Urban utopias - open spaces of the future

Head:
Dr. Annette Voigt

How can we empower people to participate in the debate about how we or future generations want to live - or not want to live or should live - in the city of the future? How can we encourage them to question established paths and to participate in the development and implementation of a major urban transformation?

In order to initiate a new, meaningful debate about different possible futures, the research project is developing 'Xtopias' as innovative tools.

On the one hand, Xtopias are content-related products that combine and integrate utopias and dystopias related to urban open space - be they technological, ecological, Urban Design, economic or social in nature. On the other hand, they represent methodological tools that transfer content into practical application using suitable, actively involving formats - for example from art and futurology or from the field of education for sustainable development. Their aim is to facilitate mental and emotional access to possible futures: the ability to think and feel one's way into ideas about the future, to analyze them, to formulate one's own new visions and, in turn, to reflect on them critically.

Xtopias go beyond the future perspectives of current transformative research: they draw extreme visions independent of current framework conditions and feasibility and consciously focus on the ambivalences of utopian and dystopian visions. As part of a "Year of Xtopias", the project team will test and evaluate exemplary Xtopias as interventions at three locations together with local urban actors. The extent to which each individual utopia stimulates the ability and motivation to deal with futures creatively, creatively or critically will be examined. Based on the practical tests, the Xtopias will then be revised and made available for other cities to use.

The "Urban Xtopias - Open Spaces of the Future" project is being funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung over a period of three years and consists of a research network with seven partners, including the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Transition Town Eberswalde and the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences. The German Institute of Urban Affairs (Difu) is leading the network together with the University of Kassel.