What form of housing will emerge in Dubai, where the majority of the population are non-citizens and the average length of stay is three days? How will depopulating cities reclaim vacant space, reorganize infrastructure and redefine their economic identity? What type of architecture results from the prevalence of airborne contaminants? What kind of urbanism does Google Earth produce?

Exploring the increasingly decentralized systems through which cities are organized and produced, Distributed Urbanism highlights the architectural practices that are emerging in response....