‘With its grand title O Problema da Habitação [The Housing Problem], Daniel Malhão’s project is a set of images resulting from a process of permanent wandering through the city. In fact, through two cities: Lisbon and Vienna […] with no programme other than stopping for long enough to look at that which has no history, or at that which has not been captured by its history.’ The art critic and curator Delfim Sardo presents the collection of photographs that make up this ‘Metropolitan’ in an essay that is itself a wandering through the History of Photography that leads to the history of these photographs. Represented in important collections and with work shown in several national and international exhibitions, Daniel Malhão is a recognised contemporary Portuguese photographer, whose work has been marked by a close connection of photography with architecture.

This issue’s dossier addresses a theme that is almost the very essence of archetypal differences: the city- countryside dichotomy. Almost like a warning to the incautious, however, it must be said at the very outset that this dichotomy, while retaining its expressive and symbolic value crystallised by our binary representations, is no longer as relevant or operative as it once was. This polarisation still exists in our imagination and even corresponds to an ideal, but in many respects it no longer coincides with its true original meaning: the countryside increasingly resembles the city or, at least, is increasingly home to more urban working habits and lifestyles. As Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas wrote over a decade ago, in an essay entitled Countryside, even ‘husbandry of the land is now a digital practice’.

At a time when it has become evident that the scale of large cities makes them fragile in all areas, especially when facing an invisible virus,Thierry Paquot, author of Mesure et démesure des villes [Moderation and Excess in Cities], as well as other books on issues of contemporary urbanism, opposes the concept of the bioregion to the increasingly numerous megalopolises and the various forms of urban disaster with which we are confronted today.

Australian philosopher Jeff Malpas questions the meaning of an ancient and persistent opposition between the city and the countryside (two territories delimited by the walls of the ancient city). Modern society has seen a total urbanisation process unfold, in such a way that the countryside, having been erased, appears today as a reality to be rediscovered.

In this article, Swiss geographer Joëlle Salomon Cavin, professor at the University of Lausanne, takes up a topic that has been the privileged object of her research: hostility towards the city, in the Swiss context, inscribed in a history and a culture but which covid-19 has caused to emerge with greater force.

The interview with Yves Cabannes that we publish here focuses on a concept that is already one hundred and twenty years old, but that is of renewed current interest as a result of both the pandemic and climate change: the concept of the ‘garden city’. As an urban planning specialist, he has contributed to the reactivation of this concept, in particular through a manifesto in favour of 21st century garden cities, which he published in 2014 with Philip Ross.

Raul Cerveira Lima, researcher in light pollution at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Science, University of Coimbra. This field of investigation has provided him with sufficient material and reasons for public interventions aimed at eliminating the factors that cause light pollution, a form of pollution that is rarely talked about. Night has been eliminated from the countryside by the imposition of the logic of urban life. This text is written in defence of the night.

The encounter and the long-standing dialogue between the Italian critic and essayist Alfonso Berardinelli and the German poet, essayist and novelist Hans Magnus Enzensberger is an example of an elective affinity rich with ensuing consequences, such as a book by them both: Che noia la poetry. Pronto Soccorso per lettori stressati [What boring poetry. First Aid for stressed readers] (2006). This text by Berardinelli on the essayist Enzensberger prolongs this fruitful encounter.

By biographical circumstance, the writer and architectural historian Paulo Varela Gomes was an inhabitant and observer of the countryside and country living for over a decade. This experience offered him plenty of food for thought. For him, who had always been immersed in city issues and culture, it represented an important theoretical challenge, as you can gather in this passage from one of his texts where this question arises.

This is an original, previously unpublished story, written for Electra. With published novels, short stories and non-fiction books, the author, Navtej Sarna, is a recognised Indian writer. His recent historical novel Crimson Spring has been acclaimed by critics. He is a regular columnist on literary and political matters. A prestigious diplomat, he has represented India in several countries, having been ambassador to the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel.