V2.1 Post-Capitalist City?

The contemporary city is challenged by economic circumstances, but also by our own inability to visualize the possibilities for the city of the future. The dichotomy of physical embodiment versus digital presence has repositioned the city as one of the few realms in which class differences manifest themselves tangibly, in the architectures and urban spaces inhabited by different classes of people. Post-Capitalist City? explores speculative desires for the city of the future. Whether utopian, fictional, or networked, these urban imaginaries insist that we suspend our conventional way of seeing the city in order to open up new possibilities. V2.1 explores the opportunities and implications of the global economic crisis and changing markets on the next generation of architects and designers, considering how current methods of urban design, real estate development, and spatial consumption are placing social capital over economic capital to catalyze new protocols of urban development.