Developing Future Visions For 2075 + Designing a Transition
by Team Symbiosis
Ally Hopping, Master of Human-Computer Interaction
Julie Choi, Bachelor of Design with Minors in Human-Computer Interaction and Photography
Morgan Newman, Master of Public Policy and Management
Adam Cowart, Ph.D. Teaching Fellow and Researcher in Transition Design
Gentrification in Pittsburgh
At the beginning of the semester, our group chose gentrification in Pittsburgh as our wicked problem. While the public discourse regarding gentrification often centers around common challenges that cities face, such as racial discrimination, socioeconomic segregation, and government inaction, wicked problems cannot be removed from their local context. They are deeply embedded in place-based systems, as are the possible solutions for addressing wicked problems. Hence, through our first assignment of mapping gentrification in Pittsburgh, we sought to understand the general issues that many cities face and the unique factors at play in Pittsburgh that interact to create the more significant problem. This localized mapping of the issue allowed us to move quickly to our second assignment of mapping stakeholder relations. In this assignment, we focused on power relationships between stakeholders most connected to or impacted by gentrification. We identified Property Developers/Managers, Long-term Neighborhood Residents, and The Air as those most deeply related to the issue. Our third assignment analyzed how historical circumstances at different levels of society have led to the current problem of gentrification.
Developing Future Visions
In thinking about our vision for a post-gentrification era many generations ahead, we imagined a world in which all underlying issues of the wicked problem have been resolved through major shifts in policies and businesses to design sustainable communities. Our approach began at the planet level by brainstorming the larger framework for society, after which we transitioned to reimagining the inner workings of individual cities and neighborhoods.
Household
In 2075, we imagine a future based on the idea of “dwellification” in which residents treat their living space and community as permanent homes. As education has become an accessible resource for everyone, people widely share common knowledge of individual rights and policies that define the experience of being residents of their community. There is a celebration of preserving traditions through generations while equally welcoming new sustainable habits and ideas in each household.
Neighborhood
The neighborhood level is where people come together as one community to show appreciation and respect for each other’s cultures and opinions. Longstanding businesses and networks within the neighborhood generate the majority of resources needed to support community life. Proactive management helps with peaceful negotiation to maintain a resilient community.
City
The policies for cities recognize and prioritize opinions from residents of all neighborhoods. The decision-making process involves many diverse perspectives collectively adapting to a society-centered design model for development. Technological advancements developed under controlled environments solve problems and create new avenues for positive change.
Region
As land isn’t owned by anyone, traveling and access to new regions have become more accessible. Cost of living is compensated with Universal Basic Income within each country with a shift of focus from growing the economy to preserving the environment through sustainable innovations.
Planet
The decline of capitalism transitions the world to focus on cosmopolitan localism where cultural, economic, and environmental sustainability is prioritized over all. All citizens of the planet recognize the strong values of community, and housing has become a basic right for everyone.
Backcasting & Milestoning
After we created a shared understanding of our future vision, we turned our attention back to the present to assess the current state in order to develop milestones for transitioning to the preferred future we outlined. In considering the present, we answered the following key questions:
What isn’t working anymore and needs to transition “out”?
We wanted to capture the three main factors that we’ve found have contributed to the problem of gentrification: capitalism, the climate crisis, and inequality. These three systems perpetuate many of the more immediate symptoms of gentrification such as the continuous redevelopment of urban areas, displacement, lack of adequate employment and affordable housing, and lack of representation in government.
What should we keep? How can we not throw the baby out with the bathwater?
In answering this question, our team considered existing practices that represent a negative feedback loop to the process of profit-driven redevelopment that leads to gentrification and the disruption of communities: community action, innovation, and automation. These practices are crucial to our vision for place-based, resilient communities because they ensure the needs of the community are properly represented and help us reimagine how we interact with each other and the planet on both a local and global scale.
What existing innovations and practices can disrupt business as usual and ignite the transition?
