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The Dreaming City: The First Step To A Better World Is Imagining One

Gerry Hassan

Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture ‘Tales of the City’ Special Issue WInter 2007

Thinking of the future is one of the characteristics of being human through the ages and different societies. Imagining different worlds can be seen in the novels of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne and in the modernist visions of films such as Metropolis and Minority Report with their urban utopian/distopian worlds of flying cars and isolated individuals.

However, these powerful public images are far removed from the world of institutional futures thinking, commonly known as futurology. This began with the establishment of the RAND Corporation in 1946 which focused on issues such as how the Americans could win a limited nuclear war, Mutually Assured Destruction and the missile gap between the US and Soviets. This narrow, technocratic world has seen the powerful forces who run the world: governments, transnationals, international agencies, engage in scenario planning ….. Read the rest of this entry »