Curatorial Ways of Making Cities and Navigating Futures Through Urban Experiments

ABSTRACT Focused on urban experiments such as electric vehicle deployments and the development of requisite urban technologies and infrastructures, this contribution argues that such developments become sites where place‐based, relationally constructed futures can take shape. We outline a curatorial approach founded in relational geography to inform the construction and navigation of such futures. Drawing parallels with nineteenth‐century curatorial approaches centred on exhibits as instruments of power and seduction, a critical perspective on contemporary technology demonstrators foregrounds how urban experiments promote specific futures and implicitly pare down alternatives. A curatorial lens is applied to urban experiments to reveal the tensions and topologies of power as technology developers, communities and local authorities add new elements to urban constellations and in doing so (re)negotiate the meanings and futures associated with urban technologies such as low‐carbon vehicles.