg Aurora Re-Archtive project (with Centria, Lapland U, etc.)
• Application Venice Biennale 2025

PhD School Urban Arctic

The PhD summer school will explore how sustainable development in resource extraction territories is being shaped and transformed by local and global trends, having a special focus on the Arctic region. The aim of the course is to analyse resource territories with a transdisciplinary perspective and to critically select and integrate methods. The participants will be introduced to local case studies and relevant topics but will be also asked to present and share their own research with their peers. The participants will work in groups on a conference-type poster that will be presented to and discussed by their peers and the teachers at the end of the course. Post-course work: develop a conference style paper in groups.

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Prosumer's perspective in cultural heritage districts

 

The purpose of this project is to develop, test and evaluate a method by which prosumers who live and / or work in environments with cultural-historical values are motivated and given the opportunity to integrate solar cells (funded by STEM)

more infos

Territories of Extraction: Mapping Palimpsests of Appropriation

Valley section of appropriation (Berta Morata based on Geonorge, LKAB, NaturalEarth, SLU, historical maps)

 

 

This research (PhD student Berta Morata, supervisors: Agatino Rizzo, Andrea Luciani, advisor: Chiara Cavalieri)—framed as a methodological contribution and at the intersection between the critical urban, urban political ecology and world-ecology disciplines—builds on Corboz’s metaphor of ‘territory as a palimpsest’ to explore the representation of the socio-economic and ecological processes underpinning uneven development under extractive capitalist urbanization. While the palimpsest approach has typically been used to map transformations of more traditional urban morphologies, this work focuses instead on remote extraction territories appropriated by the global economy and integral to planetary urbanization. The thesis suggests the central notion of ‘palimpsests of appropriation’ as a lens to map the extraction processes. It does so in its multi-scalar and temporal dimensions and on the basis of the three intertwined frames—i.e., the productive, distribution and mediation palimpsest—shortly exemplifying its use on the ground for the iron ore extraction territory in the Swedish-Norwegian Arctic. With this, the research contributes to the development of an expanded representational methodology and conception of territories of extraction—where social and natural production are brought together—illustrating how appropriation has been (re)shaping each of the frames throughout historical thresholds, but also how socio-natures are being (re)made in its image.

more infos...

RES-LINK: Workshop on Resources and Urbanization in the Arctic

Theme

Resource valorization and urbanization processes are intertwined, leading to the construction of cities and infrastructures as well as the extensive manipulation of the landscape. From time to time, under a market-led economic regime, cities, infrastructures and landscape are discarded with huge environmental and social losses. There is the need to better understand the so-called “resource-urbanization nexus” (Rizzo, 2018) to truly transform cities and regions and make them sustainable.

Case Studies

The Arctic is an excellent case study to unpack the complexities of this nexus. This region is going through rapid transformations that are led by the resource and logistic industries as well as intra-regional and international migration. However, this apparently peripheral part of the globe is deeply integrated with the world economy since this latter is dependent on the Arctic’s natural resources and energy. There is also the need to compare the story of the Arctic with those of other resource-rich regions in the global North and South.

DC Farming

Now researchers at Luleå Univesity of Technology want to take advantage of the waste heat generated by many industries in a better way. In a cold city like Luleå there are both heavy industries and large data centers that create large amounts of heat, which is apparent during the cold part of the year when steam rises to the sky.

"We have previously researched this with, among other things, Vattenfall and Bodens municipality. The difference this time is that we this time are going into more detail about how new types of greenhouse can be designed to utilize waste heat from data centers including lighting and humidity.

Solar City Lulea

Cities are the biggest polluters and must transform their energy systems. Researchers at Luleå University of Technology will now investigate how to support "prosumers", people who produce and consume energy, by using design thinking and participatory strategies.

Porsön district in Luleå will become a testbed for such methods. Community workshops, design thinking, and socio-economic models will be used too find the best ways to support prosumers and the city to think beyond the box.

This means that energy ahestetics will be come an important factor to drive the energy transition of cities. It will lead to reimagine the most common urban infrastructures (sidewalks, streets, housing, etc.). "It will be interesting to work with the people living and working in Porsön to co-create togheter news ways of imagining and designing the city", Agatino Rizzo and Kristina Ek, both Associate Professors at Luleå University of Technology.

