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Future North : the changing Arctic landscapes

The changing Arctic is of broad political concern and is being studied across many fields. This book investigates ongoing changes in the Arctic from a landscape perspective. It examines settlements and territories of the Barents Sea Coast, Northern Norway, the Russian Kola Peninsula, Svalbard and Greenland from an interdisciplinary, design-based and future-oriented perspective.

The Future North project has travelled Arctic regions since 2012, mapped landscapes and settlements, documented stories and practices, and discussed possible futures with local actors. Reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of the project, the authors in this book look at political and economic strategies, urban development, land use strategies and local initiatives in specific locations that are subject to different forces of change.

This book explores current material conditions in the Arctic as effects of industrial and political agency and social initiatives. It provides a combined view on the built environment and urbanism, as well as the cultural and material landscapes of the Arctic. The chapters move beyond single-disciplinary perspectives on the Arctic, and engage with futures, cultural landscapes and communities in ways that build on both architectural and ethnographic participatory methods.

Table of Contents

  1. Janike Kampevold Larsen and Peter Hemmersam What is the Future North?
  2. Johan Schimanski Reading the Future North
  3. Aileen A. Espíritu Spectacular Speculation: Arctic futures in transition
  4. Peter Hemmersam: Ruins and Monuments of the Kola Cities
  5. Morgan Ip Hyper-Landscape: The Norwegian-Russian Borderlands
  6. Janike Kampevold Larsen The Landscapes of the New North
  7. Henry Mainsah Visual and Sensory Methods of Knowing Place: The case of Vardø
  8. Andrew Morrison Future North, Nurture Forth: Design fiction, anticipation and Arctic futures
  9. Kjerstin Uhre The Perforated Landscape
  10. William L. Fox Branding Ice: Contemporary Public Art in the Arctic
  11. Susan Jayne Carruth Place as Progressive Optic: Reflecting on conceptualisations of place through a study of Greenlandic infrastructures
  12. Jamie Kruse and Elizabeth Ellsworth Inhabiting Change
Larsen, J. (Ed.)., Hemmersam, P.(2018). Future North : the changing Arctic landscapes. Routledge