Dr. Leandro Minuchin
leandro.minuchin@manchester.ac.uk
Office hours: Thursdays 10.00 -12.00
Keywords: Urban logistics / New Municipalism / Prefiguration / Preston model
The workshop examines the architecture and politics of urban logistics. It explores how recent municipalist experiments in the North West are trying to contest the socio-spatial implications generated by a form of logistical urbanization that is increasing geographical fragmentation and urban inequalities. The students will investigate the multiplication and spread of specific infrastructural typologies associated with the logistical turn and analyze the set of responses put forward by urban collectives and public agencies in order to invent other forms of municipal logistics.
Movement, storage, and allocation have developed into descriptive practices of how we govern urban spaces. Intermodal hubs, warehouses, fulfilment depots have become the infrastructural manifestation of a just-in-time pattern of urbanisation that is rapidly transforming how we occupy space. Logistics, often understood as the organisation and management of the circulation of goods and services, is not only accelerating patterns of extractivist development: it is also transforming the geography of metropolitan areas. It connects, mines, fields, and industrial parks, with processing and distributing plants, altering the use of urban peripheries and spreading novel architectural typologies.
Urban life has become increasingly dependent on the functioning and distribution of logistical arrangements: from food supply chains, dispersed production lines and delivery arrangements, quotidian practices often rely on the integration of infrastructural systems shaped and organised by architectures centred around objects and matter, not humans.
Against this backdrop of urban systems governed by speed and circulation, a new wave of municipal experiments is seeking to reconfigure the purpose of logistics and promote the invention and construction of logistical commons. From Barcelona, to Cleveland; From Rosario to Preston, there are a plurality of initiatives that seek to construct public platforms and forms of distribution that are not exclusively governed by profit.
This workshop problematizes the relationship between logistics and municipalism. It aims to challenge the remit and potentiality of architecture and design practices in the articulation of more egalitarian and just cities.
We will look at how we can visualize the working of procurement and distribution practices. How common infrastructures and spaces can inform a different organization of production and exchange.
The idea of prefiguration suggests a mode of learning and practice that focuses on present interventions as a means of changing urban futures. In this year, the workshop will focus on establishing partnerships with agencies and organizations in Preston, Salford, and Manchester linked with public logistics and a radical municipalist agenda.
Visualization. Preston model.
Learning outcomes
• To expose students to contemporary debates on logistical architectures
• To introduce students to new municipalist experiences in the North West.
• To allow students to develop consistent methodological decisions to trace, visualize and describe the implementation of popular logistical responses.
Teaching format
The course is divided into three blocks. The first four sessions provide the theoretical foundations for your projects. Through readings, videos, and podcasts students will familiarise themselves with notions like: logistical urbanism, infrastructural turn, platform capitalism, supply chains, new municipalism, etc. For each of these sessions, the students will analyze readings, engage with additional material and produce conceptual diagrams on the topics covered. The sessions will be structured in three parts: a lecture, readings, and diagrams.
The second block (first intensive week) focuses on three different case studies on new municipalism and the framing of possible interventions and proposals. We will introduce, analyze and critique the Preston model, initiatives in Salford, and the procurement strategy developed by CLES and Manchester Council. We will look at think tanks and research initiatives on local regeneration and municipalism. We will have invited speakers and review policy documents and recommendations. Divided into groups and focusing on specific cases, the students will propose a counter-logistical intervention.
In the third block (second intensive week) we will review and revise the suggested prefigurative projects. We will also go over your personal diagram booklets.
The sessions will be recorded and the material presented on spark webpages. There will be a dedicated google drive folder for readings and additional links and material.
Assessment
Group portfolio (80%): in groups of four students will be asked to articulate and design a counter-logistical intervention in one of the examined case studies. Collaborating with actors and agencies, the students will justify the conceptual grounding of the project, identify the area of intervention and visualize the articulation of alternative logistical arrangements.
Conceptual diagrams (20%): Each week the students will produce a series of conceptual visualizations that reflect a synthesis of the key arguments discussed and presented in the readings and materials selected for each session.
Submission:
Via moodle 19 January, noon.
Session I
28.09 - 14.00
Genealogy of logistics
- From military to civil clusters: the history of logistics.
- The architectures of logistics.
- Supply chains and space.
Readings
Cowen, D. (2014). The deadly life of logistics: Mapping violence in global trade. U of Minnesota Press.
Lyster, Clare. "Learning from fedex: lessons for the city." Journal of Landscape Architecture 7, no. 1 (2012): 54-67.
Neilson, B. (2012). Five theses on understanding logistics as power. Distinktion: Scandinavian journal of social theory, 13(3), 322-339.
Toscano, A. (2011). Logistics and opposition. Mute, August, 9.
Session II
5.10. - 14:00
Logistical urbanization
- Construction and the urbanization of capital.
- Lefebvre's urban revolution.
- Urbanization, infrastructures, and logistics.
Readings
Arboleda, Martín. "From spaces to circuits of extraction: Value in process and the mine/city nexus." Capitalism Nature Socialism 31, no. 3 (2020): 114-133.
Brenner, N., & Katsikis, N. (2020). Operational landscapes: hinterlands of the Capitalocene. Architectural Design, 90(1), 22-31.
Danyluk, Martin. "Supply-Chain Urbanism: Constructing and Contesting the Logistics City." Annals of the American Association of Geographers (2021): 1-16.
Harvey, D. (2012). Rebel cities: from the right to the city to the urban revolution: Verso Books.
Session III
12.10. - 14:00
Municipalism and logistics
- The meaning of new municipalism.
- Against austerity and extractivism: cases and experiences.
- Municipal logistics and platform urbanism.
Readings
Bookchin, M., (1995). Libertarian Municipalism: The New Municipal Agenda. Revised excerpt from From Urbanization to Cities, London, UK: Cassel, http://www. social-ecology. org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Libertarian-Municipalism-The-New-Municipal-Agenda. pdf.
Carson, K. (2017). Libertarian municipalism: Networked cities as resilient platforms for post-capitalist transition. Centre for a Stateless Society.
Russell, B. (2019). Beyond the local trap: New municipalism and the rise of the fearless cities. Antipode, 51(3), 989-1010.
Thompson, M. (2020). What’s so new about New Municipalism?. Progress in Human Geography, p.0309132520909480.
Visualisation. Jackson model
Session IV
19.10. - 14:00
Counter-logistics and municipalism
Logistical struggles: conflicts in the supply chain.
Logistical lives: everyday infrastructural adaptations.
Sustainment of urban commons: alternative logistical infrastructures
Readings
Case study documents and policies
Minuchin, L. and J. Maino, (2021) Counter-logistics and municipalism: popular infrastructures during the pandemic in Rosario. Forthcoming.
Session V-VII
Intensive week (1-5 November)
Methods, Case studies, and group proposal development
- Presentation of the Preston model, Salford initiatives, and Manchester procurement process.
- Working with policy documents and positioning papers.
- Engagement with actors and collectives.
- Groups develop proposals for interventions.
Session VIII-X
Intensive week (12, 14, 17 January)
- Review of projects: presentation and feedback
- Crits with