We believe that Community Land Trusts, indigenous practices, and education for all will be crucial practices or concepts that will lead to the transformation we imagined. Community Land Trusts help communities gain control and autonomy over their land, disrupting the ability for outside corporations to redevelop it without community consent. Honoring and learning from indigenous practices can show us how to live resiliently without harming the ecosystem. Education is one of the most powerful tools in reducing inequality and lifting people out of poverty. Uplifting and strengthening these existing practices will propel our ability to transition to a more desired future.
What “pieces of our future vision” are already here in the present?
The items we placed here are an extension of the elements we outlined in the previous question. Schools and communities must work to instill more sustainable and equitable paradigms into the minds of the younger generation. We also must encourage more technological innovation in the way we live and work to foster sustainable outcomes.
Once we had a strong grasp on the present, we plotted out three milestones that we will need to reach on the path to a future without gentrification. Sparked by the climate crisis and inequality reaching a global tipping point, we believe that we may be on the cusp of a social movement led by younger generations that will cause a global reckoning with and reimagining of existing paradigms such as capitalism and consumerism. This will lead to a complete restructuring of our priorities as human beings, causing us to reshape our relationship with the environment and our communities. In 50–60 years, we would like to see this transition solidified into a global movement that works to undo and replace the systems that allowed the climate crisis and global inequality to fester.
Writing the Narrative
[see narrative at the end of this post]
After creating our vision for a future in which gentrification had been resolved and backcasting from this vision to the present, we turned our attention to crafting a day-in-the-life narrative to bring our future vision to life.
While there are several methods in which to bring futures to life through story, we chose Design Fiction as an overarching storytelling posture. “Design Fiction represents designers amping up speculation to ‘tell worlds instead of stories’” (Byrne, Schouweiler, Bleecker) and employ “the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change” (Sterling). Hence, we sought to describe our vision for 2075 through the everyday experiences of a resident of Pittsburgh.
In order to tell the world, we considered the parameters for Design Fiction proposed by Bruce Sterling: “Three working parameters: objects (critical, imaginary, otherwise), belief (in an alternate or parallel reality), and time (the idea that change is a half-step removed from our now)” (Zeiger).
Our final Design Fiction brings together several threads that link together the envisioned future of Pittsburgh in 2075. “Dwellification” posits a city that has been transformed by cosmopolitan localism, a radical dwelling-in-place concept complimented by technological advancement, racial and economic equality, and a vibrant web of governance at multiple levels of scale.
Conclusion
What does it look like to transition into a future of our choosing? One that instills power to the people and creates an equitable society in which we all have a part in shaping the world we want to see? Using tools like backcasting and milestoning allowed us to be both idealistic and pragmatic in envisioning a future where gentrification does not exist. Balancing realism and idealism was a challenge at first, but our discussions led us to agree that eradicating gentrification also meant establishing other systems of equality (universal basic income and open borders, for example) and abolishing other systems of inequality (capitalism and climate change). Achieving these goals for 50–75 years in the future meant backcasting and understanding the steps necessary to reach them. We found that social movements led by Generation Z, increasing belief in science/climate change, and reckoning with past injustices are our tenets for creating a society that experiences no gentrification, not only in Pittsburgh but around the world.
Transitioning to a sustainable future and dismantling deep-rooted societal problems seems impossible, and indeed it is not an easy task. However, it takes envisioning the future we want to move toward the future we will have. Our group decided to remain grounded in reality, with the understanding that our world can change quickly (for good or bad), and a determination to use this fickle planet we call home to our advantage by creating equality that permeates across all aspects of our lives, from the household to the global community.
Dwellification
A77y Newman-Choi watched as the move-bots packed up the last of their stuff and wheeled out of their dorm room. They looked around the room and the many fond (and not so fond) memories of their 2 years living here, completing their Master’s in Cultural Tectonics, flooded their retina displays, not to mention their own mind!
