THE FUTURE OF THE FUTURE IN PLANNING - APPROPRIATING CYBERPUNK VISIONS OF THE CITY

Planning's vision of life in the 21st century tends ro be more-of-the- same or che adoption, often implicit, of a marker-based information so ciety in which telecommunications advances will restructure time and s pace in ways chat are beneficial in the long run. The future of the fu ture, however, deserves more attention in urban planning. Utopian cons tructs have largely been abandoned and traditional methods of projecti on and modeling are poor techniques for anticipating qualitative and n onlinear change. An exploration cf cyberpunk writings, a genre of scie nce fiction, offers che opportunity to critically examine and assess t he hegemonic model of the information society as well as more dystopia n pictures of how evolving social, economic, cultural, and technologic al patterns could combine in the next century. Attending to the urban dimensions of these fictional work, and discourses about them can cont ribute to more realistic and ethical planning scenarios of the future.