Soil Bites the City

Soil retains a polysemic definition, referring simultaneously to a surface, an abstract reserve of land and a substratum. It includes topsoil (composed of dirt or vegetable soil, usually a few centimetres deep), subsoil (made up of thicker inert materials), and the deeper rocky layers, each presenting different normative, cultural and scientific interpretations. Despite this complexity, urban soils have historically been trivialised in urban planning culture, represented as two-dimensional blank spaces without a vertical (and historical) depth.