A revolutionary reimagining of the cities we live in, the air above us, and what goes on in the earth beneath our feet Today we live in a world that can no longer be read as a two-dimensional map, but must now be understood as a series of vertical strata that reach from the satellites that encircle our planet to the tunnels deep within the ground. In Vertical, Stephen Graham rewrites the city at every level: how the geography of inequality, politics, and identity is determined in terms of above and below. Starting at the edge of earth’s atmosphere and, in a series of riveting studies, descending through each layer, Graham explores the world of drones, the city from the viewpoint of an aerial bomber, the design of sidewalks and the hidden depths of underground bunkers. He asks: why was Dubai built to be seen from Google Earth? How do the super-rich in São Paulo live in their penthouses far above the street? Why do London billionaires build vast subterranean basements? And how do the technology of elevators and subversive urban explorers shape life on the surface and subsurface of the earth? Vertical will make you look at the world around you anew: this is a revolution in understanding your place in the world.

1. vertical / ˈvɜːtık(ə)l
A adjective. (1) Of,
pertaining to, situated
at, or passing through
the vertex or zenith;
occupying a position
in the sky directly
overhead or above a
given place or point.
(2) Placed, extending,
moving, or operating
at right angles to a
horizontal plane;
perpendicular;
upright.
Oxford English
Dictionary
Vertical:
The City From
Satellites to
Bunkers
Stephen Graham
Newcastle University

2. 1. Introduction: Getting off the ground-
Beyond flat perspectives

3. ‘Geography’ as a flat plane: ‘Geopolitics is a flat discourse. It largely ignores the
vertical dimension and tends to look across rather than to cut through the
landscape. This was the cartographic imagination. Vertical inherited from the
military and political spatialities of the modern state” Eyal Weizman

7. Why does virtually every
household have a traditional
‘flat’ atlas when cross-sections
going from orbital space
through the atmosphere and
fast-verticalising cities to the
subterranean and deep ocean
worlds are virtually unknown?

8. ”Stacked
societies”

10. “What would happen if you took geographic thinking
and instead of putting it on a horizontal axis, you
added a vertical axis?” Trevor Paglen

11. 3. Satellite:
Enigmatic
presence

13. ”The view from a satellite makes possible a
Copernican revolution in outlook. For all earlier
human beings, gazing up to the heavens was
akin to a naive preliminary stage of a
philosophical thinking beyond this world and a
spontaneous elevation towards contemplation of
infinity. Ever since the early sixties, an inverted
astronomy has . . . come into being, looking
down from space onto the earth rather than
from the ground up into the skies”
Peter Sloterdijk
An Inverted Astronomy

14. Raúl Zurita: Ni pena ni miedo (“No Pain, no Fear”)

15. Google Earth and the
Bahraini uprisings,
2011 by majority Shias

16. 4. Helicopter: Direct arrival

22. London scenario: Initially 160 sky
taxis and 10 vertiports geared
towards allowing kinetic
business elites to bypass
congested ground corridors
(especially routes between
finance districts and international
airports)

23. New politics of urban
airspace

24. 5.Lift:GoingUp

29. 6. Skyscraper:
Vanity and
violence

32. 4. Above and Below:
The Politics of Looking
7. Housing:
Luxury skies and
the ‘logic of luxury’

34. Midtown Manhattan:
2021 skyline projection

35. 670 square
meter full-
floorplate
Units:
Exact opposite
of Glaeserian
‘densification’

37. Luxury roofscapes

41. The importance of
language and metaphor

42. Um Lugar Ao Sol (A
Place in the Sun)
Gabriel Mascaro
The politics of
looking down

43. Treatment od previous,
modernist and social,
housing towers

46. 8. Science Fiction:
Vertical noir

47. Wizard of Oz and
the Burj Khalifa:
Adrian Smith, SOM
“I just remembered the
glassy, crystalline structure
coming up in the middle of
what seemed like nowhere,”

48. 9. Air:
Lethal
domes

50. ‘Urban heat islands’
made worse by
air conditioning

52. 10. Ground: Making geology

55. 11. Mine : Deep frontier

58. I hope I’ve helped you to
see cities and urbanism
in a new way!
Further reading!
Thank You!
steve.graham@ncl.ac.uk