Landscaping Pavements

This zine invites readers to reconsider the mundane surfaces of the city not as static, industrial grey zones, but as vibrant, layered palimpsests: a landscape of pavements. This reading challenges the modernist project of sealing the earth with tarmac and granite. Perfectly sealed surfaces represent a form of material oblivion that disconnects urban dwellers from the geological and ecological labour lying beneath their feet. Adopting the tactile, provisional format of the zine, the text guides the reader through a series of speculative exercises aimed at “landscaping” the pavement. Qalkers are encouraged to spend time observing the contact zones where materials meet, clashing architectural dreams of order against the hopeful glitches of weeds pushing through asphalt. The zine urges an exploration of the guts of the city—those subterranean layers of pipes and soil usually reserved for experts—treating the street crust as a living interface rather than a mute barrier. By reframing pavements as liberated and more-than-human entities, this issue of Tarde functions as both a political and sensory field guide. Ultimately, it seeks to transform the simple act of walking into a deep-listening exercise, uncovering the deafening stories of extraction, maintenance, and ecological persistence hidden in the stones of the urban ground.