Sans Terre is a project for developing global collaborations that rethink urbanism as both a concept and an actuality. It begins with the observation that the world is now composed of a radically different urban geography. Currently, half of the world’s population lives in cities. From this factual observation spurse extends the idea of the urban condition as a mode of distributed agency in the world where the world is full, active and participatory across all levels of organization, forms of agency, systems of incorporation and hierarchies. 

Many of the ways in which questions are framed regarding urban dwelling–city vs. country, region vs. globe, nature vs. culture, urban vs. suburban, subject vs. object, etc.–seem to have little purchase given this new urban reality. Spurse’s research, then, centered around three primary questions:

1. Can the separation between the natural and artificial be reconceptualized under the rubric of urbanism (Is there a way outside the phenomena-neumena divide)?

2. Can urbanism as a concept allow a vectoral method of understanding place?

3. What happens when the world becomes fully urban?