Speculative Futures: Design Approaches to Navigate Change, Foster Resilience, and Co-create the Cities We Need

by Johanna Hoffman

How the emerging field of speculative futures can help us imagine–and build–better, resilient, and more equitable cities.

Speculative futures – design approaches that visualize new and potential worlds – move us beyond what currently exists into the realms of what could be. Inspired by art, film, fiction, and industrial design, the tools use speculation to provoke, imagine, and dream into what lies ahead. Written for futurists, urbanists, and artists looking to enact city-wide transformation–and for readers at the intersection of disruption, design, and city living–this book offers creative paths toward urban resilience, using design tools that already exist.

Informed by her years of experience in art, urban design, and architecture, artist and urbanist Johanna Hoffman uses an interdisciplinary lens to examine how we can reimagine our cities as individuals, as communities, and on professional scales. Hoffman's blend of precedent studies, research, and professional memoir link longstanding issues in urban development with the processes and actions positioned to create the more resilient cities this century demands. The result is a dynamic field guide that uses speculative futures to imagine, advocate for, and adapt to modern scales, scopes, and speeds of change.

This book is both for professionals in the urban design and planning industries, as well as all people who resist received, capitalistic, technocratic ways of thinking–readers who seek new solutions to old problems.

Genres: Design, Architecture, Nonfiction, Urban, Technology, Politics, Urban Planning

202 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 4, 2022

Reviews

[Edie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science fiction has been my literary genre of choice since childhood. The idea of taking the world as we know it and adding in a new element then exploring the implications has always sparked my interest and imagination. Sometimes science fiction involves completely new worlds, but there is still the exploration of what is possible within a given framework. Speculative Futures is the nonfiction version. Johanna Hoffman explores what is possible in urban design using the tools of speculative futures to collaboratively imagine and cocreate better spaces.

Although it is a slim book, I highlighted 50+ passages. That is one every three pages! Speculative Futures is full of both concrete ideas and food for the imagination. It also very honestly reckons with its own limitations. This is not a cure-all. It is another tool in a situation where we are going to need all the tools at our disposal to find practical and creative solutions. The book is a good balance of theory and real-world examples. It is not the most riveting writing but the content kept me glued to the page.

Thank you to the author, Johanna Hoffman, the publisher, North Atlantic Books, and NetGalley for the ARC of Speculative Futures. If you are interested in urban planning, climate change solutions, building resilience in individuals and communities - look for this book coming out in October 2022.

[chirpingwrens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book on speculative design and practices. Accessible and told in series of anecdotes and stories, Hoffman's book does a great job of introducing great potential of speculative design. One theme rings true in the book - speculative design works best provocation: to be successful, they should use senses to provoke emotions.

I agree with Hoffman on many points, specifically about using creativity and imagination as a way of challenging the status quo; as a designer and student, I encounter many projects that doggedly roots itself in pragmatism, often losing the holistic view of how design's systemic and transitive properties work within other elements. Hoffman also addresses many speculative design projects that focus on dystopic futures, and how that may not be conducive to provoking actions; they propose the best approach in middle ground between dystopic and utopian futures.

My own values as a queer, disabled designer to conduct more participatory and codesign sessions were echoed by Hoffman's focus on social resilience, equity, and collaboration among voices of people whose voices have not been heard in the past. But I would have liked to see more aspects of disability in urban city planning in the book's inclusion chapter.

Given critiques of speculative design as "impractical" by many designers, I would have liked to seen more from "From Vision to Action" chapter. But I also understand that the question is difficult to answer, and no one really has answers to it. What I took away was futures backtracking, responsibility, persistence in community-oriented processes ("future is not a destination, but a process + path"), and believing potential of speculation as important tools for action.

[Wyndy KnoxCarr · Rating 5 out of 5]

