Tag: designing otherwise

This article explores the use of drawing as a research method to reimagine ecological, social and spatial changes in urban areas undergoing global urbanization. Focusing on the rapidly transformation of the landscape of Seropédica on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, the article frames urbanization as a contested process in which multiple histories and temporalities coexist. Rather than treating informality and nature as issues to be resolved, the article proposes a pluriversal urban ecology that centers the “otherwise”: informal, marginalized and non-human forms of life. The article introduces “research by drawing” as an alternative where drawing makes visible what is excluded from conventional planning. Three visual methods reveal Seropédica’s overlooked dynamics. We trace the shifting relationships between rural life, logistics and symbolic erasures, translate a transect into a performative score, documenting rhythms and human–non-human encounters and overlay narratives to expose the multiplicity of urbanization. The findings depict this metropolitan periphery as a fragmented yet interconnected mosaic, challenging binaries such as formal/informal and city/nature and emphasizes the importance of the otherwise for achieving just and ecological urban futures.