A bioregion in the Anthropocene: a systemic vision of the Ile-de-France metropolis

Abstract

Today, urban morphologies respond to the de-contextualized and functional rules of the machines civilization and fossil fuels where the territory is no more than a simple technical support. So far, the dynamic of metropolises has been based on the import of ghost acreage, that is to say of distant energies and materials. In giving the measure of the acceleration of the Earth transformation caused by industrial societies, this unprecedented era suggests a change of temporal and spatial scale, a systemic shift. The need to connect with the local implies contextualizing the urban and the suburban in the living beings and the immediate resources, in particular water and energy. The challenge is to bring out elements of restoration, in the form of bioregional ecological niches, within the global metropolization and its future exoduses.

Keywords

• Anthropocene
• bioregions
• scales
• overshoot
• retrofit