GCEG Dublin 2022

The dispositif of urgency in current urban future-making debates is mobilized by a dual challenge: a new class of problems reveals the inadequacy of an old class of solutions. More specifically, the new class of challenges is framed in terms of the unsettling language of ‘wicked problems’, non-linearity and endemic uncertainty. There is, of course, nothing innocent about such metaphors; they rather ‘do political work’ (Sismondo 2010) as they insinuate state-failure and de-legitimize traditional planning and long-term political self-commitment. ‘Thinking outside the box’ is the new chief imperative, and the experiment is the key arena for such disruptive deliberation.

The dispositif of urgency in current urban future-making debates is mobilized by a dual challenge: a new class of problems reveals the inadequacy of an old class of solutions. More specifically, the new class of challenges is framed in terms of the unsettling language of ‘wicked problems’, non-linearity and endemic uncertainty. There is, of course, nothing innocent about such metaphors; they rather ‘do political work’ (Sismondo 2010) as they insinuate state-failure and de-legitimize traditional planning and long-term political self-commitment. ‘Thinking outside the box’ is the new chief impera