Johanna Hoffman is a designer, urbanist and strategist exploring the ties between design, planning, fiction and futures. She’s the founder of Design for Adaptation, a studio using strategic planning, interactive storytelling and speculative design to survey the impacts of potential futures and spur proactive adaptation. Her new book is called Speculative Futures: Design Approaches to Navigate Change, Foster Resilience, and Co-Create the Cities we Need. Johanna and I talk about strategies to make the intangibility and overwhelm of the future more personal and inspiring, and how we can integrate grief into shifting narratives. We discuss how national mythologies translate into the creation of different landscapes, the pros and cons of modern cities, and how important it is to give ourselves permission to lean into our creativity, imagination, and confidence in order to manifest big ideas.

Johanna’s book recommendations: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Viral Justice by Ruha Benjamin, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and the work of Eric Klineberg, Ursula Le Guin, Stuart Candy, and Octavia Butler.

Find Johanna at johannahoffman.com and on Instagram

Songs featured: “The Fear” by Ben Howard and “Let Me Down Easy” by Gang of Youths

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