Future Earth Catalog: World your World

WORLD YOUR WORLD : NEW YORK 3000

Storytelling Speculative Scenarios Prompts, games, and activities for professionals and for people to world your own future New York.

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FUNCTION The FUTURE EARTH CATALOG functions as a playbook for visioning through ideas that are not limited by present barriers (both real and perceived).

An optomistic call to action today that does not recognize hard boundaries between (science) fact / (speculative) fiction real / representation data / projection.

PURPOSE To connect the scientific and non-scientific speculations of the future. To form an approach that is process (not product) oriented, so that people build knowledge together and consider multiple possible futures.

There is no silver bullet solution. We might as well find silver linings in the uncertainty of our Future Earth.

Max Moinian 180511

1968. Spread from the Whole Earth Catalog.

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

First they ignore you.

Then they fight you.

Then they laugh at you.

Then, you win.

Gandhi

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

Manhattan Design fiction has been fixated on the city. From Viele’s double-decker streets, New York World’s illustrations of the future city, Hugh Ferriss’ dramatic renderings of megastructures, and Hood’s city bridges creating life above the water, to Wright’s Ellis Island, Le Corbusier’s Radiant City, Fuller’s dome over midtown, Superstudio’s Continuous Monument and Rudolph’s LOMEX. Architects and illustrators manifest visions of the future through Manhattan. As designers, these projects world worlds with drawings. As citizens, the projects reflect on technology and society and express hope and fear through utopia or dystopia.

Science and popular fiction has done the same thing for the masses. Max Page states that “Americans have been imagining New York’s destruction for two centuries.” Gernsback’s Amazing Stories, Godzilla, Superman, Batman, Final Fantasy, and the Day after Tomorrow, to name a few. Writers, illustrators, and filmmakers channel fantasy and fear through the wrecking of American progress’ most physical form.

New York City is positioned in the tension between designer and citizen.

Events like the World’s Fair popularized the concept of utopia, Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs’ legacies raised issues of citizen’s rights, power of authority, and participation. 9/11 highlighted the importance of design and community engagement in rebuilding the image of the city, and Hurricane Sandy elevated the civic responsibility of urban design in “building it back better.” The current federal, philanthropic, design, and artistic investments in worlding the future of Manhattan raise question of the role of the public in deciding what the future of the city should be. The history of imaging New York offer a wealth of inspiration for deciding what it should look like. [Add statistic about how New Yorkers are more “open,” also engagement activity centered here].

Imaging New York Visions, Narratives, Plans

"Man refused to be vanquished. He came out to defy the storm‌" "New York, like the victim of an outrage, goes about freeing itself from its shroud."

1888

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2017

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Max Moinian 180511

1906

First aerial photograph of Manhattan

Coney Island Tower, 1907

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1900

New York as it Will be in 1999, published in the XXX newspaer in 1900.

42nd & 5th, 1900

42nd & 5th, 1900

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2001. Stills from the film Final Fantasty.

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

“It matters what worlds world worlds”

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

April 6, 1968. First issue of New York Magazine, cover designed by Milton Glaser.

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

PROMPT New Yorkers stand out in their stance on climate change.

We can be leaders in adapting to a changing environment and mitigating risk and environmental degradation.

Sandy is still left unresolved. The urgency for protection prompted the formation of Rebuild

by Design and showed how communal efforts — from federal, state, local, and philanthropic organizations to engineers, planners, designers, and the communities themselves — can lead collective responses after catastrophic events. The lines of defense buy us time, and civic engagement is a useful tool for informing the public. But what happens when the water rises over the seawalls? Who and what is still missing in the conversation?

How can we use our firsthand experience with a disrupted and disruptive climate to revise what we thought we knew and move forward meaningfully? Reflexive society -- revisionist history -breakdown narratives to reassess limits/opportunities for a way forward...what we thought we knew, learn again, and move forward with a capacity for meaningful change, driven by an reflect address the risk our future city faces, and address prepardedness ands responsibility? How can New York make a greater contribution to the discourse and action on climate change mitigation and adaptation?

Sandy brought us together but also raised slow-accumulating social, economic, policy, and development issues. Naomi Klein writes about how disasters are used as opportunities to slip in capitalist agendas. We can flip this tactic on its head. The moment of vulnerability and shift after a disaster can lead to positive outcomes. Explore how solutions to other issues can piggyback off of a resilience agenda.

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

MANNAHATTA

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Max Moinian 180511

Max Moinian 180511

X + Y + Z

Need for Energy

Earth’s Resources are Finite Healthy People + Planet

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Max Moinian 180511

PICTURE ONE

The Future without Oil

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PICTURE TWO

Business as Usual

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PICTURE THREE

Some Adapt, Some Don’t

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Department of the Earth, USA This doesn’t exist, but what if it did?

2007. Image from Diesel clothing brand ‘s ad campaign, “Global Warming Ready!”

Tagline, “GLOBAL WARMING CAN’T STOP OUR LIVES!”

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2006. Image from Vanity Fair article, “While Washington Slept.� Original image by Cameron Davidson; illustration by John Blackford.

Max Moinian 180511