“Designating land as ‘technical’ is a political act. Doing so entails dividing, marginalizing, and rendering portions of the Earth inaccessible and invisible.”

These words derive from Technical Lands: A Critical Primer, the new book by Harvard GSD professor Charles Waldheim, in which various authors consider the meaning of spaces that are united by their “exceptional” characteristics, such as remote locations, delimited boundaries, secured accessibility and hyper-vigilant management. (Or: demilitarized zones, prison yards, industrial extraction sites, airports and spaceports.)