The Urban Futures Studio explores sustainable and meaningfully democratic futures, and ways to get there. We investigate what we call ‘futuring’ - the social creation of the (imagined) futures that direct collective action. As a transdisciplinary institute, we collaborate with policymakers, activists, artists, and students to enable alternative futures.

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Visit the Urban Futures Studio at Princetonlaan 8a, Utrecht  (room 1.02)

    • The perils of foretelling the future

      Opinion
      For the opening keynote for the 16th Nordic Environmental Social Sciences Conference, Josie Chambers chose not to focus on the dominant ways people have been co-producing knowledge and action for sustainability. But rather, to take stock of the field and ask: what exactly are we co-producing? Are we producing knowledge that reinforces how the world is? Or are we imagining and prefiguring explorations of how the world can be otherwise?

    • Exhibition on geoengineering inspired by Utrecht University research

      News
      The exhibition Design for the Planet, partially inspired by research by Jeroen Oomen offers a groundbreaking exploration of the design and history behind geoengineering.

    • Environmentalists must embrace the drama of belonging

      Opinion
      In the summer of 2022, 100 Dutch farmers parked their tractors outside of the Asylum Seekers’ Centre in Ter Apel, on the Netherlands’ north-eastern border with Germany to protest that they “no longer feel welcome” in the Netherlands. With right-ring populists being elected across the world, the action offers lessons that progressive environmentalists sorely need to hear.

    • We are all Donald Trump

      Opinion
      November 6. The morning after polls close in America...is Trump just the unspoken desires of a global north elite that never really wanted to give up power? Very few of us are truly ready for the societal transformations required to achieve climate justice on a global scale.

    • What can we learn about the ways Caribbean communities adapt and bring in culturally vibrant ways of knowing and being with the ocean?’

      Background
      This May the Island and Oceans imaginaries workshop took place at Utrecht University. Researchers and others interested in the Caribbean came together to learn more about islands, islanders, their relationship to the ocean, and the unique challenges they face in the wake of a changing climate.
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