A brief history of a subversive future: cities of ecological entanglement

Henri Lefebvre wrote of a future world turned upside down. This counter-narrative is an exploration of what that might look like and how that may come about. Written with scholar-activists in mind, this is a call to action for new modes of storytelling. As a proof of concept, this article offers fresh methodological and epistemological contributions in just transition scholarship. Transcending history, this speculative nonfiction story traverses a counterfactual future transpiring between 2025 and 2049. Here, present tense refers to 31 December 2049. However, the focus is on the ideas and struggles that provide the foundations that would make a utopian future possible. There is particular attention paid to the possible role speculative nonfiction scholarship could play. The story begins with an overview of its theoretical frame of ecopedagogy before delving into its methodological framework within speculative nonfiction that draws on backcasting and autoethnographic traditions. This future is grounded in historical precedent – both from literature as well my own lived experience. The second section provides a short overview of the motonormative imaginary that helped create the troubled cities we have today. What follows is not a probable, but a possible future. Here, the metacrisis is overcome through an explosion of veganic urban agriculture that upends the animal industrial complex – making way for a radical rewilding of cities and agricultural lands, as well as a revolution in inclusive democracy. Finally, I explore how the envisioned biophilic cities might transform our relationships with the more-than-human world, with one another and ourselves.

Abstract licence: CC BY-ND

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