Abstract
As climate change intensifies, architects and other design professionals are creating bold visions for future dwellings, such as green buildings, master-planned eco-cities, and even planetary-scale sustainability measures. These “climatopias,” categorically different from ecological utopias of the past, are architectural and urban-planning proposals for the built environment that seek to address climate adaptation and/or mitigation through new design, material, and sociopolitical processes. In this perspective, we define a climatopia and introduce an evaluation approach to examine aspirational design projects for climate change according to concepts of transformation and climate-resilient development being widely called for across the climate research community. Using criteria of effectiveness, justice, and feasibility, the evaluation approach offers design practitioners and policymakers a high-level framework to critically evaluate climate-inspired utopic design schemes. Climatopias support transformation when they give sustained consideration to both material and social, political, and economic dimensions of the design process and its outcomes for inhabitants.
Climatopias are architectural and urban-planning proposals for the built environment that seek to address climate adaptation and mitigation through new design, material, and sociopolitical processes. Here, we introduce an evaluation approach to critically examine climate-inspired utopic design schemes for their effectiveness, justice, and feasibility. Climatopias support transformational adaptation when they significantly lower a project’s embodied carbon, are affordable and involve residents in the design and implementation processes, and are designed to be built and deployed today or provoke transformation.