The Power of Narrative in Climate Change

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We live in a culture that prioritizes expertise. We want to present it in a way that seems official and objective. But humans, we're not very rational creatures. Sometimes we make a decision. I would love to see a world for example where all academic institutions or think tanks or NGOs or governance organizations could translate research into some sort of narrative form. So people can really feel what the impacts of two degrees Celsius versus 1.5 versus 3.5 can be like. That's going to have massive implications on how people are in panic about this.

Cities are incredibly important to modern life, and their importance is only growing. As Geoffrey West points out, the world is adding urban areas equivalent to the population of San Francisco once every four days. How those areas get designed and structured is a complicated interplay between top-down planning and the collective choices of millions of inhabitants. As the world is changing and urbanization increases, it will be crucial to imagine how cities might serve our needs even better. Johanna Hoffman is an urbanist who harnesses imagination to make cities more sustainable and equitable.

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Johanna Hoffman received an MLA in landscape architecture and environmental planning from UC Berkeley. She is the co-founder and Director of Planning at urban futures firm Design for Adaptation. She has won fellowships from the European Futures Observatory and the Berggruen Institute, and served as Artist in Residence at the Buckminster Fuller Institute. Her new book is Speculative Futures: Design Approaches to Navigate Change, Foster Resilience, and Co-Create the Cities We Need.

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