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You can find the transcript through this link.

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

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Summary of 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.

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

1. A consensus has emerged in the first decades of the 21st 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.

You can find the article through this link.

Abstract: This article offers an analytical reflection on how urban futures have been imagined throughout history and into the present. Considering this question at a global scale, it examines the place of urbanization within the development of the modern/colonial order, accounting for the imagined futures that have supported this world-historical process. Three thematic sections—idealization, capitalization, and securitization—frame the discussion. Capturing desires for societal betterment alongside attempts to extract economic value and imperatives to govern anticipated threats, these heuristics provide insight into forms of urban future-making and future-thinking that continue to reverberate across contemporary projects, debates, and struggles. This 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 rather than another.

Connecting episodes you might be interested in:

• No.021 – Interview with Bridgette Engeler about questioning cities;
• No.072 – Interview with Tamás Mezős about the importance of urban history;
• No.135 – Interview with Paul Satur about the term city;

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