Future Environments: Cities, Ecologies, Planets

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the study of natural and built environments often involved visions of the future along with proposals for social and political change: narratives and images of what better futures might look like, and how worse futures might be avoided. Implicitly or explicitly, these narratives of future environments are enmeshed with underlying assumptions about what the best social order would be, how a more just society might function, and how human communities should relate to nonhuman species and systems. Focus on connection between stories about urban, ecological, and planetary futures; technologies involved in their creation, use, and maintenance; and underlying assumptions that shape them. Students apply narrative analysis and reasoning about social justice to stories about future environments and techno-social innovation.

P/NP or letter grading.