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THE FUTURE IS OURS TO IMAGINE: USING WORLDBUILDING TO CREATE MORE RESILIENT URBAN FUTURES
Hall C
Abstract
Abstract Body
This research investigates how worldbuilding can be used to create more participatory and interdisciplinary planning initiatives for resilient urban futures. A design methodology with origins in fiction and Hollywood filmmaking, worldbuilding employs a collaborative, ethnographic design methodology that emphasizes extensive research at individual, community, and world scales to explore grounded visions of alternative futures. It uses a narrative, story-based approach to synthesize research strains in order to create more human-centered articulations of potential future conditions. Because narratives are processed differently than other forms of information, the narrative tools of worldbuilding can challenge existing views and belief systems without threatening deeply held values (Zaidi, 2019). In this way, worldbuilding can provide fertile ground for enhanced collaboration and participation, between professional disciplines as well as groups with significant cultural differences. As stronger degrees of collaboration have been shown to enhance social resilience (Ledogar and Fleming, 2010), the worldbuilding approach presents valuable potential to create the more resilient cities the 21st century demands.
The presentation focuses on a project titled Future World Vision. The project is a worldbuilding initiative created for the American Society of Civil Engineers, to envision and articulate what dense urban environments could become by the year 2070. Developed as an interactive educational video game for emerging civil engineering students, the project is designed to provoke deeper questions about what urban life might be like and invite in-depth conversation, planning and strategy to identicy about what preferable futures could be. A breakdown of the project’s methodology serves as an example of worldbuilding’s potential utility in creating more collaborative, participatory engagement in long-term urban development and building more resilient communities.