The Urban Theory Lab (UTL) seeks to develop new ways of conceptualizing capitalist urbanization and its increasingly planetary environmental impacts. Our work combines explorations of urban theory with diverse forms of research on urbanization in historical-geographical, political-economic, and biospheric perspective, generally in close conjunction with the development of new approaches to geographic visualization that advance—and often transform—our inquiries. We are equally interested in strategies and struggles to create “alter-urbanizations”—alternative forms of urbanization, social reproduction, and ecological repair.

Our work reflects a broad range of scholarly and pedagogical activities, and builds upon a vibrant network of collaborations with colleagues in North America, South America, Western Europe, and beyond. Our research network includes scholars at all stages—from Ph.D. students and early-career academics to more seasoned researchers, writers, cartographers, and designers. Our work takes many forms, including research, publication, teaching, exhibitions, and various forms of public communication.

While all UTL researchers are interested in urban questions, broadly construed, and approach them from a range of disciplinary perspectives, we also build upon transdisciplinary knowledge drawn from, among other fields, environmental social science, geographical political economy, global political ecology, agrarian studies, energy history and geography, environmental and public humanities, infrastructure studies, waste and discard studies, sustainability science, critical/forensic cartography, philosophy and political theory, climate justice law, Black geographies and ecologies, Chicago studies, media and sound studies, urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and territorial design.

Much of our current work focuses on a range of questions related to planetary urbanization, fossil energy metabolism, the remaking of non-city territories and environments, and proliferating climate and nature emergencies. In pursuing such explorations, we seek to investigate the patterns and pathways–both historical and emergent–of urban transformation across the Earth while developing–and stress-testing–new conceptual frameworks for understanding them.  Our research is equally focused on concrete forms of urban/environmental restructuring and on the critical interrogation of the evolving knowledge-formations through which such processes are studied, shaped, and contested.

Through these initiatives, the UTL seeks to contribute to the collective project of imagining new spaces of solidarity and emancipatory forms of urbanization for the flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth.

Background & Overview

The UTL was founded by Neil Brenner in 2012 at the Graduate School of Design (GSD), Harvard University and, since 2020, has been based in the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU) at the University of Chicago. Over the last fifteen years, the UTL has developed an internationally recognized body of research on critical urban theory, planetary urbanization, operational landscapes, infrastructure, environmental transformation, and the increasingly planetary ecological consequences of capitalist development. Its work combines historical-geographical and political-economic analysis with experimental cartography, spatial visualization, environmental research, and design inquiry. Rather than treating cities as bounded objects, the Lab has sought to reconceptualize urbanization as a territorially extensive and environmentally transformative process encompassing agglomerations, hinterlands, logistical systems, extractive zones, agricultural regions, waste landscapes, oceans, and other operational landscapes across the Earth.

The UTL’s research has generated an extensive international record of books, articles, edited volumes, working papers, cartographic projects, exhibitions, public lectures, conferences, and teaching experiments. Its work on planetary urbanization and operational landscapes has circulated widely across urban studies, geography, sociology, architecture, landscape architecture, planning, environmental studies, and the humanities, and has been published and translated in numerous languages. Major publications associated with this intellectual program include Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization, Data-Spheres of Planetary Urbanization, and Environments of Planetary Urbanization, alongside a large body of articles and collaborative publications by current and former Lab researchers. Data-Spheres of Planetary Urbanization, first presented as an installation at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021 and subsequently expanded into a major publication, exemplifies the Lab’s distinctive effort to combine theoretical innovation with experimental forms of geographic visualization. Earlier work was also presented through the Operational Landscapes exhibition at the Melbourne School of Design and through contributions to the Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, among other international venues.

Pedagogy has been equally central to the UTL’s work. Across Harvard and the University of Chicago, its research agendas have been developed through studios, seminars, lecture courses, workshops, and collaborative research projects involving successive generations of doctoral students, architects, planners, geographers, sociologists, designers, and emerging scholars. Courses on operational landscapes, critical urban theory, planetary urbanization, environmental change, capitalism and energy, spatial media, and urban political ecology have helped disseminate and continually revise the Lab’s conceptual and methodological approaches. Many former participants and collaborators have subsequently developed influential independent research programs in universities and design schools internationally. In this sense, the UTL has functioned not only as a site of publication and research production but as a sustained intellectual and pedagogical platform through which new approaches to urbanization have been tested, debated, visualized, and transmitted across disciplines and generations.

Support

The UTL’s core intellectual home at the University of Chicago is in the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU). The UTL was previously based at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, which provided a vibrant intellectual home and financial support from 2012-2020. Since then, the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago has provided generous support. Although we are constantly seeking large-scale, longer term forms of support, much of our work is funded through project- or publication-based grants from our home institutions and/or external foundations. Most of our researchers also secure funding through their home institutions and through grants tied to their individual research projects. Since our work began in 2012, our researchers or research teams have received generous support from the following organizations, fellowships and grants:

The UTL welcomes inquiries from individuals and organizations interested in learning more about, and contributing to our work.

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Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU), The University of Chicago
1155 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637  USA

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