Conference Agenda

The research focus on how coal extraction and usage for energy generation can shape the evolution of urban areas and how extractive pasts influence contemporary city development. For this, the work examines the case of Coronel, a city located in the Gulf of Arauco, southern Chile. A region historically rich in coal, and Bocamina I & II, two coal-based thermoelectric, which coal domes and ash dumpster are placed near the city center. Coronel is regarded as a Chilean sacrifice zone, one of five port cities where 27 of the nation’s 28 coal-based thermoelectric are located. The work studies Coronel’s evolution and its history related to coal extraction and usage in different phases between 1840’s and 2024; A coal-rich extractive territory, fundamental to the countries development; A deteriorated monoproductive mining-city, product of extractive oligarchies and mines depletion; A bastion of thermoelectric generated electricity and consequently backwards energy transition; A sacrifice zone with high levels of industrial pollution and urban distress, and; An industrial port city, after the closing of Bocamina I & II power plants amidst the 2050 national carbon neutrality plan.

To achieve this, the research conducted on-site photographic records, satellite imagery and geo spatial information analysis based on data from Chilean governmental institutions and NGOs, studies of Bocamina I thermoelectric original plans and a review of Coronel historical maps and urban regulatory documents. Carried with an approach that consider its evolution over time, to showcase how coal extractive and usage dynamics conditioned its urban evolution and contemporary urban development.

Coronel offers new insights on how the development of urban areas is conditioned by extractive landscapes. Its study exposes how social distress and political agendas influence energy transition dynamics and how capitalist extractive processes of the past affect current urban policies. Furthermore, it displays how coal extraction and storage infrastructures, and energy generation supply chains, historically exert pressure in the development of the port city and energy transitions. Lastly, the case of Coronel serves as a compelling model for understanding global challenges for marginal territories and could provide insights in how to adress transformation scenarios of historic extractive sites.

The uneven spatial patterns of wealth creation have long been a central theme in geographic scholarship, tracing back to the discipline’s earliest days. Theories of uneven regional development (e.g., Mandel, 1969; Aglietta, 1979) emphasize that regional disparities are not merely incidental to capitalism but are intrinsic to its functioning. As Smith (2001, p. 15958) observed, “uneven development is the process by which the social relations of capitalist societies are translated into spatial forms […] the hallmark of the geography of capitalism.” These dynamic processes reshape not only the socio-economic fabric of regions but also their natural landscapes and geographic character (Smith, 2008).

European extractive regions exemplify such transformative dynamics within capitalist systems. Historically pivotal to national wealth creation, many of these areas have, since the 1970s, become emblematic of deindustrialization and structural change, facing significant economic, ecological, and social challenges. Such regions have been for long neglected both in political and academic debates (Atkinson, 2017), but are now in the centre of recent debates on ‘places that do not matter’ (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018) and ‘left-behind places’ (MacKinnon et al., 2022).

This session focuses on the transformations of the Styrian Iron Route in central Austria, a region that remains home to Europe’s largest iron ore mine, which has shaped the area’s identity for centuries. By tracing the region’s developmental trajectory, this presentation examines contemporary challenges and explores policy responses to address the region's ongoing socio-economic and environmental transitions.

The transformation of European hinterlands into operational landscapes of urbanization, infrastructure, and resource extraction has followed distinct historical and spatial trajectories. This paper explores how formerly extractive or rural peripheries have been incorporated into metropolitan and regional governance frameworks, reshaping their economic, environmental, and territorial functions. To this end, Highlands and Islands of Scotland, UK have chosen to be focused on as the case study.

The Scottish Highlands and Islands have long been shaped by extractive processes—ranging from historical land enclosures and agricultural commodification to contemporary resource extraction, tourism economies, and renewable energy production. Once considered a remote periphery, the region has been increasingly integrated into urban and regional governance frameworks, creating new forms of territorial dependency. In recent years, the Highlands and Islands have been positioned as a renewable energy frontier, with large-scale investments in offshore wind and marine biotechnology. While framed as a climate solution, this transition reflects a new phase of extractivism—where energy production remains governed by external economic forces, reinforcing historical center-periphery dependencies and reshaping territorial governance.

This paper examines the governance mechanisms that have facilitated the transition of the Highlands and Islands from an extractive rural periphery to a managed operational landscape. Using the conceptual lenses of urban political ecology, historical extractivism, and planetary urbanization, it explores how tourism, renewable energy, and conservation policies operate as new forms of territorial commodification and governance-led urbanization; and how governance structures have redefined the center-periphery relationship in the Highlands and Islands. The intended outcome of the study is to reveal the socio-spatial consequences of integrating historically peripheral rural areas into broader urban networks and policy frameworks.

A qualitative research approach is employed, integrating ethnographic methods—mapping and a historical and comparative perspective within an interdisciplinary and theory-driven framework. Through a historical and comparative perspective, the paper contextualizes the Scottish case within broader European trends of rural extraction, governance centralization, and hinterland transformation. By bridging political ecology and urban studies, it contributes to understanding how governance mechanisms shape the socio-spatial trajectories of operational hinterlands in contemporary Europe.

Largely under-represented in scientific literature compared to their mediatic counterparts of metal ores (copper, iron, nickel, etc.), quarries can be considered as places of “ordinary extractivism” in Europe, enabling the massive production of building materials. Marginal both in discourse and literature on the urban environment, and in the territorial systems in which they take place, they are nonetheless essential to the making of the city, and as such should be considered as key elements of “urban metabolism” (Barles, 2017). Since the 1960s, as a result of urban sprawl, rural areas have seen an increase in the number of sand and aggregate extraction sites serving metropolitan areas. These sites maintain an ambivalent spatial relationship with the city, balancing the need for proximity motivated by various issues (transport costs, infrastructure, environmental objectives) with the need for land, nuisance and risk, which relegates them to the periphery.

Following a legal geography approach (Graham, 2011) and methodology (Santoire,& al. 2020), we question in particular the way in which legal categorizations of space and the socio-institutional transactions around them contribute to assigning an extractive vocation to certain rural territories - sometimes at the expense of other trajectories. In this proposal, we analyze the trajectories of two territories marked by the extraction of building materials in the Seine valley, in the departements of Eure (Normandie) and Yvelines (Ile de France). We are particularly interested in two aspects. The first question addresses the way in which metropolitan urban expansion and market dynamics, coupled with new environmental regulations, have modified the cultural and economic place of quarries in territorial development paths since 19th century. The second question focuses on the legal conditions and socio-spatial variables that allow this type of extraction site to multiply in certain areas, and under what conditions - and which temporality - it is possible to speak of “sacrifice zones” in this respect.