This book draws together classic and contemporary texts on the "Horizontal Metropolis" concept. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it explores various theoretical, methodological and political implications of the Horizontal Metropolis hypothesis. Assembling a series of textual and cartographic interventions, this book explores those that supersede inherited spatial ontologies (urban/rural, town/country, city/non-city, society/nature). It investigates the emergence of a new type of extended urbanity across regions, territories and continents up to the global scale through the reconstruction of a fundamental but neglected tradition. This book responds to the radical nature of the changes underway today, calling for a rethinking of the Western Metropolis idea and form along with the emergence of new urban paradigms. The Horizontal Metropolis concept represents an ambitious attempt to offer new instruction to take on this challenge at the global scale. The book is intended for a wide audience interested in the emergence and development of new approaches in urbanism, architecture, cultural theory, urban and design education, landscape urbanism and geography.

This book provides an overview of the Horizontal Metropolis concept, and of the theoretical, methodological and political implications for the interdisciplinary field in which it operates. The book investigates the contemporary emergence of a new type of extended urbanity across regions, territories and continents, up to the global scale. Further, it explores the diffusion of contemporary urban conditions in an interdisciplinary and original manner by analyzing essential case studies. Offering extensive content on the Horizontal Metropolis concept, the book presents a range of approaches intended to transcend various inherited spatial ontologies: urban/rural, town/country, city/non-city, and society/nature. The book is intended for all readers interested in the emergence and development of new approaches in cultural theory, urban and design education, landscape urbanism and geography.

This book provides an overview of the Horizontal Metropolis concept, and of the theoretical, methodological and political implications for the interdisciplinary field in which it operates. The book investigates the contemporary emergence of a new type of extended urbanity across regions, territories and continents, up to the global scale. Further, it explores the diffusion of contemporary urban conditions in an interdisciplinary and original manner by analyzing essential case studies. Offering extensive content on the Horizontal Metropolis concept, the book presents a range of approaches intended to transcend various inherited spatial ontologies: urban/rural, town/country, city/non-city, and society/nature. The book is intended for all readers interested in the emergence and development of new approaches in cultural theory, urban and design education, landscape urbanism and geography.

The central hypothesis behind the book concerns the capacity of urban as well as territorial design, of the "project" in the sense of design activity on multiple scales, to produce knowledge. The volume discusses research conducted with design tools and operations, crossing physical and conceptual territories, related to a set of direct design explorations, and to the concept of "research by design." This idea of the project contains, manipulates and produces concepts and forms of concrete action in space, involving interpretation, abstraction and - at times - generalization. It describes and reveals processes of individualization, recognizes situations and allows possibilities to emerge. The project images the future and takes its impact on thinking about the city as the basis for the production of an original form of knowledge. Reflection on the epistemological statutes of the design project, in the wake of the crisis of expert knowledge and in a period of progressive marginalization and simplification of the practice of the architect and of the urban designer, is now fundamental for the rethinking of design's social role, and to formulate a fresh, new, critical vision of the world.

Two contrasting terms are joined to conjugate the traditional idea of metropolis (the centre of a vast territory, hierarchically organised, dense, vertical, produced by polarization) with horizontality (the idea of a more diffuse, isotropic urban condition, where centre and periphery blur). Beyond a simplistic centre vs periphery opposition, the concept of a horizontal metropolis reveals the dispersed condition as a potential asset, rather than a limit, to the construction of a sustainable and innovative urban dimension. Around 1990, Terry McGee, an urban researcher at the University of British Columbia, coined the term "desakota", deriving from Indonesian "desa" (village) and "kota" (city). Desakota areas typically occur in Asia, especially South East Asia. The term describes an area situated outside the periurban zone, often sprawling alongside arterial and communication roads, sometimes from one agglomeration to the next. They are characterised by high population density and intensive agricultural use, but differ from densely populated rural areas by more urban-like characteristics. The new book The Horizontal Meteropolis investigates such areas alongside examples in the US, Italy, and Switzerland. The study highlights the advantages of the concept and its relevance in economical, ecological, and social aspects. The concept reflects a vision of global urbanisation that no longer allows for "outside" areas and that will test the urban ecosystem to its limits.

Water and Asphalt proposes a project of extended requalification for the territories of settlement dispersion and diffusion; a project on a territorial scale and imagined in a context of economic, social, and environmental crisis. To indicate its principal characteristics, the research study uses the term Project of Isotropy. The metropolitan area of Venice, criss-crossed by dense networks of roads and waterways, is the test case for imagining the concept. The Project of Isotropy is the acknowledgement of a territorial specificity, a scenario to be investigated in its manifold consequences, and a design hypothesis that can be concretely devised in terms of intervention regarding the water system, roads and public transport, alternative mobility, forms of diffused welfare, innovative agriculture, and the decentralised production of energy. The hypothesis is that new conditions now exist for re-devising the isotropic space in the Metropolitan area of Venice.