Social-ecological-technological imaginaries for cities in the 21st century

As the world continues to urbanize, the capacity to confront climate change and broader sustainability challenges is increasingly intertwined with the fate of cities. Urban areas represent a double-edged sword: they are major drivers of emissions and ecological degradation, yet they also serve as crucial sites of experimentation, innovation, and transformative possibility. Among the multiple crises affecting cities in the 21st century, one of the most consequential may be a crisis of imagination—the diminishing collective capacity to envision futures beyond the constraints of the present. Imagination, understood as the ability to conceive alternatives, is increasingly recognized as vital for shaping sustainable futures. Yet accelerating climate impacts, widening inequality, and ecological degradation often leave little space for imagining positive possibilities.

Urban imaginaries—shared narratives and visions of idealized futures—have long guided urban development, emerging as constellations of ideas circulating across policy, design, media, and public discourse. Despite diverse cultural and geographic contexts, contemporary imaginaries appear to be converging rather than expanding, heightening the risk of reproducing familiar and insufficiently transformative trajectories. This raises a pressing question: how do we cultivate alternative visions capable of reorienting cities toward more just and sustainable futures?

To address this gap, the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) undertook a coordinated effort with nine cities across the United States and Latin America to co-produce positive long-term futures. Between 2017 and 2020, these participatory processes generated over 45 visions and nearly 1,500 strategies for building resilience and enabling transformative change in Baltimore (MD), Hermosillo (Mexico), Miami (FL), New York (NY), Phoenix (AZ), Portland (OR), San Juan (PR), Syracuse (NY), and Valdivia (Chile).

Eight distinct future imaginaries emerged from this work, each contributing to, expanding upon, and challenging dominant city archetypes, including connected cities, ecocities, smart cities, friendly cities, and just cities. The analysis also advances conceptualizations of heat-resilient and flood-resilient urban futures. By examining patterns across visions, strategies, and actors, the paper offers a rare snapshot of contemporary urban imaginaries in the Anthropocene and provides insights into how cities across the Americas imagine—and seek to shape—their long-term futures.