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Department of Spatial Planning

New Book Chapter: What if Everything is Production of Scale?

Cover of the book: "Geografía contemporánea – Pensar y hacer desde los territorios" [In Spanish] © Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado

Scale is both a tool and a concept of great historical and contemporary importance, especially for geographical and interdisciplinary thought and practice. Discussions of scale range from the social ascription of the construction of scale, its use and tensions in cartography and GIScience, to arguments about the need for scale-free human geography or the replacement of scale with an emphasis on connectivity. A recent chapter by our lab member Víctor Cobs-Muñoz (in collaboration with Dr Ulises Sepúlveda of Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Chile) seeks to deepen the clarification of certain elements that revolve around the construction of a sense of scale, both in subjective dimensions and in the creation of representations. The chapter looks at elements that, based on bibliographical evidence, are essential conditions for the production of scale, such as ontology, place, power, and representation. The work also opens a debate on the meaning of this concept in today's world for the geographical and interdisciplinary discipline, with the guiding question that determines the title of the paper: What if everything is the production of scale?

The chapter is published as part of the book "Contemporary Geography - Thinking and doing from the territories" (In Spanish: Geografía contemporánea - Pensar y hacer desde los territorios). The book can be found online:

Sepúlveda, U. and Cobs-Muñoz, V. (2022). ¿Y si todo es producción de escala? Sujeto, ontología y lugar para la comprensión del mundo contemporáneo [What if everything is production of scale? Subject, ontology and place for understanding the contemporary world]. In: Sepúlveda, U., Maturana Miranda, F., Muniz Solari, O. and Palomino-Schalscha, M. (eds.): Geografía contemporánea – Pensar y hacer desde los territorios [Contemporary geography  Thinking and doing from the territories] . Santiago de Chile, Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 89–118.