Beyond Sustainability: Designing More-than-Human Urban Encounters and Justice Practices

Beyond Sustainability:

The smart city began as a socio-technical imaginary that placed human and technological efficiencies at the core of its agenda. In recent years a reliance on the design of technological and data driven decision-making in urban planning and governance to support sustainability, carbon net zero and climate mitigation has become central to the smart city narrative. In this talk, Rachel Clarke will explore critical perspectives of the smart city and approaches to reconfiguring the dominance of technoscientific sustainable and efficient futures. Drawing from my new co-edited book I will discuss examples using the lens of ‘justice practices’ to consider how designers and practitioners are making sense of and developing more-than-human approaches to cohabitation with species, data, chemicals, hybrid technical-organic interfaces and other-worldly entities.

Rachel Clarke is a design researcher and practitioner who combines visual communication with qualitative research, performance and storytelling on issues of climate change, sustainability and social inequality. She is senior lecturer in Design for Climate Justice and Course Leader for Art Direction at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

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The event is part of the evening lectures series “MORE-THAN-HUMAN AI. Exploring the boundaries between humans and AI in the design of regenerative futures”, organized by the PhD Program in Design in collaboration with the Design Intelligences Institute.