Territorial Tropes
2018
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Research team
- Roi Salgueiro Barrio
- Hashim Sarkis
Territorial Tropes maps urban regions across Europe to propose three analytical hypotheses. First, analyzing contemporary urbanization requires developing post-metropolitan models that grasp the actual scale and diversity of global urban systems, while avoiding false dichotomies between urban and non-urban conditions. Second, contemporary urbanization is characterized by strong convergence of geographical, biophysical, and built elements, constituting what Clementi et al. term "territorial bodies"—vast urban areas interrelated with geographical features—requiring integrated urban and geographical analysis. Third, functional necessities derived from global structuring similarly affect these territorial bodies. Understanding global urbanization requires identifying the territorial types that globalization produces.
The research concludes by applying this post-metropolitan analysis to map coastal urbanization across Spain. It identifies continuous urbanization patterns, where similar transects appear consistently across the coastline. These transects constitute "Territorial Tropes"—recurring organizations of geographical factors, land uses, mobility systems, and ecological systems.