‘Imagining urban futures through speculative fiction’ talk @ The British Academy, London, Jan 17, 2025

A disco ball reflecting blue-ish light

How can a geographical lens support much-needed social change – and how does that relate to literature? When it comes to imagining urban futures, what could we learn and, indeed, unlearn by reading and writing speculative fiction? Building on Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, the Blade Runner movies, Lauren Berlant, Ernst Bloch, and José Esteban Muñoz, amongst others, I argue that there is a need to hold space for strangeness when it comes to imagining the urban – something that could be done by teaching urban studies through speculative and science fiction.

Talk by Anke Schwarz at the Imag(in)ing the Urban Future conference, co-organized by The British Academy and The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Humanity’s Urban Future program.

Friday, January 17, 2025, 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH

Image: Final closing night at institut fuer zukunft, Leipzig, 2025.