Urban Xtopias – Open Future Spaces
How can people be empowered to form their own visions of what they want the future to look like? How can we make it easier for people to participate in the debate about how „we“ or future generations want to live – or how we do not want to /should not live – in the city of the future? How can they be encouraged to question established paths and participate in the development and realisation of a major urban transformation?
In order to initiate a new, meaningful discourse on various possible futures, we developed ‚Xtopia‚ as innovative tools in our research project.
Specifically, we developed Xtopias relating to urban public space: Within the city, public space is a living environment that can be individually experienced and thus also easily imagined. Its design and utilisation as well as restrictions on its use can be negotiated. In public open spaces, urban visions of the future become concrete and real. This is where different social groups meet, communicate and interact with each other.
Some examples of the interventions in the research project can be found here.
The project was funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung as part of its outstanding funding programme „SPIELRAUM – Urbane Transformation gestalten“ over a period of almost four years. We are Xtremely grateful for this!
Urbane Xtopien 