"Meltdown: Thawing Geographies in the Arctic" – Critical Response 1. by Allison Franko

In their article, architects Lola Sheppard and Mason White offer a provocative, yet somewhat romantic and opportunistic, vision of a current and future ‘urban arctic’.  They claim that, due to current and growing world demand, the arctic oil and gas reserves will be further explored and exploited, fueling an ‘emergent frontier urbanism’ in the arctic (pg. 133). Aided by the thawing of the ice cap, paradoxically hastened through man’s use of fossil fuels and resultant effects on climate change, increased arctic resource extraction will lead to new and expanded urbanization. Although I do not find that the authors are actually endorsing the development of the Arctic, their article nonetheless tends to glorify the process and its infrastructural icons.  In this response, I aim to highlight the authors’ rose-tinted viewpoint on Arctic resource exploitation, infrastructure, and suggested urbanization.

As the authors are both architects, I feel they fail to give proper consideration to the expansive realm of human and environmental geography; as such, current and future resource extraction in the arctic, by any political or corporate entity, is depicted as desirable for the barbaric Arctic region, or ‘the other’. The authors postulate that the thawing of the Arctic is in part facilitating  emerging urban cities reminiscent of unbuilt “megaform” projects of the 1960s and 1970s” (pg. 136). This comparison is indicative of the authors’ admiration for urban development of the Arctic, regardless of what environmentally-distressing technologies and infrastructures are inevitably deployed.

Moreover, the authors’ reliance on key premises without evidentiary support and the occasional use of certain jargon (such as, ‘virgin geography as a zero condition’ and ‘techno-geographical utopia’), bad examples, and confusing analogies, sometimes detracts from the article (pg. 136). I disagree with their proposition that the melting of polar ice has “simultaneously spawned territorial land claims” (pg. 133). The melting of ice may have indeed sped up exploration, threatened ecosystems, or otherwise contributed to various changes, but the expression ‘simultaneously spawned’ inappropriately implies suddenness, as well as inaccurately attributes a cause-and-effect relationship. 

In their discussion of subterranean land claims in the arctic, the authors’ claim, that the entire Arctic Circle is a contested space, is clearly false; much of Canada, Russia, and the other noted countries have completely uncontested land rights at or above the Arctic Circle.   Notwithstanding this, they correctly point out certain countries are indeed making territorial land claims, particularly Russia, to the various arctic sea floors and the resources beneath.  As well, the authors’ implication that several countries’ race for these claims has “led to a series of inevitably networked cities bound by ambition to serve as a hub for development of [the Arctic] region”, is weak because the premise of inevitability is unsupported and the infrastructural cities’ ambition, if personification is acceptable, may be shared, but it cannot be binding (pg. 133-134).

We can see the issue of scale arise when the authors discuss the ‘gaseous state’ of the infrastructural city, characterizing ‘gas urbanism’ in the Arctic (pg. 134). The statement that such cities are “without definite shape and of relatively low density,” contradicts their thesis of an increasing urban population in the Arctic (pg. 134). Furthermore, the image on the last page of the article (pg 137), of a floating platform housing more than 150 workers, illustrates the fact that these workers are not there to live, they are there to make a profit. The inhabitants of these infrastructural cities in the Arctic are almost exclusively employees and only live in such places because twenty four-seven production is demanded by their corporate employers- not because they see it as a ‘techno-geographical utopia’ (pg. 136). Most people would not choose to live in such an inhospitable environment without serious incentives and compensation. Unfortunately, certain readers of this article will be largely unaware of the heavy environmental, political, and social consequences specific to resource extraction in the Arctic; as a result, some may take the article at face value. In view of this, perhaps the theme of urbanization being forced upon the Arctic, in pursuit of the profits associated with resource extraction, would have been a more appropriate choice for these authors, particularly in view of current worldwide concern for climate change and its consequences.

Works Cited:

Sheppard, L., and White, M. (2009). Meltdown: Thawing Geographies in the Arctic. In Ramos, S., and Turan, N (Eds.), New Geographies: After Zero (pg. 132-137). Hong Kong, China: Regal Printing.