From marine pollution to environmental intelligence. Innovation by necessity in northern European urban areas

Résumé 0

The Baltic Sea, North Sea and Arctic Ocean are three symbolic spaces regularly associated with the environmental emergency. This is either because of the deplorable state of their ecosystems (like the Baltic), or ecological threats becoming increasingly severe in an undisturbed environment (as in the Arctic). The northern European urban areas contribute largely to the global economy (maritime flows, energy production, mineral extraction, tourism). While appearing increasingly vulnerable to geopolitical conflicts, they did not consider pollution according to a deterministic approach but as a possibility to redefine their territorial and interterritorial strategies and to initiate new trajectories. How can studying the innovations they have introduced help open up a new perspective on territorial ingenuity and one of its variations, environmental intelligence? Liquid territories, considered as pure or contaminated, seem to participate, at all scales, in the changes and recomposition under way in urban space systems and their transition dynamics.