Off-campus living was heavily regulated, due to the Universal Declaration on Municipal Preservation, which was recognized 37 years ago, in 2038. The declaration was triggered by massive first year sit-ins, in which students refused to find accommodation in neighborhoods that pushed out local residents. Instead, across the globe, students had simply made themselves comfortable in university buildings, setting up makeshift beds and their desks, until universities finally agreed to take responsibility for their roles in gentrification. Many employees at tech firms followed suit, forcing companies to recognize the impact they had on communities. Under the declaration, universities and companies were legally obligated to house all students and employees in defined areas that did not intrude on communities. No longer could they shirk the responsibilities of displacement caused by higher education and capitalist expansion. Instead, all students were to be housed on campus or in areas the university negotiated directly with neighborhood leadership councils. Employees for large companies also had campuses, or engaged in symbiotic relationships with the communities in order to house employees and become part of the community through consensus based developments.
As A77y stepped outside their old residence for the last time, a retinal feed informed them that their universal income status had changed from Master’s Student to Civic Leader. With a slight bump in pay! They were thrilled that their mandatory two years with the Selective Civic Service would be served right in Pittsburgh. Where once countries had required mandatory or selective military service, with the introduction of global civic systems of youth governance, war and the need for military intervention was unheard of. Citizens for all member-states of the United Nations had to be provided with full salaries for 2 years of service, at some point between the ages of 18 and 30. Most governments and political bodies now operated on a fluid combination of youth leadership, elder mentorship, and distributed forms of democratic decision-making enabled by technology.
No longer could the energy and optimism of youth be dimmed by decades of waiting for power and influence.
A pod swung up to the curb to pick A77y up and take them to their new apartment in Larimer. A77y had already taken the necessary Neighborhood Sensitivity tests required to relocate. The tests were pretty standard and A77y had taken similar tests when they had lived in an off-campus zone while pursuing their Bachelor’s years ago, living in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood in Vancouver, BC Canada. The tests typically consisted of several modules, virtual reality sessions that walked applicants through traditional keepers and practices on the land, bioregional characteristics, ecosystem losses and repair, and interviews with previous generations who lived in the neighborhood. Then there was the standard Individual Impact Assessment in which a recommended allocation for resource consumption was suggested to the new arrival based on a number of metric. The final section was always the same: multiple conversations with community leaders, including elders and current youth civic leaders.
“Scenic + Slow” they muttered to the pod, meaning they wanted to take the slow and scenic route. The pod crept out into the lush greenways of Morewood, once a road for cars, now mostly community gardens and greenhouses through which pods moved at variable speeds. The pod glided to the right, onto what was once Ellsworth Ave. A77y leaned back and enjoyed passing over streams, children playing, and trees in blossom.
They brought up the history of the neighborhood just to make sure they hadn’t missed anything about Larimer: First Nations inhabitants, the German and then Italian settlers, then the African-American migrants from the South that settled in the neighborhood in the 1960’s, before they were forced out in the 2020’s, following the gentrification of Bakery Square and East Liberty. And more recently, in the 2040’s, when the North American Reconciliation and Reparations act allowed for place-of-origin repatriation funding — basically, grants and bursaries to allow for those pushed out of “low-income neighborhoods” to buy back their homes and businesses from real estate developers and gentrifying inhabitants who had not fully understood the impacts caused by income inequality. This whole process of return was facilitated in large part by the hollowing out of city financial sectors, and all the available space converted from offices to apartments. Not to mention communal micro-living complexes constructed through cities using space from traditional overpasses and highways that had once violently cut through city-centers. Suddenly, there really was room for everyone!
