Main Theme*

MULTI-ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PALIMPSEST CITIES IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

We are witnessing a period unprecedented in the history of humanity and the world we inhabit: the Anthropocene. Described by scientists and environmental thinkers as “the end of the world as we know it” (McKibben, 2011), this era signifies a radical rupture in which human-induced impacts have irreversibly transformed the planet’s geological, biological, and climatic systems. The warming of the Earth due to the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases, the rapid melting of polar ice caps, droughts, unexpected wildfires, the decline of biodiversity, and extraordinary ecological devastation are only a few manifestations of this transformation.

Within the Anthropocene, cities occupy a paradoxical position: they are both major drivers of these changes and highly vulnerable ecosystems directly affected by them. Human-induced environmental transformations not only alter urban forms and spatial organization but also deeply influence the everyday practices, collective memory, and emotional landscapes of urban inhabitants, who are themselves embedded within—and shaped by—these processes (Özelçi, 2025). This approach aligns with contemporary theoretical readings of the Anthropocene that do not treat it solely as an anthropocentric geological epoch, but rather as a relational surface in which human and non-human actors collectively leave traces, and where material and temporal layers accumulate and can be read relationally (Latour, 2018; Haraway, 2016).

In recent years, disasters witnessed on a global scale—along with the destructive impacts of the climate crisis, wars, mass migrations, and pandemics—have tested both the position of urban dwellers and the capacities of cities to renew, repair, and reorganize themselves in different ways. Each new event inscribes fresh traces onto the layers of the city, while simultaneously causing certain past layers to be erased or transformed. These unexpected ruptures are already shaping the multiple possibilities of the future. As long-term global transformations intertwine with immediate and localized interventions, ecological, social, political, and cultural changes become most visibly concentrated within urban environments. Cities and urban fragments that are transformed or destroyed through wars, earthquakes, and the interventions of decision-making actors offer powerful readings of this multi-layered condition of rupture. These readings move away from approaches that treat cities as fixed and closed systems, instead conceptualizing them as open-ended processes in which continuities and ruptures, along with visible and erased traces, coexist (Ingold, 2011; DeLanda, 2006). In this context, world cities persist as palimpsest structures—interconnected within an organic networked system, multilayered, and continuously rewritten. While tracing the remnants of layers that are fading or have already been erased, we simultaneously attempt to read the signs of what is “yet to come” and to consider how potential new layers might emerge. Within this conceptual framework, the “yet to come” is not treated as a fixed goal or scenario determined by linear projections, but rather as a field of speculative, cultural, and plural possibilities emerging from the tensions between existing layers.

From this perspective, the main focus of IAPS – C&S Network – Culture and Space Meetings 5 is shaped by the necessity of developing a multi-ecologies perspective when discussing the future of cities. Within this framework, the aim is to establish a new relationality between the multilayered structure of palimpsest cities and an understanding of ecological plurality.

A multi-ecologies perspective approaches cities not merely as environmental systems, but as dynamic formations in which social relations, subjective experiences, and interspecies encounters are co-produced. Félix Guattari conceptualizes ecology through the mutual interaction of environmental, social, and mental/subjective registers, emphasizing that urban space is a field of production that is not only physical, but also political, cultural, and sensorial (Guattari, 1989). Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, in turn, understands ecologies as fragile, temporary, and plural networks of encounters established by human and more-than-human actors within historical, economic, and technological processes. This perspective enables urban ecosystems to be read not as static structures, but through uncertainty, conflict, and processes of becoming-with (Tsing, 2015). These approaches also resonate with contemporary theoretical frameworks that refuse to reduce ecology solely to the natural environment, instead conceptualizing it through relational networks among human and non-human beings, technological infrastructures, and political processes. Bruno Latour challenges the modern division between nature and society, framing cities as hybrid and political ecological networks shaped through the collective agency of human and non-human actors (Latour, 2004; 2018). Timothy Morton, meanwhile, proposes thinking ecological processes through “hyperobjects” that exceed human perception in terms of temporal and spatial scales, defining ecology not as a singular or balanced system but as a multiplicity of fragile and ongoing relational entanglements (Morton, 2007; 2013). Within this framework, a multi-ecologies perspective makes it possible to read palimpsest cities beyond historical layering alone, as dynamic formations in which interspecies, technological, temporal, and political interactions are deeply intertwined.

