2025年2月28日　17:00～18:30

オンライン

In this presentation, we discuss how we can make visible more diverse ways of future-making based on an article recently published in the journal Futures.

Scholarship of addressing socio-environmental challenges through sustainability transitions inherently considers the future in various ways, although these considerations are often only implicit. We argue that it is crucial to engage more explicitly in understanding how imagined futures are enacted and comprehended within research on sustainability transitions. This endeavour is necessary to navigate both the uncertainty and complexity of the future and to avoid perpetuating cognitive path dependencies and unsustainable modes of production and consumption that uphold existing injustices. Our paper discusses characteristics of futures and future-making that are relevant to transition studies. Given the spatial contingency of futures, the social construction of time, and the tendency to reproduce incumbent futures in transitions research, we outline contours of diverse futures through which we can not only analyse but actively engage in diverse future-making.
We illustrate this through the engagement with a new research project: The Netherlands Imagines. In this comprehensive research and public engagement project by the Urban Futures Studio at Utrecht University, we explore how diverse future-making can help us in overcoming societal deadlocks. Through investigating how different ways of imagining and visualizing the future can create moment for positive change, we move beyond traditional approaches that usually struggle to engage citizens effectively in building appetite for sustainable futures across The Netherlands.

Jonathan Friedrich, Department of Human Geography & CIRCLE, Lund University, Sweden and Abe Hendriks, Urban Futures Studio, Utrecht University, the Netherlands