Critical transitions

Climate change confounds a key assumption within many critical urban repertoires: that urban futures are open and available to design. The four respondents take up this issue in different ways: by understanding urban systems and their limits through the biophysical transformations of climate change; problematizing conventional and critical tendencies to “design” our way out of those transformations—or to ignore some of their undesirable consequences; and underscoring the kinds of political thought and action that remain possible under conditions of irreversible loss. Together, these responses point toward a “critical” transition I have argued is necessary: recalibrating critical urban thought and practice in a world of climate overshoot.