Issue 12/13, 2020/2021: canada: delineating nation state capitalism aims to connect two critical discourses about space that have so far been disassociated: architectural theories that point to the importance of real property as the fundamental unit of urban morphology and architectural typology, and Indigenous land claims which point to the violence of colonial land dispossession, through which this property was originally invented and formed.

This research sees property delineation as a fundamental grammatical logic of the production of the space of nation, state and capital. Nisga’a architect luugigyoo patrick reid stewart, who is interviewed in this volume, underlines this fact when he likens the grammar of the English language to the striation of colonial land appropriation. To counter the violence of this colonial language, he writes without periods or capitals, and spells “Canada,” a word derived from the Iroquoian word kanata, meaning “settlement,” with backward slashes between each of its letters, a critical spelling that literally illustrates the fragmentation of land produced through the delineation of colonial land appropriation.

The editors and contributors to this volume approach this intersection of Indigenous and settler viewpoints, as well as the interdisciplinary perspectives of both spatial delineators and critical commentators, in order to understand the deep connections between Indigenous dispossession and urban pathologies of gentrification, homelessness, systemically biased planning and urban alienation. Finally, contributors to this issue address this connection in order to rethink and redraw land relations as a foundation for undoing this alienation and creating spaces that cultivate a caring relation with land, kin and strangers.

Contributors: Sabrien Amrov, George Baird, Nicholas Blomley, D.T. Cochrane, Sarah Cooper, Roberto Damiani, Tiffany Kaewen Dang, Bonnie Devine, Victoria Freeman, Luis Jacob, Dani Kastelein-Longlade, Irena Latek, Adam Lauder, Ange Loft, Sophie Maguire, Kanahus Manuel, Phil Monture, Michael Piper, Brian Porter, Beverly A. Sandalack, luugigyoo patrick reid stewart, Martha Stiegman, Eunice Wong.

Edited by David Fortin and Adrian Blackwell

Scapegoat, 2022

29.5 X 21 cm, 230 pages