Apocalyptic, preparatory, and visionary urbanism in the face of planetary insecurity - "Urban Future-making"

Prof. Dr. Christine Hentschel

The future as disaster: Apocalyptic, preparatory, and visionary urbanism in the face of planetary insecurity

What orientations towards the future are emerging as the intertwined ecological, social, and political crises of the Anthropocene intensify? This talk distinguishes three logics of societal response to the increasing uninhabitability of the planet – apocalyptic, preparatory, and visionary – and conceptualizes them in terms of their different relations to the future, the affectivity they rely on, the collectivity they mobilize, and the materiality of the city through which they operate. Drawing on concrete examples ranging from climate activism to luxury prepping to extreme urban adaptation projects, I argue for a ‘sociology of the end-times’ that takes the brokenness of the Anthropocene as its point of departure and investigates responses to a diminishing habitability of this planet on urban grounds.