The Petropolis of Tomorrow

The Petropolis of Tomorrow examines
the role of resource extraction
infrastructure in the production of new
forms of urbanism
In recent years, Brazil has discovered vast
quantities of petroleum deep within its
territorial waters, inciting the construction of
a series of cities along its coast and in the
ocean. We could term these developments as
Petropolises, or cities formed from resource
extraction. The Petropolis of Tomorrow is
a design and research project, originally
undertaken at Rice University that examines
the relationship between resource extraction
and urban development in order to extract new
templates for sustainable urbanism. Organized
into three sections: Archipelago Urbanism,
Harvesting Urbanism, and Logistical Urbanism,
which consist of theoretical, technical, and
photo articles as well as design proposals,
The Petropolis of Tomorrow elucidates not
only a vision for water-based urbanism of the
floating frontier city, it also speculates on new methodologies for integrating infrastructure,
landscape, urbanism and architecture within
the larger spheres of economics, politics, and
culture that implicate these disciplines.
Articles by: Neeraj Bhatia, Luis Callejas, Mary
Casper, Brian Davis, Farès el-Dahdah, Rania
Ghosn, Carola Hein, Bárbara Loureiro, Clare
Lyster, Geoff Manaugh, Alida C. Metcalf,
Juliana Moura, Koen Olthuis, Albert Pope, Maya
Przybylski, Rafico Ruiz, Mason White, Sarah
Whiting. Photo Essays by: Garth Lenz, Peter
Mettler, Alex Webb. Research/ Design Team:
Alex Gregor, Joshua Herzstein, Libo Li, Joanna
Luo, Bomin Park, Weijia Song, Peter Stone,
Laura Williams, Alex Yuen.