The earlier strong ties between politicians and state engineers, both extensively formulating the constructs of technological innovation, territorial organization, and societal modernization, seem to be replaced by a focus on and accumulation of local interventions generated by what seem like more complex design techniques. Whereas in his essay “What ever happened to urbanism?” Rem Koolhaas’ call for a “new urbanism” creating “enabling fields that accommodate processes” and manipulating “infrastructure for endless intensification and diversification” has been successfully answered, his concern about “taking positions” as the “most basic action in making the city” or “encoding civilizations on their territory” remains largely hidden under the zeal of “sophistication” (Koolhaas 1995). Consequently, the sociopolitical dimension of space or the notion of territory in general has become ambiguous in current design theory and practice. In his contribution to the conference on Ecological Urbanism at the GSD, Koolhaas is explicit about the direction in which the discipline needs to move: “We need to step out of this amalgamation of good intentions and branding and move in a political direction and a direction of engineering” (Koolhaas 2010, 70).