Infrastructures of Excess
From overflowing landfills to the guarded estates of the ultra-wealthy, this project asks what these seemingly unrelated places have in common — and how excess itself reshapes the planet.
Infrastructure studies offer a framework for understanding how built systems and social structures shape cultural life, power, and human experience. This research project, led by Marc Böhlen, advances infrastructure studies by developing the concept of "infrastructures of excess"–spatial systems that produce, manage, or materially express intensification, surplus, waste, and unequal accumulation. By examining sites ranging from uncontrolled landfills and engineered abundance of massive theme parks to the secluded estates of the global ultra-wealthy, the project argues that these divergent landscapes are linked by shared logics of privilege, security, and environmental stress. Methodologically, the project integrates satellite imagery and geospatial analytics with machine learning and generative AI to identify and compare these sites at a planetary scale. Ultimately, this work develops novel interdisciplinary methods to describe human impact on planet Earth.