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Abstract
What are the possibilities for an art of urban engagement which takes a position on issues such as democracy, power, social justice and sustainability? And what does this have to do with planning, as we know it? These are the questions which frame this paper, in the context of a view of planning as an always unfinished social project.
In order to liberate ourselves to think differently about how we might practice utopia as urban activists, I describe a new planning imagination, a dialectical imagination, and its actually existing practices. Among other things, such an imagination requires an expanded, more communicative conception of planning, and a more emotionally rich language available to its practitioners. This is not urban science fiction but true stories from various cities. What these stories suggest is that more and more of our work, if we want to work towards sustaining cities, will be bound up with organizing hope, negotiating fears, and mediating memories.
