The future does not have a definite form

Abstract

If the city is more than a mere physical form, it is also the medium and outcome of the social "habitus" that sustains the practice of a city. Groups of people who maintain certain common practices after awhile perceive them to be normal and "natural," even though the intentions sustaining some of these practices are limiting and inconsistent . As designers, our attempts at structuring formal and spatial order by classifications and by the interpretation of patterns, limits our other societal intention of influencing the future increasingly. The practice of classification and the recognition of patterns rests on the belief of the existence of an objective reality which structures our attempts at creating. What does it imply about t he influence we have on our future , if the environment we live in is a predetermined stasis? How objective is "what exists" ? Can form and spatial practices be self-justifying by their objective existence? If we are to approach these questions, we need to have measures of better and worse, a nd t he means for evaluating options in order to make consistent choices in the present. Underlying this proposition is the belief that all that we have as conscious human beings is the present. This paper explores three cultural assumptions that our existing mode of approaching the future is seen to rest on. These are: the belief in the existence of an objective future, the possibility of creating it in the present, and the position of individual subjectivity as being extraneous to the notion of an objective plan. The thoughts expressed here are intended to be more provocative than prescriptive, in the hope that we may design with a more conscious practice of intent.