Invisible Routes . The (In-)Visible Infrastructural Expansion of Today’s Society Above and Below Sea Level

What is the port of Forchis without the many ships that pass through it? How can we consider Ithaca a simple scenography and the Mediterranean sea only a natural space? Isn’t the metal so longed for by Creon for his war same as the search for resources of the “floating bodies” (A.Lahoud) that live today in the Mediterranean Sea? And ignore the fact that the overheating of the Mediterranean Sea is the cause of the increase in the level of aridity of the surrounding lands, and consequently of the increase in the flows of the same migration phenomena that pass through it? Today the Mediterranean is “a geography of the possibilities of the territory, which, meeting latent or unsatisfied needs, aims to become the foundation of a new social and political order”. (DeMatteis 1985) Conflicts, violence, wars, rites, ancient, modern and future society; incessantly delineate the Mediterranean Sea as an extreme territory *. Here, in fact, the maximum ratio between the anthropic resource coincides with the maximum anthropic risk and with its connection-disconnection to the surrounding states. The Mediterranean Sea, as an extreme territory located beyond the limits of Mediterranean society, presents itself as a fluid and dynamic space. Above and below sea level the network of connectivity levels narrated by Braudel takes shape: shipping routes, maritime traffic, Conventions, Agreements, Navigation Codes, migrations, territorial limits and areas of influence . This network of connectivity levels creates a fluid, dynamic, unstable and invisible space of relationship. The set of socio-economic, geopolitical and socio-ecological relationships, invisible routes that cross the Mare Nostrum, trace within it a new expansion and implosion of the visible (In-) infrastructural urban space. Starting from the provocative question “Is the Mediterranean Urban?”, posed by Neil Brenner and Nikos Katsikis, this research aims to map the fluid and relationship space, given by the “footprint of human mobility” with the contribution of the LandScan approach(Neil Brenner, Nikos Katsikis) . The map becomes a dynamic tool to translate “The (In-) Visible expansion of the Mediterranean Sea” to achieve a vision of a place and a reality implicitly necessary, but removed from sight.