It is “the tendency of every age to read the future as a fancier version of the present” (Schutz 1971).
Predicting Futures | Similar to the vertical living phenomenon of Le Corbusier (Graham, 1965), ensuring practicality and fluidity, was imperative to the planning philosophy of Robert Moses in in New York. However, Robert Moses was critiqued for his ‘birds-eye view’ in the 1980s when he was challenged by Jane Jacobs. Jacobs was an advocate for bottom-up initiatives, she watched and experienced local life to investigate and understand the intricate workings and different uses of city spaces. Planners, like Le Corbusier, are not the only ones attempting to predict and shape the future. This attempt to design imagery of a possible future can be in the Science Fiction genre (Sci-Fi) this attempt to design imagery of a possible future. Only recently has research shown that Sci-Fi visualisations and futuristic imagery in the media are sources of visualising and informing expectations (Akkawi, 2018). Since the beginning of
the 20th century, Sci-Fi and futuristic imagery has built on ideas of “imaginative paradigms” (Annas, 1978), an attempt to predict futures or alternative presents. Sci-Fi has previously been a genre dominated by the work of men, however lately women have begun to engage with writing science fiction and are beginning to depict and illustrate a more feminine perspective of the future (Annas, 1978). The prominence of Le Corbusier and Robert Moses in planning and the male-dominated production of sci-fi and arguably imagery suggests a representation of male futures, potentially influenced by patriarchy, notably ‘patriarchal futures’. Now, however, women are becoming more connected and involved with the future and challenging the imagery and expectations historically portrayed by males in both science fiction and past planning practice.
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