Future Cities: Figurations, Fictions, and Models

Working on future cities requires projecting oneself into realities that do not yet exist. One method consists of creating models. “Modelling” is based on the principle that what does not yet exist can be deduced with a high probability from calculations that take into account the data that exist, describing the present or the past; from their setting in systems; and from projections oriented in this or that way. Yet behaviours, uses, and cultures are strongly dependent on individual, subjective and imaginary phenomena. These phenomena are not easily modelled, perhaps not measured either, and even escape the very conditionality condition. They are, however, at work at all times. The authors borrow the concept of figuration to literary theory and transfer it to urban planning and urban planning pedagogy to report on an experience of sensitive and perceptual cartography and an experience of climate fiction found footage. The authors show that both can be used to propose a protocol for exploring how urban subjectivity may face the climate crisis.