![]() Fortunately, around the world, thousands of cities have declared their intention to become carbon-neutral, as have thousands of city-based businesses across finance, transportation, manufacturing, and energy. Cities, too, are where most of the world’s energy systems are controlled, even if much of the energy is made in more distant places. Cities are where people use and consume the vast majority of the world’s energy. Many people agree that a major change in the energy sector is coming, and point to a need to swap the use of fossil fuels for renewable sources of electricity. We imagine that future as very different than the cities of today. And since, for millennia, the city has been a focal point of human experience, before even the Greeks conceived of their city-states and the Romans imagined their civitas-a community of citizens, from which we derive the English word city-this book is also about imagining the future of the human experience and human community in the wake of a sustainable energy revolution. This book is about imagining the future of the post-carbon city. “Kublai asked Marco: ‘You who go about exploring and see signs, can tell toward which of those futures the favoring winds are driving us.’”-Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities Is the city of tomorrow you imagined worth inhabiting? For whom, and in what ways? How does sustainable energy contribute to that worth? In your mind, who decided what the future would look like, and whose voices were left out? The Future of the City How has the city weathered the transition to renewable energy? Has its look and feel changed? Do people live, work, and play in different ways? Where are all the solar panels? Who owns them? Who benefits or bears the risks from the technological, economic, and political power they generate? How are benefits and risks distributed? How are those panels connected to the invisible threads of history and purpose, commerce and industry, culture and society that make up the city? Now imagine that same city, a few decades from now, powered by solar energy. What does it cost people to live there, financially and otherwise? What inequalities and conflicts does it harbor? Who owns the city? At whose expense? What gives the city vitality? Why does it exist? Who lives there? What meanings does it have for them? What is its history? What is its future? Make it real. Envision the lives and the lifestyles that it cultivates and nourishes. Feel its shape, its textures, its vibe, its street culture. Picture it in your mind, even just one neighborhood or part of town. “I should never have imagined a city like this could exist …”-Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities And, so, we tell tales for you, conjured from our own urban experiences, and our own imaginings of what the future may bring, in the hope that they will inspire you to imagine and create sustainable cities of the future worth inhabiting. But we do not have any better tools than Polo and Khan for grasping the cities of tomorrow. Today’s decision-makers have far more capable data systems for knowing the cities of today. Rather, the cities that Polo conjures are shaped by memories of Venice, while the Khan rambles through memories informed by past imperial campaigns, each refracting the streets of Polo’s narratives through his own fantasies about what cities should be, molded by very different life experiences and positions of power. The challenge is that the two protagonists do not share a common register of truth. This Polo does, recounting 55 stories of 55 cities. And, so, he asks his visitor to describe those cities, to explore for him, through stories of his own travels, the state of the empire and whether his cities and their residents thrive. Trapped in his palace by the demands of rule, the Khan no longer knows the cities of his empire, except through dispatches and messengers he does not trust. In Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities, the Venetian explorer Marco Polo receives an invitation to visit with the Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan. ![]() “From each city Marco described to him, the Great Khan’s mind set out on its own, and after dismantling the city piece by piece, reconstructed it in other ways, substituting elements, shifting them, inverting them.”-Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities 1 How do we imagine the cities of tomorrow? Miller, Patricia Romero-Lankao, Andrew Dana Hudson, Joey Eschrich, and Ruth Wylie Introduction: Imagined Cities By Clark A. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |