Fadi Masoud on Terra-Sorta-Firma
On 24-November, Fadi Masoud shared “Terra-Sorta-Firma”, as part of the 2021 Fall Urbanism Lecture Series, co-hosted by the City Design & Development Program (CDD), SMArchS Urbanism Program, and Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT. Fadi Masoud is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism and the Director of the Centre for Landscape Research at the University of Toronto. Fadi’s current work explores climate adaptive urban and landscape design, novel resilient urban codes, and the future of metropolitan public open space
In his lecture, Fadi unpacks the precarity of urban coastal conditions, sharing highlights from his latest publication, Terra-Sorta-Firma: Reclaiming the Littoral Gradient (Actar — 2020). Terra-Sorta-Firma documents the global extent of reclaimed coastal lands and provides a framework for comparison across varying geographies, cultures, and histories. For centuries, cities have grown and expanded onto previously saturated grounds; “reclaiming” land from estuaries, marshes, mangroves, and seabeds. While these artificial coastlines are sites of tremendous real estate, civic, and infrastructural investments, they are also the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In his book, Fadi aims to render visible the ubiquity and precarity of urban coastal reclamation in an age of increased environmental and economic indeterminacy.
By Joris Komen, Norman B. (1938) and Muriel Leventhal Fellow, Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism.
