What Fits in the Void? Terrain Vague and Cities That Resist Planning

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Every city carries, woven into its fabric, fissures that resist capture: ruins, vacant lots, leftover infrastructures, and gaps that persist at the margins of the official narrative. These are places that slip through the logics of planning, emerging as unexpected counter-scenes within a territory that seeks to present itself as coherent.

In the rush to organize and predict, we rarely pause to notice what emerges from such unforeseen conditions. Yet it is precisely in them that new forms of urban life begin to take shape. Free from pragmatic control or predetermined codes of conduct, these spaces reveal another layer of the city — one that, in its continual state of latency, opens room for new modes of appropriation.

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Cite: Ghisleni, Camilla. "What Fits in the Void? Terrain Vague and Cities That Resist Planning" [O que cabe no vazio? Terrain vague e a cidade que resiste ao planejamento] 01 Dec 2025. ArchDaily. (Trans. Simões, Diogo) Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1036323/what-fits-in-the-void-terrain-vague-and-cities-that-resist-planning> ISSN 0719-8884

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