Counterfactual future-thinking

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4475593
AutoresAlize Arıcan (0000-0002-7329-851X, Boston University Society of Fellows, USA, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume41
Fascículo4
Páginas637-655
Data de publicação2023-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/02637758231158376
OpenAlexW4321789403
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas38

In this article, I follow two urban experts, a Turkish construction site manager and a Kurdish foreman, working in Taksim 360, one of Istanbul's first state-led urban transformation projects still in construction since 2006. Homing in on the protracted landscape of construction, I am concerned with how urban experts in Taksim 360, who do not entirely concur with the seemingly determined trajectory of urban transformation in Tarlabaşı, put inevitability to work. I ask: what makes urban experts stay with a project that might not materialize? The answer lies in what I call "counterfactual future-thinking": a way of articulating the future in relation to what might have happened-an articulation that comes particularly handy when the gap between inevitable visions and everyday experiences of urban projects seems irreconcilable. Counterfactual future-thinking allows urban experts to navigate the tensions between suspension and inevitability. It offers a way to urban experts to bridge their quotidian experiences of urban projects with their future visions, which become hazier in their attainability. I argue that counterfactuals emanating from protraction are lenses through which we can understand what inevitability actually does, rather than dismiss it as a farse disconnected from urban expertise on the ground

Civil engineering · Counterfactual thinking · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Political science · Public relations · Sociology · Urban planning · Urban theory · Vision · Engineering · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Urban Planning and Governance · Water Governance and Infrastructure