The United States Department of Defense is the largest contractor and land developer in the world. Despite a budget of over 500 billion dollars and a portfolio of nearly 30 million acres of lands and facilities, there does not exist a clear cartographic inventory of this military-security apparatus, nor has any recent scholarly enterprise been undertaken to analyze the effects of US military operations abroad, with their associated infrastructures. Shedding light on the complexities of this vast spatial footprint, this project overcomes a critical deficit in public knowledge by representing and interpreting the military geographies and altitudes of urbanization associated with the emergence of a military-logistical landscape, of planetary proportions.

Pierre Bélanger is a landscape urbanist and associate professor at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. His academic research and public work focus on the convergence of urbanism, landscape, and ecology in the fields of planning, design, and engineering. His publication include the 35th edition of Pamphlet Architecture (Going Live: From Models to Systems, 2015), Harvard Design Magazine 39 (Wet Matter, guest editor), editor of the Landscape Infrastructures DVD (2009), and author of the accompanying book to be published by MIT Press in 2016. His most recent articles and essays include "Between Tides of Apartheid" and "The Other 71 Percent" (2015), "The Alvsjo Flatbed" (2015), "Ecology 5.0" (2014), "The Multimedia Language of Models" (2014), "The Strategy of Urbanization" (2013), "Urbanism beyond Engineering" (2012), "Regionalization" (2010), "Redefining Infrastructure" (2010), "Landscape as Infrastructure" (2009), and "Synthetic Surfaces" (2007). He collaborates on a range of publications and projects, with subjects related to military geographies and urban infrastructures, including "Logistics Islands" (2012), "The Agronomic Landscape" (2011), "Power Perestroika" (2009) and "Airspace" (2007). He is Academic Advisor to the US Army Corps of Engineers, Executive Board Member for the Metis International Garden Festival, and recipient of the Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture, awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts. He is appointed as the national curator of the Canada Pavilion for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.