Flying cars and bigots: projecting post-COVID-19 worlds through the atlas of the civic imagination as refuge for hope

ABSTRACT

In April 2020, the Civic Imagination Project at the University of Southern California, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, asked participants around the world to share some of their reflections on what the world of 2060 might look like, and what roles the COVID-19 pandemic may have played in transforming how we live and relate to each other. For the past six years, the Civic Imagination Project has been conducting world-building workshops with groups across America and around the world. Our workshops encourage participants to imagine together what the future might look like under the premise that before we can change the world, we have to be able to collectively imagine what a better world looks like. For this paper, our team draws tools from speculative fiction to create a process where communities come together and propose what an alternative world might look like. While it is still too early for any preliminary analysis, we anticipate being able to map responses from many different parts of the world, and in particular, across different regions in the United States. We are interested in the tensions amongst utopian, dystopian, protopian and heterotopian visions at a time of enormous anxiety.

KEYWORDS:

• Media
• civic imagination
• popular culture
• dystopias
• Covid-19
• futures
• storytelling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Atlas Submissions

Cait. Change. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Vermont, USA. https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/2984-change

Daniel B. After a storm comes a calm. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Portugal.

https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/2786-after-a-storm-comes-a-calm

Dilek. METAMORPHOSIS. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Istanbul, Turkey. https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/2775-metamorphosis

Hollissunny. ‘Doomsday Clock’. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Vermont, Illinois, USA. https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/3033-doomsday-clock

Kellie. future that is much better than the present. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Chandler, Arizona, USA. https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/2755-future-that-is-much-better-than-the-present

Lilith T. My 2060 from a 2020 perspective. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Mexico City, Mexico. https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/2745-my-2060-from-a-2020-perspective

M.E. An alternative time. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Vermont, North Carolina, USA. https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/3037-an-alternative-time

Melo. We consume almost it all. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. São Paulo, Brazil. https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/2747-we-consume-almost-it-all

Montserrat A. Neither a utopia or dystopia. Atlas of the Civic Imagination. Mexico. https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/2770-neither-a-utopia-or-dystopia.

Nai. Nepacatica(Nahuatl: In the future). Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Mexico.

https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/3230-nepacatica-nahuatl-in-the-future

Nathaly J. Carta a Elena. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Uninorte (Barranquilla), Colombia

https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/2893-carta-a-elena

Paul Trimakas. Kur dingo mūsų rytojai. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Vilnius, Lithuania. https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/2844-kur-dingo-musu-rytojai

Purnima R. In the Shade of Trees. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Delhi, India. https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/2763-in-the-shade-of-trees)

Puppy. Anxious for Human Race. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Dong Nai, Vietnam.

https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/3355-anxious-for-human-race

Steve 1. awe, triage, and empathetic. Atlas for the Civic Imagination. Detroit, Michigan, USA.

https://www.ciatlas.org/responses/2739-aware-triage-and-empathetic