Technical Lands

Designating land as technical is a political act. Doing so entails dividing, marginalizing, and rendering portions of the Earth inaccessible. Technical lands are co-extensive with political and physical boundaries instrumentalized by their exceptional status. Their remote location, delimited boundary, and active management occlude their visibility. Technical lands include disaster exclusion and demilitarized zones, extractive industry sites, airports, and spaceports, among dozens of other typologies. Despite the recent emergence of a discourse on technical lands, our understanding of these geographies remains unclear. Technical Lands: A Critical Primer assembles authors from a diverse array of disciplines, geographies, and epistemologies to illuminate the meanings of these spaces.

Jeffrey S. Nesbit is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the
Office for Urbanization at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Nesbit’s research focuses on urbanization, infrastructure, and the evolution of
technical lands.

Charles Waldheim is John E. Irving
Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director of the Office for Urbanization
at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Waldheim’s research
examines the relations between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism.