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This generously illustrated volume surveys a new chapter in the history of environmental art, one in which space, geopolitics, human relations, urbanism and utopian dreamwork play as important a role as, if not more than, raw earth.

Discusses the role of architecture in regenerating New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The author notes the influence of the book 'Design with nature' (1969; illus.) by Ian McHarg on subsequent sustainable design theory, highlights the influence of the work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and in particular on the publication 'New Orleans: strategies for a city in soft land' (2005), and assesses the latter work's analysis of New Orleans' future, also commenting on proposals relating to the city published in 2006 in the journal 'Artforum', the essay 'Sites unseen' by Aaron Betsky and theories advanced by Miwon Kwon. She focuses on radical interventions into the debate relating to housing in New Orleans such as the 'Survivors village', comments on the 'Survivaball' proposal advanced by the neo-Situationist group the Yes Men, and assesses the academic Laura Kurgan's analysis of recent planning proposals for the city. She concludes by asserting that political and historical considerations should be taken into account in future planning proposals for New Orleans.

Discusses the work of American interdisciplinary collective Pulsa, founded in 1967, focusing on their computer-based sound and light interventions in the urban and natural environment. With reference to the writings of Jack Burnham, analyses how Pulsa sought to expose and aestheticise the technological systems underpinning life in the city, devoting special attention to urban lighting systems. Suggests that their goals were to heighten awareness of impending ecological crisis and to create possibilities for interaction between people, their environment and the art work itself. Discusses installations created for the Yale Golf Course (1969; illus.) and the sculpture garden at New York's Museum of Modern Art (1970; col. illus.), and details 'Harmony Ranch', an experiment in communal living and art-making set up by the group. Assesses critical responses to the artistic exploration of technology by Rosalind Krauss and Jean Baudrillard, and concludes by considering how the work of Pulsa prefigured and influenced later contemporary art practice, with reference to the light installations of Olafur Eliasson.

New Design Futures, which, like Gene Youngblood's 1970 Expanded Cinema, conceived the artist as an intermedia \"ecologist\" facilitating the design of open systems, structures, and spaces amenable to collective participation and transformation over and against the \"closed system\" strictures of modernist medium-specificity in art and architecture alike.8 Like Burnham 's thought, this countercultural strand was heavily informed by McLuhan, Fuller, and John McHale, situating the ecological activity of the artist within expanded planetary networks of energy and information imagined to be approaching a state of perilous disequilibrium in which \"species survival\" itself was at stake.47 Like Pulsa, these groups eschew the revolutionary impulse of Baudrillard in favor of a long-term engagement with actually existing urban systems.

Epitomizing this risk is the book New Orleans: Strategies for a Soft City, the result of a studio and research project undertaken at the Harvard School of Design with the support of the Tulane Architecture Department in the 2004-5 academic year but published in December, three months into the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In its rhetoric of biomorphism, which effaces the biopolitics of Katrina, New Orleans unwittingly lends itself to the ethnic and class cleansing of redevelopment elites such as Joe Canizaro, a well-connected real estate mogul appointed by the mayor to chair the urban planning committee of the Bring Back New Orleans Commission, who notoriously remarked, \"As a practical matter these poor folks don't have the resources to go back to our city just like they didn't have the resources to get out of our city. The stakes of this criticality-or lack thereof-become evident in Aaron Betsky's article, which meditates on how architecture might contribute to the reenvisioning and reconstruction of the city.9 Unlike New Orleans, Betsky frames his remarks with an explicit criticism of the politico-economic dynamics of the city, writing, \"The situation in New Orleans is only an extreme instance of the quandary in which arch in general finds itself-when the economic realities imposed on us by relentless market forces compel the proliferation of nonplaces leached of any individual or social meaning or coherence, how is architecture to respond?\" Yet, echoing Ilya Berman's claims to resist \"habitual typological patterns\" and Roof's denunciation of \"the sugar-coated future\" offered by New Urbanism, Betsky's main objection to \"market forces\" appears to be that it threatens to reduce the aesthetic and spiritual qualities of urban place-it is against this alienating privation of \"meaning\" that architecture finds its specific competence. \"11 Rancière's concept enables to understand the stakes of the \"right to return\" declared by groups such as the ACORN Katrina Survivors; this right unsettles the self-evidence of both political and physical territory, suggesting that the future of spaces is inextricably bound up with the conflicting ways in which their histories are marked, represented, and interpreted.12 Inhabiting and displacing the ubiquitous mantra about the dependence of the urban future on a sense of the past, the right to return challenges Betsky's narrow demarcation of the politics of housing and his uncritical acceptance of the \"shrinking cities\" narrative, which in fact bears a disturbing affinity with the class-cleansing discourse of figures such as Canizaro and the self-fulfilling forecast by the Rand Corporation in April that half of New Orleans's pre-storm diaspora will in fact not return to the city.13 Needless to say, in questioning such a position one should not be glib about the massive obstacles facing the return of displaced people, or the serious ecological and infrastructural issues to be dealt with in low-lying areas of the city.

Discusses the work of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. The author comments on the artists' video work 'Under discussion' (2005; illus.) noting that the work is part of a long-term project relating to the island of Vieques near Puerto Rico, explains that the work poses a series of questions relating to land use, and argues that their video work 'Land mark' investigates spatial issues through the artists' concept of 'the trace'. He assesses the relationship of Allora and Calzadilla's work to contemporary activist media with reference to the work of William Kentridge, asserts that the artists' work is primarily concerned with issues relating to ecology and politics, and examines their interest in the concept of the trace with reference to their site-specific sculptural work 'Chalk' (illus.) noting that the work was created in three separate locations between 2000-04. He focuses on the history of Vieques noting its use as a site for target practice by the American military, reports on Allora and Calzadilla's collaboration with local protest groups in 2000 noting the political element of their work 'Land mark (foot prints)' (2001-02; illus.), and studies a series of influences on the work including photographs of footprints on the moon, the work of Robert Smithson and Richard Long, and works by Dennis Oppenheim such as 'Ground mutations' (1969; illus.). He assesses Allora and Calzadilla's approach to documenting their work through photography, states that the American military vacated Vieques in 2003, and reports on Allora and Calzadilla's subsequent purchase of information relating to the geography of the island noting their virtual recreation of the island's conditions in Tate Modern, London, also noting the influence of Joseph Beuys on their work 'Land mark (felt)' (2003; illus.). He suggests that Allora and Calzadilla's work is a continuation of the work of Robert Smithson and Robert Morris, highlights Allora and Calzadilla's work in the field of reclaiming the land of Vieques in 2004, and studies their video work 'Re-turning a sound' (2004; illus.) noting its relationship to the video 'Under discussion'. He concludes by assessing the nature of the 'Land mark' project with reference to the theorist Barbara Johnson's understanding of the concept of the 'wake'.