UNALAB

UNaLab is a project funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The UNaLab consortium is comprised of 28 partners from 10 cities across Europe and beyond, including municipalities, research, business and industry. The UNaLab partner cities commit to addressing the challenges that cities around the world are facing today, by focusing on climate and water related issues, within an innovative and citizen-driven paradigm. With three demonstration cities, seven replication cities and several observers, the UNaLab project aims to develop smarter, more inclusive, more resilient and increasingly sustainable societies through innovative nature-based solutions (NBS).

More infos...

Food on the Roof

The aim of this project is to explore the possibility to smartly integrate food production in cold urban environments. The main objective is to sketch an intelligent platform to guide a comprehensive, city-wide approach to urban farming in winter cities and assist city stakeholder . The platform will integrate various data sources - geographic, population and building data (e.g., location, orientation, size), energy performance (e.g., energy declaration) - and food-science knowledge to be able to identify suitable locations for UF.

Urban farming (UF) has social, economic, and environmental benefits: socially UF will bring people closer to nature and it can become a source of education for local schools and community; economically, UF targets the rapidly growing market of premium, fresh, biological food that is proudly produced locally and can be sold to local restaurants and other customers; environmentally, UF will decrease our reliance from far away and poorly controlled food chains, while decreasing environmental costs for transportation. CF-0 is aligned to the Swedish National strategy for food safety (2016/17:104) which aims "in 2030 the Swedish food supply chain will be globally competitive, innovative, sustainable and an attractive sector to operate in."

more infos...

MIN-SPIRE (Sustainable Planning of mIning aREas)

MIN-SPIRE is a project funded by the Hjalmar Lundbohm Research Centre (HLRC)

Sustainable Urban Development in Gällivare (SUD course, 2017)

The focus of this year course in Sustainable Urban Development is Gällivare which is located in the resource-rich region of Norrbotten. The region is at once heavily industrialized (steel, bio fuels, paper, extraction industry, large energy infrastructures) and one of the least densely populated area of Europe.

The project demonstrates the use of multifunctional ecological corridors for urban regeneration, where a specific focus is placed on the regeneration of mining areas and their connection with the rest of the town.

The aim of the project is to explore the challenges and opportunities in integrating urban planning and design considerations with mining sites. This move should contribute to: on the one hand, the sustainable (and economically feasible) rehabilitation of mining sites during and after operations have ceased; and, on the other hand, to diversify the local economy towards additional economic ventures (e.g., tourisms, sport, etc.).

Sustainable Mixed-Use Districts: Mitigating land-Use Conflicts in Industrial Cities​ (SUD course, 2015)

Project Site & Mission

 

Luleå is a city characterized by many industrial developments within its inhabited urban core. This has been mainly the consequence of the historic vocation of the city as an industrial and harbor hub for resource-rich Norrbotten, in the north of Sweden. It is also crucially the result of previous land use policies and master plans that have facilitated the proliferation of industrial areas throughout the city.

However, during the last decades the city has strived the service sector and increasingly towards the knowledge industry (see the Aurorum area and the expansion of the university campus). This, in turn, has attracted new residents from within the region and abroad and therefore has boosted the demand for dwellings in the urban core.

This rapid demographic growth coupled with an increasing percentage of the population with a tertiary education has exacerbated the land use conflict between residential and industrial areas. It has also further the social and spatial divides within the city.

The aim of this course is to map these divides and the infrastructural gaps of Luleå’s residential areas encroached by industrial clusters to suggest strategies and interventions to mitigate the existing and future potential land use conflicts. 

The projects below show the potentials of many existing urbanized areas in the inner town. This urban regeneration approach is antithetical to the current developments in town:

- many of the projects concentrate in upgrading brownfield areas rather that green ones.

- density is crucial but it is always declined to increase the "intensity" of activities and social interactions and not for speculative purposes. 

- finally, all developments promote walking, cycling, and public transit rather than car-centred development.

We hope that these projects will foster a change of mentality in Luleå's city makers towards a more attractive, sustainable and just urbanism.

