Public lecture: Technological Imaginaries of Farming in Cities

About the lecture

What sustainable futures are we calling forth: techno-imaginaries in a climate-changing world

Dr Jamie Wang

Amid the intensifying effects of climate change and environmental degradation, there is growing enthusiasm for building sustainable, liveable and “natural” cities. At the same time, the imaginary of an alluring urban ecofuture is often driven by a narrow version of sustainability, paired with high-tech futurism and persistent economic growth. As we call forth a particular sustainable future, other kinds of possibilities are squeezed out in the process.

In this lecture, drawing on a series of storied encounters in Singapore and Hong Kong—from urban farming to skyrise greeneries and technological water production —Jamie Wang considers how technological imaginaries seek to pre-empt, produce or perpetuate certain futures. Specifically, the lecture focuses on three interrelated aspects.

• Firstly, what is the idea and reality of controlled environments; how are they underpinned by entangled dominance over natures and humans?

• Secondly, how does an eco-modernised future envisioning a decoupling from nature (albeit illusory) shift across and shape temporal relations?

• Thirdly, the lecture explores some alternative practices that seek to reconfigure contemporary approaches; these work, although having their own compromises, craft different possibilities.

Holding these stories together, Wang argues that foregrounding more-than-human dimensions thickens the understanding of complex human-environment-technology relations and opens up spaces for more relational, just urban futures in a climate-changing world.

About the speaker:

Jamie Wang is an urban environmental humanities scholar and Assistant Professor in the Department of Literature and Cultural Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong. Her current writing and thinking examine sustainable urban-making, technological imaginaries, and multimodal storytelling in the context of climate change and environmental injustice. Wang is author of Reimagining the More-Than-Human City: Stories from Singapore.