Futures From Ruins

Understanding that the ground we walk on is in a state of constant transformation is a powerful invitation to remake it, continually, anew.

The ongoing work of making the spaces in which we live cultivates a kind of alchemy, in which stronger links between people and place can arise.

When ruins become places for celebration and growth, they challenge the narrative of inevitable decay. They offer us the chance to cultivate Lefebrve’s ideas of “the right to the city” through the experience of everyday inhabitation.

Deeper connections between people support more creative imagination of what’s possible.

Tsing encourages us to look beyond those simplistic narratives, and to ask what else ruins might allow to emerge. As portals to past realities, ruins have the capacity to cultivate connection across history, geography, and culture.

When ruins become ground for creation rather than objects from devastated pasts, they cultivate belief in what’s possible. It’s a shift that people like Tsing insist is essential to moving beyond extractive cycles of “promise and ruin, promise and ruin.”

As places where disaster has already occurred, ruins are proof that life continues even when everything goes wrong — and that beauty and connection can be cultivated in the process.

Reshaping ruins activates the future through experimentation with the past, a dynamic that both shifts embedded memories of physical spaces and diversifies what and how we imagine what can be.