30 March, 2023, published as “Pushing ThOur Boundaries,” The Berkeley Times, Knox Book Beat.
Speculative Futures: Design Approaches to Navigate Change, Foster Resilience, and Co-create the Cities We Need, by Johanna Hoffman, (2022) from Berkeley’s North Atlantic Books, is simply marvelous. An absolute relief when contemplating not only the common-sense/realistic but the fantastic/boundless transformations as possible.
She may be “all spin,” but I don’t care. Anybody who uses examples from Blade Runner, Black Panther; calls out the “negative impacts of 1950s urban planning" as well as the racism/classism of the 2020 Oakland “Slow Streets” redevelopment; and has chapter titles like “Shared Language” and “Collective Imagination” has my interest and support right away.
She knows the structures must be “doable,” even though “the future is not a destination, but a process and a path.” (p. 150) Hoffman (Joanna in Wikipedia) herself is diversely undefinable as marketing executive, urban planner and “had a reputation at both Apple and NeXT as one of the few who could successfully engage with (Steve) Jobs,” particularly in writing the first draft of the Macintosh User Interface Guidelines. (Wikipedia)
“Speculative futures tools help us:
• challenge the status quo
• increase individual and social resilience
• balance short-term needs with long-term change, reorienting our understanding of cities toward more adaptive capacity
• create more collaborative and equitable development by supporting cooperation over persuasion (My italics. wc) (I particularly like that one)
• shift our collective imagination toward resilient possibility and cultivate more proactive planning as a result.”
Her “Takeaway: By giving us permission to imagine, speculative futures encourage a shift in attitude from “What’s the problem?” to “What’s possible?” In doing so, they question our assumptions about existing norms to see if they’re really the paradigms we want to shape what lies ahead. … Speculative futures offer practices that create the forward-thinking, adaptive plans that modern uncertainty requires.”
“This is the time for imagination…Assuming that devastation is the entirety of what’s ahead is limited thinking. What if the best times are still to come? We owe it to ourselves and future generations to ask. The tools to help us ask are there. We just have to use them.”

[Mani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across this book very recently when researching Speculative Design for a Masters project I'm doing at the RCA.

I thought it was incredible!

A great summation of the scene as it stands, of processes, of the history, and of course the creative potential of Speculative Design/Futures.

The stuff around Urban planning and design was incredibly relevant to the work I do, as is the focus on participatory research, working in groups with non-designers, and envisioning futures that are inclusive, and relevant to all people, not just sci-fi geeks.

Written in a clear, accessible, and straightforward way, this is a great resource for beginners (indeed, I recommended it to my teammates as the text to read first for it all to make sense. Whilst great for beginners, it also had fantastic use of references throughout, and many other sources for academics to deep dive if required.

I was really satisfied with this read, it was the perfect download for exactly what I needed it for.

[Tristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanted to love this, but it felt like a lot of empty calories. Saying a lot, but saying very little, and I'm not really sure what actionable steps this book actually provides. I think there's also a fair amount of contradictions made and misidentification of problems with concepting future solutions and communities. I think there are most probably better books on the urbanism and design out there.

[Alexander Pyles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I realize this is maybe more of a quick introduction on what "Speculative Futures" can be in the urban planning/design space. Still, I honestly wanted more from this, especially as someone who has read science fiction and been *in* the space of speculative imaginings for the last 5+ years.

Still, Hoffman does a good job of summarizing the current state of things and how her work as an urban planner/designer is impacted by the limitations that we create of our own volition.

[Sophie Ekwe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved the book. It's refreshing and inspiring to see 'Futures' addressed in this way. The more I delve into this topic, the more I realise how crucial it will be to help reframe and rethink the societal and environmental problems we're facing using the skills and tools highlighted in the book. Let's imagine futures we might not have imagined at all. Remarkable

[Jennifer Stencel · Rating 3 out of 5]

My notes include: speculative/ questions what else can be.
Answering through social, environmental tech. Long term thinking, short term thoughts. Use senses ti build your story to share. More visual the better.
Ask participants to respond- how did it make them feel, what did they visualize, react to, anything proactively thinking about?

[yipeng · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an accessible read in those who want to learn more about futures design. I got some great nuggets of information and also ideas on ways to incorporate speculative futures into my work. It can be a tad bit repetitive at times but the case studies and examples gave fresh insight and inspiration.

[Sylvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book. The title was at first misleading - Speculative Futures - made me think of stock trading. In reality the author explains clearly and concisely a new approach to fostering change.

[Susan Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome read!! Information expanded in my nursing school class

[Aubrey Byron · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lofty concept that in the end had very little substantive support and one actually harmful idea of selling autonomous cars as an urbanism.

[Demetria Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

💭I think this is one of the best science-fiction books I’ve read this year. Even though it talks about topics not everyone may be familiar with like urban architecture, Catastrophisation of the future, speculative development plans with long term effects, the book is written in simple language, making it more easy and accessible for wider audience. Moreover, while being short( the book is maybe 150 pages long without references and notes), the author provides not only theory but real-world examples and goes straight to the point, which makes this book more interesting and just less boring. Johanna Hoffman was able to keep me glued to the pages and what she was talking about throughout the whole book, even though I have an attention span of a person addicted to TikTok😂

I believe this is a very valuable read, also for tourism management students like me( making decisions without the local people’s input leads to bad results- talked about in Speculative futures) and for that reason I will be trying to get my uni to buy this book once it’s out. (Update: I forgot to do that😅)

Thank you NetGalley, Johanna Hoffman and North Atlantic Books for allowing me to read this arc.

[Ceci G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mid writing but some cool speculative concepts I’d never heard of mentioned.