Integrating human geography into futures studies: Reconstructing and reimagining the future of space

Abstract

This article explores the concept of the “future” through the lens of human geography. We examine how space may influence the way we perceive the future and how actors connected to this space will determine or undermine the kind of future to be unfolded. Particularly, we are interested in who influences the ideas of the future that explains how futures could be imagined and constructed. Already, the ideas of the future have utilized concepts of sustainability and climate change to demonstrate how futures may unfold. However, these envisioned futures, which mostly originate from a narrow perspective within a single space–time dimension, can be misleading. The ideas of the future can be challenged because space–time evolution alters the social structure of actors connected to space in multiple dimensions. As space–time evolves, new actors will be introduced, and actors who have been traditionally power‐less may emerge to contest and negotiate access to power to provide alternative ideas of the future. Understanding how power is negotiated and contested by these actors in the future is critical to understanding who has the future power.

A foresight study on urban mobility: Singapore in 2040

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“…The question is who are they representing in the workshop? Individuals can adopt different social roles in various situations that come with a set of expectations of what to do and who they represent (Kurniawan and Kundurpi, 2019). We acknowledge the limitation of our study due to some aspects (i.e.…”

Restoration-as-development? Contesting Aspirational Politics Regarding the Restoration of Wildlife Corridors in the Kilombero Valley, Tanzania

“…Even though global environmental governance must still be organized very hierarchically to be able to dictate its aspirations 'downwards', so far only a few scholars have tried to understand better how those who actually accept, execute, appropriate, protest against and transform these aspirations can still be treated as mere spectators or uninvolved recipients (Kurniawan and Kundurpi 2019). It is in this spirit that we have examined the ways in which ROAM is being used by the AWF in the Kilombero Valley to restore wildlife corridors.…”

Who Cares? Older Singaporeans Negotiating Care Expectations and Aging Futures

“…While migration scholarship has focused on the ways families utilize migration to strategize for better futures, it is also important to understand how migrants’ family members who remain in place—including the elderly—think about their futures. Older people’s capacity to imagine their futures often shifts with changing circumstances and over the life course and, with that, their ability to “exercise agency and negotiate power imbalances” to realize desired outcomes (Kurniawan & Kundurpi, 2018: 7).…”