When you imagine future cities, you probably picture tall buildings reaching high into the sky with lanes of drones, hover cars and other flying vehicles. Taking to the sky has always been a part of our cultural imagination. Flying cars feature in all kinds of futuristic novels, TV shows and films, from the dystopian landscape of Bladerunner to the utopic Earth Star Trek envisages.
It’s no coincidence that these fictions have such a grip on the way we approach the future. Design fictions are hugely valuable in unpacking our ambitions for the future as well as forming a critical analysis of how those fictions could work in reality. But often, while films and novels interrogate the ethical or moral dilemmas technology might bring, they ignore the more mundane practicalities such as how the drones might move around the space or how they could influence a range of other industries and designs.
In this podcast, Hannah and Ian are joined by Paul Cureton, from Imagination, Lancaster, a design research department that looks at design futures, speculative design and design fictions. One of Paul’s interests is how visions of the future translate into reality, which has led him to write his book, Drone Futures: UAS in Landscape and Urban Design.
We ask what the future could look like with drones, how they could change the landscape and who is most likely to use them. Our conversation takes us from the history of our imagination of flight right through to the idea of being able to drive a drone into your apartment for it to be taken down to a basement parking area by automatic lift and everything in between!
Listen to our podcast here:
Reading list
- Paul Cureton, Drone Futures: UAS in Landscape and Urban Design
- Grégoire Chamayou, Drone Theory
- Stephen Graham, Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers
Manchester Futurists 