Imagination

Abstract

Imagination about better futures exists in a spectrum between two poles. At one end, it builds on what we know and is conceivable within our existing worlds. This includes action towards “everyday” utopias, the way mundane practices demonstrate the possibility for something better. At the other end of the spectrum, imagination remakes things entirely and goes beyond what we currently know. This involves interrogating the existing categories that constrain where our imagination might go, and attempting to transgress them. This is the kind of imagination where social relations are entirely remade and the world is fantastically different. The Imagining Decolonised Cities project also highlighted the complexity of focusing on imagination when communities in the here and now don’t have justice. Imagination as a theoretical task and a methodology in radical geography holds the promise of creativity instead of technocratic management, and hope rather than securitisation and crisis management.