The Urban Future, Back and Forth: Utopias and Dystopias

Abstract

Does the future of cities matter as a research topic? If we are powerless to predict or to control their trajectory, exercising such an investigation may in fact be pointless. Disregarding this possibility, urban society seems to enjoy making predictions about the kind of settlements it creates and lives in, as do scientific researchers who hypothesize a possible rational alignment between the past, present and times to come. This paper is a discussion on perspectives looking towards urban futures demonstrated in one world newspaper and in selected academic papers. The New York Times newspaper was chosen due to its global impact, the considerable amount of material available on its website, and the quantity of archived material it provides. Academic articles were chosen from SAGE Publications, due to the large number and variety of academic journals in its database. Assumption adopted is that key factors throughout history, not only necessarily those closely related to cities, play a decisive role in the way we envision the future of our own settlements. Discussion indicates that despite predictions may commonly fail exercises for envisioning times to come may help to transform current circumstances.