︎

Irrational Territories:
Counter-tactics for a Post-Petroleum Future
by Clare Coburn

︎Full project brochure

Working towards a post-petroleum future, “Irrational Territories” antagonizes capitalist ways of thinking to redistribute agency through community-driven information networks that recognize the obsolescence of industry and emphasize digital and environmental justice in order to understand the latent politics of land and critique industrial legacy.

The industries that drive the climate crisis, such as oil, steel, and automotive, have dominated landscapes and determined the accessibility of information. This leaves the public in the dark regarding their global influence, actions, and subsequent consequences. Taking direct action against the climate crisis and its allies requires community-driven information networks that recognize that oil is obsolete, the internet is a utility, and healthcare is a human right. From the scale of watershed to institution to individual actor, the networks will combat the overwhelming extent of the industries it takes on. The work positions itself against climate crisis industries in order to produce a series of counter-tactics for a post-petroleum future to redistribute agency over occupied land as a critique of industrial legacy.

Urban decay in Rust Belt cities, like Detroit, has produced an irrational urban condition in which the climate crisis industries have occupied and irreversibly decimated the ground, air, and environment of entire neighborhoods; heavy historic churches stand above toxic waste-water clarifiers, single-family homes share property lines with oil refineries, and complex railway networks connect factories and isolate neighborhoods. Post-petroleum information networks will seek to redistribute agency from industries to the communities around them. Utilizing similar urban renewal tactics to the industries themselves in anticipation of their eventual shrinkage, the networks will provide a space for digital, environmental, and social justice to spread from each node to break down the hold of climate crisis industries on the urban fabric of the city. Transforming obsolete industrial structures, such as wastewater clarifiers and crude oil tanks, occupying railroad networks, and distributing information and education through digital hubs will effectively surround, fragment, and shrink the climate crisis network. Through this, the communities living within this neglected industrial territory will be able to combat the climate crisis network with their own series of information networks.