Unexpected paradigm shifts are overturning established notions of time, space, norms, and order, making new narratives of the future unavoidable. As the classical distinctions between utopia and dystopia become blurred, heterotopic realities are increasingly normalized in everyday life. This situation allows for a rethinking of Foucault’s concept of heterotopia in the context of contemporary ecological and technological ruptures, positioning the city both as a space of crises and as a field for experimenting with alternative ways of living (Foucault, 1986; Brenner, 2019). In this context, emerging urban layers point not only to physical transformations but also to utopian–dystopian palimpsest formations encompassing intellectual, emotional, technological, and ecological dimensions. These intermediate forms make it possible to approach the future not as a singular and closed imagination, but as open-ended and negotiable urban configurations in which multiple possibilities can coexist simultaneously (Özorhon et al., 2025).

This thematic framework invites participants to reflect on future imaginaries shaped by the entanglement of changing ecosystems, fragile geologies, multispecies encounters, socio-political transformations, and technological processes. Under the influence of the Anthropocene, cities are no longer merely lived spaces; they have become intersectional fields of environmental, ecological, technological, and social transformations. 

In this context, the IAPS Culture and Space Meetings 2025 Series, under the title “Multiple Ecological Perspectives on Palimpsest Cities in the Anthropocene” aims to open up discussion on new ways of thinking about the future of cities. Participants are expected to bring critical issues—such as urban transformation, continuity, and fragility—into discussion through productions in the form of texts, actions, objects, spaces, images, or experiences. The event offers an open-ended, experimental, and multidisciplinary platform that moves beyond utopian or dystopian classifications. Young designers, students, and researchers are invited to build new bridges between Istanbul’s past, present, and future, and to develop critical, creative, and relational urban imaginaries.

Discussion Questions

• In the Anthropocene, how does humanity’s determining influence over the planet transform the relationship between cities and nature? Does the city remain a construct positioned against nature, or is it evolving into a living, adaptive organism engaged in continuous negotiation with natural systems?
• Through which social, political, economic, and ecological processes are the traces and layers accumulated by cities over time preserved, erased, or rewritten over time?
• In palimpsest cities, how do conflicts, overlaps, and discontinuities between layers enable multiple ecological readings that move urban space beyond anthropocentric and material representations in the Anthropocene?
• When the city is approached as a text, which lines of this text do we read in the Anthropocene, which do we rewrite, and which do we consciously or unconsciously choose to overlook?
• When envisioning the future of palimpsest cities, with which concepts, images, narratives, and affective registers do we begin to write.
• In an era of accelerating time and increasingly elastic, can urban memory sustain continuity, or does permanent fragility, rupture, and impermanence prevail?
• How do human-induced crises—such as climate change, war, migration, pandemics, and other global disruptions—radically redefine urban existence?
• In what ways do crises, decision-making mechanisms, technological infrastructures, and social ruptures transform urban palimpsests, and what possible future scenarios do these transformations render visible?
• Can an environment of poly_crises also make visible the cities’ capacities for self-repair, adaptation, and resilience?
• In a geography of crises and ruptures, how can palimpsest cities generate new forms of urban co-existence between destruction and continuity? 
• Through which spatial, affective, or speculative tools can “not-yet-realized possibilities” be rendered visible at the urban scale?
• How can palimpsest cities such as Istanbul be rethought, within the Anthropocene, as distinctive laboratories for reading multiple ecological ruptures and possible futures?

Keywords

Palimpsest cities, Urban Palimpsest, Anthropocene, multiple ecologies, poly-crises, ecological and social disruptions, layers, relationality, ruptures, tension, conflict, urban memory, continuity, temporality, resilience, vulnerability, metamorphosis, future imaginaries, scenarios, Istanbul, alternative urban readings.