Spatializing the Energy Transition. Toward a Meta-Reflection on the Notion of Energy Landscape

In 2022, urban researchers and architectural historians Sascha Roesler, Kim Förster and Elke Beyer launched the international “Network on Urban Energy Landscapes.” The following discussion for the “Ardeth” edition, to which historical sociologist
Daniela Russ was also invited, revolves around three central aspects:
a) firstly, the need to think about the energy transition in spatial terms and across different scales, i.e., from the smallest to the largest manifestations of the built environment, which the notion of “energy landscape” seeks to encompass;
b) secondly, the unprecedented challenges posed by the future energy transition and the epistemological limits of historical research;
c) and thirdly, the special position of cities as centers of energy consumption and the inevitability of networked energy hinterlands.