New Order is a catalogue of future visions for a post-carbon world. Like all future visions, they are by turns tentative, speculative, exaggerated, and subjective. But this is not to say they are mere fantasy. As in the context of today’s contemporary ideology, living patterns, and political priorities, the six visions presented here should be viewed as prototypes for a future we need to create, or will be forced to confront.

‘Where is the center?’ must be the most commonly asked question when tourists enter a city. The center is where the action is supposed to be, where life is vibrant and interesting, where there’s lots to see, where you simply want to go. It is a matter of gravity and (functional) density that attracts visitors to ‘the center’. This tourist gaze is defining for our understanding of the city, any city.

For decades satellite imagery has provided data for, and insights into, a huge amount of different fields of science such as ecology, geosciences, meteorology, and urban planning. Nowadays the usage of satellite imagery has increased overwhelmingly as consumer applications have found their way to the market – think about Google maps, navigation apps and weather forecasts. Correspondingly governments have found the use of the footage interesting for a broad range of practices, both malicious and positive. Positive applications include infrastructural planning, mapping of urban expansions and ecological surveillance, though more nefarious uses have been featured frequently over the last few months: malicious military practices, observed and recorded by satellites, have been revealed to the public via the media. The fact that satellite imagery is increasingly used when it comes to media coverage and public presentations concerning politics and warfare shows the established importance of satellites for a broad range of purposes.

‘Guilty landscape’ is a notion borrowed from the Dutch painter, sculptor, writer, and musician Armando, who wrote about such landscapes more than once. Living in Amersfoort before, during, and after the Second World War, close to a concentration camp situated in the woods, he was very aware that the innocent forest of his youth had witnessed the horrors of war and the Holocaust.

We recently had a little lottery draw to win a copy of 'Project Japan: Metabolism Talks', signed by the authors, Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist! Take a look at the draw to find out if you were the lucky one selected.

Jeffrey Inaba, Volume's feature editor from C-LAB, talks about the convergence by technology, automobile, and higher learning corporations and international policy organizations on the city — and how they are making the City 2.0. The lecture is part of the program of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2012 and takes place at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) on Thursday 3 May from 8 pm. Click here for more information!

Volume’s presence at the Storefront For Art And Architecture in New York was well received by a good crowd attending the event. Justin Fowler, editor of the Volume in New York, gave a presentation about his opinion on Crisis, one of the themes of the day. Fowler's presentation tackled issues such as the aging population and war survivors, leading to what he calls a 'Trauma Generation'. The presentation created a link between the trauma generation and urban planning. “Human development corresponds with urban development”, he stated, illustrating his presentation with various projects aiming overcome issues of the aging population.

Volume is present at the last day of symposium on publishing practices at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City. The Storefront hosts a two-day symposium in conjunction with Archizines, an exhibition by Elias Redstone. Volume's New York editor Justin Fowler will participate in the talk on Crisis at 4 pm, or follow the live stream here.

Japanese photojournalist Kazuma Obara recently released a collection of photographs entitled Reset: Beyond Fukushima. Reset visually explores the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, one of the most harrowing results of the 11 March 2011 earthquake off the coast of Tōhoku, Japan. The disaster sparked a critical global conversation regarding whether or not nuclear power should be one of the planet’s primary source of energy, including the long-term effects of nuclear waste. Fukushima Daiichi is now one amongst a growing list of what could be termed ‘guilty landscapes’: Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Bikini Atoll, Chernobyl, Tiananmen Square, and Fukushima Daiichi are all places that continue to carry heavy historical baggage. Such a recent apolitical addition to this list reminds us of our collective duty to balance the emotional weight of such places with the desire to progress beyond previous mistakes. Kazuma Obara’s Reset: Beyond Fukushima is published by Lars Müller Publishers.

Without resorting to the tired clichés on the advancements of globalisation/consumer technology/social media/creative economies/additive manufacturing, it would be safe to say that the relationship that architectural publications have with the discipline that they cover is undergoing a transformation. ARCHIZINES showcases the globally developing alternative in architectural publishing, featuring sixty architecture publications from over twenty countries. The publications serve as new platforms for practitioners, theorists, students, and anyone with a vested interest in contemporary architecture (NB: that would include all of us) to provide commentary and criticism of the built environment. Curated by Elias Redstone, ARCHIZINES features publications running from the low-budget fanzine aesthetic (New York’s Evil People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films) to the glossy bound almanac (Toronto’s Bracket) that showcase research (Paris’s Criticat), art (Amsterdam’s foto.zine), and narrative (Beijing’s What About It?) in contributing to the discourse of the spaces and places that we use and inhabit. Having recently visited London and Milan, ARCHIZINES will showcase the diverse and critical platforms in architecture publishing as part of its tour, currently parked in Barcelona until 4 May at Otracosas de Villar-Rosàs. ARCHIZINES world tour will continue, with upcoming visits to, amongst others, New York, Berlin, and Montréal currently scheduled. ARCHIZINES is on now at Otrascosas de Villar-Rosàs (Via Laietana 64) in Barcelona. The exhibition runs until 4 May.

With a global infrastructure crisis looming, there is much debate as to how our roads, sewers, and power lines will be financed in the future.  While privatization was heralded as the solution a few years back, the current economic situation has cast doubt on the strategy. What do we do when the state can’t afford it and the private sphere doesn’t want the risk? Architects are complicit in this debate – affordability is a design issue.  Can we design a new breed of infrastructure that pays for itself?