A77y considered the body of work before them in their new role as Political Mobilist for the community. Larimer shared a series of solar intensification energy units with a few communities nearby, with additional energy borrowed from the neighborhoods that used the three rivers to create sustainable energy. Most community energy systems were quite similar — weather forecasts now provided “solar output forecasts”, how sunny it would be over the next week. This allowed people to make decisions around when to do their laundry, when to cook more energy-intensive foods; and for the engineering departments to charge the pods and other city resources. But with a more varied climate, the local cultivation of food was disrupted, forcing more food production into greenhouses. So now, analysts forecasted the need for two more greenhouses, which would require more energy. As well, community growers were experiencing a fertilizer shortage, mainly because of a somewhat mysterious drop in human waste that was typically used. Agreements had to be drawn up to make up the shortfall with the waste from other communities — Bakery Square had found itself with a surplus it needed to offload. So that would work short term.
If A77y and other civic councilors could not work it out locally, they would need to go to the municipal council of elders. Since community politics and decision-making was done mostly by recent graduates like themselves, along with close partnerships with community members, a council of elders helped to resolve more complex issues.
The pod pulled up to a quiet, almost non-descript apartment unit. A77y had picked the location out themselves. The population in Larimer had aged, and several units had become available. Coupled with this, A77y’s diverse family background made the displacement credits needed to relocate very low.
Speaking of displacement credits! They had almost forgotten they had their first Cosmo-Partnership meeting. Stepping out of the pod, A77y tuned in. Larimer’s Cosmo-Partnership was with several other cities around the world. In the early 2000’s these were known as “sister cities” in which relationships were forged across traditional culture chasms. Now, relationships were forged at the community level, with several, typically no more than seven, but sometimes as much as fifteen, communities forged a bond that went well beyond mere pageantry. These communities voted in each other’s decision plebiscites, contributed to a single Cosmo-Tax, and could be fined for any transgressions by their Cosmo-family. This allowed communities to have a truly global governance system that both respected the rights of local communities but also considered impacts and nuances of decisions and activities around the globe.
A77y stepped into their new apartment. The bots were already busy setting up their things in the pre-agreed upon configuration. In their retina display several “tables” appeared. A77y was sitting at one with their fellow Larimer council people. One person stood to speak and the instant translator kicked in. Before A77y could bring up details on where this delegation was from, an old friend, Labo, from the community delegation of Phakalane, a neighborhood in the city of Gaborone, in Botswana, stood and spoke.
“I agree the matter is worthy of a global community vote. First, however, I believe we have some new members to the council. And I am hoping they can introduce themselves.” Labo turned and gave A77y a sly smile. A77y rose, thanked Labo and the council for allowing them to be a humble representative, then launched into their rehearsed introduction, who they were, pronouns, land acknowledgement, the usual stuff, along with thanking the elders in their community and their own lineage. They especially wanted to acknowledge their grandmother’s, who were both former students at CMU themselves, and who were now both popping up on the periphery of A77y’s retinal feed, pestering them about if they had settled in and if A77y had received their housewarming presents yet!
Once they finished, matters of the council moved on and A77y was distracted by the last of the move-bots departing. Their apartment looked great! And over by the small dining room table, they could see their grandmother’s gifts had arrived. Cookies from Grandma Newman and, resting delicately over the dining room chair, a hanbok, a traditional Korean wrap, from Grandma Choi. A77y rolled their eyes — yeah, that would really help them blend in with the Larimer community!
The meeting wrapped with agreement to reconvene on voting once everyone had a chance to review the proposal from Dzyevyatowka, a neighborhood in Grodno, Belarus. A77y stepped outside to go for a walk before it got dark. There was a pizza place nearby they wanted to try. As they walked down the street, they met several community members. Everyone was receiving the info that A77y was new to the neighborhood and everyone stopped, introduced themselves to A77y and many conversations, laughter, and invitations for coffee or dinner, played out. By the time A77y made it to the pizza joint, over an hour had passed and it was now dark. And the pizza place was only three blocks away!
A77y ordered their pizza and chatted with the young person working behind the counter while they waited. A couple customers popped in and a raucous conversation broke out as they all debated which restaurant A77y should try next, and where the best coffee in the neighborhood could be had. A77y listened and laughed. They were home!
