Urban pulse: land reclamation as climate urbanism

Source abstract

Large coastal city regions have rapidly accelerated their outward expansion, reclaiming thousands of square kilometers of land from the sea. Here, we argue that land reclamation is emblematic of the emerging logics of climate urbanism; a spectacular and speculative form of urban adaptation, multiplying in vulnerable cities around the world. We present illustrative cases from San Francisco, Jakarta, and Funafuti to suggest that contemporary land reclamation is producing urban space through multiscalar financial entanglements, regimes of resource and labor extraction and exploitation, and increasingly aggressive forms of nation building and geopolitical competition. As such, land reclamation, as an emerging logic of climate urbanism, demands much more urban geographical analysis.