public imaginaries

crucially, the treatment of unhoused people, and how that also trickles out to everyone else
on car supremacy and walkability
monumentual architecture
Built environment affects autistics beyond need for isolated sensory rooms, we need more consideration in general public space to allow us to be in it rather than escape it. Factors of the built environment can also dictate social expectations and affect behaviour of others, clear procedure, affordances and signage is crucial
benches
- deliberately uncomfortable design, often entirely unusable
- cruel anti-sleeping measures
- disadvantages many already disadvantaged people
  - homeless people
  - disabled people
  - pregnant people
  - elderly people
  - young children
  - those caring for young children
- lack of seating at many bus stops, those that do have seating have inadequate seating, and people who use buses are more likely to be the already disadvantaged groups mentioned above
- Benches as a haven for the stressed, anxious, autistic, etc, scouting location
kinda opposite of this is the public safety measures built into environments such as flood prevention and bollarding with planters and artworks (or just actual bollards)

Resources

Monuments To Guilt, interactive virtual installation on exclusionary design (downloadable)(online)

[Alternative systems](alternative systems) are possible. Presented with alternatives in narrative/artistic/fictional form as well as real examples and plans, people are better equipped to enact social change.

many genres eg horror and dramatic realism are very good at negative realities and possible dystopias and these are important, but movements aren’t sustained on negative momentum alone - people need something to strive for
sci-fi is the realm that best captures the contrast of dystopia and utopia, offering far-flung alternatives with radical implications
but realist alternatives are lacking. gently optimistic narratives in short supply
even attempts at ‘good news’ programming can feel saccharine
the best of this I’ve seen is in the form of the ‘case study’ of existing movements, projects and activists that are making positive changes in the here and now, or of repeatable processes by which people can accelerate the growth of more equitable systems
Political art and radical art can also be very impactful in these areas
media that is otherwise realist, negative or naive in worldview can often address some angle of real-world injustice, bringing some small slice of utopia - any depicted better world, no matter how trivial, can be impactful
- consider for example an incredibly downbeat BBC drama whose protagonist uses a wheelchair, set in an old English village full of locations that are inexplicably entirely accessible to them
- this could’ve happened due to ignorance to its unlikelihood, happenstance of location, catering to the actor’s needs, or as a deliberate cry for wheelchair accessibility
- but regardless of reason, the imagined world has been created.
- for a viewer who uses a wheelchair and laments about the accessibility of old buildings, they’ve stumbled across some hope, and for them this show can be a utopia, despite other plots and moods that are melancholy and depressing.
  - (there’s a link here to ‘impact over intention’, interestingly)
- they could go on to advocate for this very thing with the armament of the media depiction.
so, any concrete depiction of better worlds/systems/ideas in any medium can be crucial to aiming someone’s sights at it
and unfortunately the opposite can also be true with satirical dystopias backfiring
- eg Squid Game inspired several real life competitions with huge monetary prizes (without the outright massacre of the original, but still with the horrifically exploitative and dangerous nature of playing with the lives of desperate people)
progress and innovation
what we can imagine, who gets to see through their plans
sci-fi shorts as experimental exploratory alternative futures

Mentions

“The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.”– William Gibson (quoted by)
“to capture one’s imagination – […] not only inspires, but also detains attention and imagination, orchestrates it, and delimits the possibility to imagine differently.” (Smolicki, 2017)