Conditioned Urbanities & 'Bulk Landscape'. The Case of The Coronel 'Sacrifice Zone', Chile

This study examines the transformation of Coronel, a Chilean industrial port city historically linked to coal mining, amidst the national energy transition and the phase-out of coal-based thermoelectric plants. Using GIS and satellite analyses, alongside a review of urban policy and historical context, the research traces Coronel’s development across three phases: pre-coal, during coal, and post-coal. The findings highlight the city’s evolution within complex socio-political and policy frameworks, showing how successive governance decisions generated wicked problems that contributed to its environmental degradation and subsequent classification as a ‘sacrifice zone’, framed within coal usage and its importation as bulk cargo, as Chile moves toward carbon neutrality. Coronel provides insights into addressing transformation scenarios of historic extractive sites, showcasing how extractive landscapes condition urban development. It reveals how social distress and political agendas shape energy transition dynamics and how the capitalist extractive processes of the past continue to influence current urban policies. Accordingly, the research proposes the term ‘Bulk Landscape’ to refer to industrial landscapes determined by the processes related to large-volume, dry raw materials.