During the eighteenth century, the expectation that the future would be radically different from the past emerged as a defining trait of urban life. Cities became expressions of individual and collective aspirations. This talk will trace changes in how people imagined the cities of tomorrow across the Atlantic, whether focused on flying cars above or sewage systems below. For much of its history, urban planning was premised on an understanding of progress as achievable and desirable (though many disagreed about what that meant). Urbanization occurred within a history of competing visions for the future. Meanwhile, the evolution of modern cities defied predictions and remade the destinies of humanity. And this story is not over. The talk will also reflect on urban futures imagined in contemporary debates, arguing that while urbanization helped create climate change, compact cities are one of our best hopes to reduce ecological footprints and raise living standards.

Speaker: Bruno Carvalho, Harvard University

About Bruno Carvalho

Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies,
Portuguese Section Leader (Spring Semester), and Co-Director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative;
Affiliated Professor in Urban Planning and Design at the Graduate School of Design

At Harvard, Carvalho is Co-Director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative. He also Co-Chairs the Art, Film, & Culture Committee at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and serves as a member of the Faculty Standing Committee on History and Literature, of the Advisory Committees on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, and of the Brazil Studies Program, as well as the Steering Committees of the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History, and the Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion. He is also a Faculty Affiliate in Critical Media Practice, at the Afro-Latin American Research Institute, The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, the Graduate School of Design, the Bloomberg Center for Cities, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He serves on the boards of the Dumbarton Oaks Ex Horto book series on garden and landscape studies, the Mellon Democracy and Landscape Initiative, and the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University.