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Are you interested in how urban futures have changed over time?

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Our summary today works with the article titled Urban futures – Idealization, capitalization, securitization from 2022 by Austin Zeiderman and Katherine Dawson, published in the City – Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action journal. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how our imagination has changed regarding our cities’ futures. This article presents insights into forms of urban future-making and thinking, which lays the groundwork to identify what is at stake in imagining the future of cities in one way or another.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss with a special attention to Australian cities.

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A consensus has emerged in the first decades of the 21^st century: the global future is an urban future. At the same time, the urban future is a centrally important problem. The future has become a pre-eminent focus of temporary urban policy, planning, design, development, and governance. If one takes time to notice, it can easily begin to feel like the urban future is everywhere. The pandemic intensified this trend by producing uncertainty and provoking reflection about the future of cities. Established principles of urbanism, such as density, circulation, and exchange, are thrown into question by social distancing, self-isolation, and shelter in place. Despite the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the urban future, efforts to imagine the post-pandemic city inevitably bear traces of the experiences, images and ideas from before COVID-19.

If the current conjuncture indeed demands deeper reflection on the future of cities, it is worth taking stock of the conceptual resources we possess by looking back to historically influential ways in which the urban imagination has taken shape. This article selectively reviews a wide spectrum of urban thought and practice to offer an analytical reflection that would prove useful for studying contemporary cities and their imagined futures. The authors focus on three prominent themes – idealisation, capitalisation and securitisation which are recurrent in the history of the urban imagination and continue to reverberate throughout contemporary discussions of future cities. In doing so, the article lays the groundwork for the critical analysis of urban futures that identifies what is at stake in imagining the future of cities in one way or another. The ultimate objectives are to equip urbanists to think critically about how the future of cities has been thought about and acted upon in different times and places, and to reframe the ever-expanding historical archive of urban thought and practice to inform contemporary debates.

The future can be understood as a historically specific cultural horizon that defines how societies organise themselves and their institutions. But what does the future have to do with cities? Out of an experience of the cities came an experience of the future, with the crises produced by urbanisation and industrialisation, and the movements for social change emerging in time. The future is not only a cultural fact, but also an urban fact. So, the urban experience and its perpetual crises create the collective consciousness of the future. What forms of urban future-thinking and making have recurred and endured and how might their histories inform contemporary debates about the future of cities in times of profound uncertainty? The authors categorised the approaches into 3 themes: idealisation with better city better world, capitalisation with urban futures, bought and sold, and securitisation with the future is our enemy.

Idealisation with better city, better world refers to the urge to break free from the past and the present in order to create something new, different, better. The pursuit of improvements to the human condition has a long and winding history in which the city has consistently played a fundamental role from ancient Greece till the modern ages. The polis was the necessary outcome of the human search for fulfillment which was only possible in the city. In this understanding, the city is taken for granted as the endpoint of a natural progression – that the nature of society is to self-organise, both spatially and politically in urban form. This perspective usually critiques the existing urban conditions with the plan for an altogether superior alternative. Among the many contemporary iterations of this paradigm, the smart city is perhaps the most pervasive. As an all-purpose technological solution to social ills, the smart city is only the most recent in a long line of future visions that seek to make the world a better place, one city at a time.

Capitalisation with urban futures bought and sold refers to the process by which the urban future is rendered available as a source of economic value. Entangled with the paradigm of human-through-urban betterment is the process by which the urban future is leveraged to create profit. This process also features prominently in the urban imagination over the past few centuries and continues to exert profound influence. In this approach, the future is rendered available as a source of economic value. Currently, cities are still the place for the speculative dynamics of capitalist urbanisation and the aspirational excess of elite consumption instead of ecological urbanism. The most attractive feature of the emerging urban environmental and sustainable solutions may be their promise of economic return, the solutions need to be profitable to be implemented and wide-spread.

Securitisation with the future is our enemy refers to the imperative to govern the city in anticipation of future threats. Since the bloody English Civil War, many forms of urbanism can focus on securing the city against unwanted eventualities and in curtailing freedom in return for protection. Cities are now increasingly understood as spaces of convergence for multiple threats, as strategic sites that must be secured. The city-as-target captures the dual nature of an urban imagination that sees the city both as something to aspire to and to protect from. The imperative is to eliminate, minimise, or manage threats in the city and urban life across policy, infrastructure, and society. With climate change and the notion of Anthropocene, the future has become increasingly menacing to urban life. Concepts foresee an inherently volatile future that cannot be controlled or managed according to existing frameworks and institutions, hence the need to redesign the social and infrastructural urban systems to withstand and bounce back from any and all eventualities. Again, smart city is being positioned as a potential solution to this urban fear, offering technological solutions to emerging threats that appear poised to disrupt the city’s stability and economic success.

The urban future is everywhere. If engaging critically with the urban future is now more urgent than ever, the authors believe the time is right to look for conceptual resources and analytical tools that can help make sense of the current conjuncture. The presented 3 themes can appear in collaboration, not just individually. The link between urban and future might not be necessary or automatic. Many contemporary urbanists treat the urban condition as a foregone conclusion for the planet elevating their authority and expertise while diminishing rich traditions. The authors urge urbanists to question the inevitability of the urban and to remain open for future visions emanating from outside their purview, that is from beyond the urban world, however defined. The authors believe this is especially necessary at a historical moment in which to urban future is radically uncertain, given ecological and epidemiological concerns of a global nature – concerns that force us to contend with the possibility that the city as we know it may be threatening the future survival of humanity.

The urban future probably will remain a strategic terrain of social and political struggle and the authors hoped the presented knowledge will support the efforts of urban scholars, practitioners, activists and citizens alike to engage, critically, creatively and constructively – with the city of tomorrow today. By taking stock of both historical perspectives and contemporary possibilities, we can learn to better understand the imaginary and material processes that bring cities into being and perhaps even how to shape them in widely beneficial and truly inclusionary ways.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. A consensus has emerged in the first decades of the 21^st century: the global future is an urban future, but the urban future is a centrally important problem.
2. The urban future probably will remain a strategic terrain of social and political struggle and the authors hoped the presented knowledge will support the efforts of urban scholars, practitioners, activists and citizens alike to engage, critically, creatively and constructively – with the city of tomorrow today.
3. By taking stock of both historical perspectives and contemporary possibilities, we can learn to better understand the imaginary and material processes that bring cities into being and perhaps even how to shape them in widely beneficial and truly inclusionary ways.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. What do you think: is the global future an urban future?
2. How do your lived experiences influence your thinking about the future of your city?
3. Have you noticed any of the themes, idealisation, capitalisation and securitisation in your thinking about your city and its future?
4. How can you engage with the city of tomorrow today?

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