Abstract:
The power of regions as constellations of emplacement lies in the ways they mediate between the stabilities of specific populations and ways of doing things and create more open-ended exchanges with a larger surrounds. This essay considers regions of the “uninhabitable” as a particular terrain within urban life that has been frequently described as “unfit for human habitation.” The essay explores some of the things the uninhabitable might mean against a backdrop where the entirety of the earth may at some point no longer sustain human habitation, at least in the conventional forms by which we know it.  For it is possible that the will to inhabit could result in the impossibility of habitation, or that this will derives from the very rendering of certain spaces as uninhabitable.