arbiter
JournalsAccount

Timber, power, and the metabolic city: Alpine frontiers in the Swiss inner south

Mosè Cometta

Environment and Planning D: society and space2026https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758261418558article
AJG 4ABDC A
Weight
0.50

Abstract

This paper advances a theoretical reflection on the entanglement between territorial governance, extractivism, and urban metabolism through the case of nineteenth-century timber trade in Ticino, on the Alpine border between Switzerland and Lombardy. Building on debates around planetary urbanisation and the critique of methodological cityism, it argues for a perspective that understands operational landscapes as historically contingent and politically negotiated formations. Through a micro-historical analysis of a 1810 dispute in the village of Tegna, the paper re-constructs how local actors and timber merchants engaged in struggles over value, legitimacy, and control of natural resources. The notion of a ‘timber republic’ is proposed to conceptualise situations in which state institutions are informally captured and re-oriented to serve extractivist interests – thus extending the urban metabolism into peripheral territories. This concept provides a lens for examining how informal alliances, legal ambiguities, and socio-ecological transformations co-produce governance regimes across scales. By situating the Alps within global histories of extraction and state formation, the paper suggests that frontier zones are not marginal spaces but laboratories where the infrastructural and political conditions of capitalism are constantly re-negotiated. Ultimately, it calls for an inter-scalar, inter-sectional approach to operational landscapes attentive to local agency and epistemic pluralism.

Open via your library →

Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758261418558

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{mosè2026,
  title        = {{Timber, power, and the metabolic city: Alpine frontiers in the Swiss inner south}},
  author       = {Mosè Cometta},
  journal      = {Environment and Planning D: society and space},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758261418558},
}

Paste directly into BibTeX, Zotero, or your reference manager.

Flag this paper

Timber, power, and the metabolic city: Alpine frontiers in the Swiss inner south

Flags are reviewed by the Arbiter methodology team within 5 business days.

Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.