Terra-Sorta-Firma: Reclaiming the Littoral Gradient

Terra-Sorta-Firma documents the global extent of reclaimed coastal lands and provides a framework for comparison across varying geographies, cultures, and histories. For centuries, cities have grown and expanded onto previously saturated grounds; “reclaiming” land from estuaries, marshes, mangroves, and seabeds. While these artificial coastlines are sites of tremendous real estate, civic, and infrastructural investments, they are also the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

In this book talk, each invited contributor represents the story of urban shoreline transformation in a different geography, from China to Singapore, and from Charlottetown to Lagos to Boston. Taken together, the event and the book aim to render visible the ubiquity and precarity of urban coastal reclamation in an age of increased environmental and economic indeterminacy. Read more