Infra Eco Logi Urbanism: Future Utopia or Paradise Lost?

“This century is seeing the emergence of a new type of human settlement — the megalopolis.” — Constantinos Doxiadis, “The Emerging Great Lakes Megalopolis,” 1968

Much of our inherited urban landscape continues to be understood via early modernist notions of the city. These sweeping urban manifestos present visions of a static city with forms and spaces that follow patterns dictated solely by programmatic organization. With a desire to achieve clarity via the absence of multiplicity and conflict, these forms are found in spatial isolation from one another: an urbanism of single meanings and single use zones.

Yet we have reached a point of urban and social crisis as the world has become smaller and the spaces between cities continue to shrink both physically — as a result of horizontal expansion — and virtually — through the interdependent flows of globalization. It is no longer enough to think of urbanism in terms of discrete cities clearly delineated in space: a new type of “hybrid city” is needed. Because of a reconceptualization of the Great Lakes territory, Toronto-based design research practice RVTR presents us with one such vision in its bookInfra Eco Logi Urbanism: A Project for the Great Lakes Megaregion.

As the culmination of a multiyear project, Infra Eco Logi Urbanism is framed within this shift from the conventional city to a complex territory determined by an interconnected network of infrastructure, ecologies, and economies. For RVTR, the city “no longer constitutes a construct possessing clear functions, boundaries, or distinctions from that which is not city.” In order to disrupt the status quo, the firm explores the possibility of a new urban condition in the Great Lakes Megaregion, the largest and most-populated metropolitan network in North America.

With an estimated population of 60 million, the Great Lakes Megaregion encompasses major urban areas including Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, N.Y., Toronto, and Montreal. The Megaregion boasts a significant cache of natural resources — including one fifth of the world’s fresh water by surface area — as well as thriving agricultural and manufacturing industries and numerous major research universities.

The scale of this megaregion is daunting, and the task to analyze it seems herculean — requiring an ambitious exercise of power and total control of the territory. Yet RVTR comfortably navigates this terrain; it seamlessly shifts scale from the network at large to individual nodes of connectivity and proposes designs informed by a meticulous exercise in mapping. The intent of Infra Eco Logi Urbanism becomes clear: to find potential in the system and synthesize it to generate a new type of architecture.

Using a series of cartographic exercises, RVTR visualized the many networks of the Great Lakes Megaregion — breaking down any preconceived boundaries. The resulting “Shed Cartographies” organize geospatial boundaries into interconnected systems. (Clockwise from top-left: CommodityShed, EnviroShed, MediShed, and PotentialShed)

Whereas early modernist schemes often regarded open space as independent of private or public distinction and streets as avenues solely for traffic, RVTR identifies these spaces (namely, the highway interchange) as places with overlapping possibilities for public space. Knowing that the effects of the interventions on strategic nodes will resonate with other parts of the system, Infra Eco Logi Urbanism presents vast architectural schemes in which infrastructure, ecologies, and logistics are all deployed to create a balanced urban future.

The Exchange

The Crossing

The Gateway

RVTR developed three prototypical interchanges in detail. Though physically and operationally interconnected, these systems are urban artifacts of their own accord and question the role of a megaregion’s public institutions. Firstly, TheExchange — located along Chicago’s Congress Parkway — is a linear assembly of infrastructure “in resistance to the monopolization of the market for hegemonic gain and the systemic privatization of the city and its institutions.”

Next, The Crossing — located at the U.S.-Canada border between Detroit and Windsor — houses the headquarters of the Coalitions for the Governance of the Great Lakes “in resistance to the privatization of government and environmental resources.” Finally, The Gateway — located adjacent to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport — is a monumental landform of “collective citizenship, orientation, physical, and spiritual life.”

Study Model of the Crossing

By situating this brave new world amid the real-world problems of contemporary cities — global warming, international migration, excess resource extraction and depletion, for example — Infra Eco Logi Urbanism calls forth an alternative to the status quo. These radical proposals present hopeful promise and highlight opportunities while simultaneously lamenting the flaws of our current urban conditions. RVTR invites you to wonder: is this a future utopia or paradise lost?