Futures of Human-Nature Relationships in Urban Planning, Design, And Practice
Guest Editors:
Prof. Fabiano Lemes de Oliveira, Associate Professor in Urbanism, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano - Email:
Dr. Israa H. Mahmoud , Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano – Email:
The concept:
This Special Issue of "Futures" focuses on the futures of the relationships between humans and nature in urban and environmental planning, design and practice. The climate crisis challenges the continuation of life on the planet as it is, of the existing and future ecosystems and poses the need for fundamental reconsiderations of possible, probable and preferable futures for human-nature relations.
It has been argued that solutions to many contemporary urban challenges can be found in nature. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have emerged to address the effects of climate change for both humans and non-humans and are at the forefront of the intersection between environmental sciences and planning. Yet, there is an open debate regarding the concept’s positioning and effectiveness. New approaches have sought the reconciliation of culture and nature, such as co-evolution, and between technology and nature, such as those based on virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Despite such advances, there is a lack of dialogue across the emerging field of nature-based solutions and that of futures studies.
This Special Issue brings together environmental sciences, urban planning and future studies, and aims to advance studies on the future conceptualizations of human-nature relationships, co-existence, and their implications for planning in cities.
It seeks to explore topics such as, but not exclusively:
- Human-nature relationships in visions of possible, probable and preferable urban futures
- Possible futures of the biodiversity, climate and urban crises and their implications for cities and other habitats
- Co-evolutionary scenarios between nature and humans in cities
- Explorations of how more-than-human approaches could lead to plural, democratic and more sustainable cities
- Futures of multispecies justice and ethics, and their implications for planning
- Futures of radical ecology, nature-based solutions, and artificial nature in cities
- Foresight, methods and practices of anticipation and advanced scenario building in human-nature relationships applied to urban adaptation planning with nature in the medium-long term
- The question of nature in counterfactual, past futures, and alternative futures in cities
- Anticipatory assumptions in co-designing resilient and sustainable futures with nature
- Alternative path dependence, indeterminism, and complexity in planning future cities
- Future perspectives of human-nature relationships from indigenous and non-western traditions
- Historical methods for the study of the future roles of nature in cities
- New pathways for backcasting and forecasting models in urban sustainability towards regenerative changes in urban futures
- The future of urban ecologies in cities
- The roles of speculative and radical urban design exploring the future of human-nature relations
- Multiple voices and agencies in envisaging and implementing urban futures with nature
- The question of more-than-human participation in the design of urban futures – how can ‘nature’ itself play a role in informing speculation and planning?
Keywords:
Nature, futures, nature-based solutions, more-than-human, counterfactualism, scenarios, ecosystem services, climate change, adaptation, speculative design
Please do not hesitate to contact us directly for an informal discussion of your idea for an article.
Fabiano Lemes de Oliveira –
Israa Mahmoud -