Declining, transition and slow rural territories

As metropolitan areas around the world keep expanding, behind them, rural areas continue to be affected by greater rates of depopulation. This is not a new phenomenon: rural to urban migration has been reported in the developed world at least from the period between the two world wars. However, recent rural depopulation trends have dramatically intensified in both the developed and the developing countries worldwide. In planning literature, greater emphasis is placed on the “urban–rural” divide, that is, people leaving the countryside to look for better opportunities in urban areas. However, a growing body of literature points to the fact that not all rural areas are declining at the same rate. Indeed, some rural towns have managed to retain population and even to grow. Therefore, at least in developed countries, an “intra-rural” divide notion is emerging. To exemplify this notion, we have studied rural towns in Southern Italy.
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Qualitative characterization of rural territories.

City of Science in Luxembourg: Urban Redevelopment of a Steel Mill Areain Esch Sur Alzette in Luxembourg

The new City of Science in Belval, nearby the town of Esch Sur Alzette in Luxembourg, is one of the latest examples of urban redevelopment of a former industrial site to a knowledge-oriented function. Interestingly, part of the area is still used as an industrial site by one of the subsidiaries of the Luxembourgian-Dutch conglomerate ArcelorMittal, one of the main stakeholders in the region (before being a financial hub, Luxembourg was a well-established steel production centre).

The regenerated City of Science hosts the offices and educational facilities of the University of Luxembourg and several other buildings such as new national research facilities, banks, a shopping mall and several residential buildings as well as cultural spaces such as a museum adapted in the former furnaces of the steel mill, concert hall, etc. More information about the project can be found here: http://www.belval.lu/en/

The project is perhaps not the most advanced example of urban redevelopment of a former industrial area. However, it shows clearly the urban potentials of industrial sites located nearby urbanized areas. The City of Science in Luxembourg is an interesting exepirement of a mixed-use development in a former heavy-industry area. In a small scale, perhaps, a city of science could be imagined in a city like Luleå, which, not without controversies, apires to transition its economy from a steel and iron ore manufacturing centre in to one of  the leading knowledge cities in the nordic arctic region (Pictures by A. Rizzo, 2015).

Luleå Urban Lab

Lulea is a fast growing city that in the last decade has benefited more from new knowledge- activities and inhabitants (e.g., LTU, Aurorum, Facebook, etc.) than from the traditional steel and mining industry (today in deep crisis). All over the city we can see major works to expand the current infrastructures (roads, sewage, etc.) and slowly provide housing for the new residents. However, the city lags miles behind when it comes to be a socially just, sustainable, and attractive city. Among the causes that have determined this lack of success there have been short-sighted decision making, lack of participatory planning, and poor urban design and planning.

The consequences of these three serious issues are visible all over in the city: e.g. the large number of industrial areas of any size encroaching inhabited areas (e.g., Lövskatan, Bergviken, Skurholmen, etc.); the use of public money to finance new developments in virgin areas that ultimately will, at the same time, destroy green areas, encourage the use of the car instead of more sustainable buses, and fail to provide affordable housing (e.g. Krona); the lack of attractive urban centres that can cater to both the wealthy and the middle-class, the youth and the families, and the long-term and new inhabitants; and citizens’ distrust on the ability of the kommun to meet their needs and aspirations.

Insofar, short-sighted decision making, lack of participatory planning, and poor urban design and planning are all contributing to make Lulea more unequal (rich vs. poor, newcomers Vs. long-time residents, creatives Vs. mainstreamers; industrial Vs. residential areas; etc.). To exemplify this situation, let me take three examples: the industrialization of the city centre, the saga of the relocation of the ÅVC, and the launch of the new city district of Krona.

PolyQatar (excerpt)

In this booklet we present the results of an ongoing research on the opportunity to implement polycentric, transit-oriented urban development in Qatar.

In the first part of the booklet we show the current urban development scenario in Doha and Qatar while in the second part we highlight problems and opportunities of the current scenario.

In the third part we propose alternative scenarios (i.e. polycentric development) to compensate the current urban problems.

In the fourth and fifth part we introduce the concept of transit oriented development (TOD) and analyse case studies abroad.

Building upon the previous two sections, in part six we highlight TOD factors for success.

In part seven we deploy TOD and polycentric development principles to design a new-town development in Qatar.

In part eight we present our conclusions and recommendations.