“Build a Better Day After”: Reclaiming Urban Space in the Post-Apocalypse

Description

The American post-apocalyptic city has become a ubiquitous and recognizable sight across contemporary science fiction, and especially in the visual media of film, television, and video games. While in many of these texts an apocalyptic event is the trigger for an exodus from the city, the value of the post-apocalyptic city often necessitates a return, allowing for an exploration of how humanity might reevaluate its relationship to urban spaces and how urban decay and ruination might be halted, reversed, or managed through urban planning. Texts such as A Boy and His Dog (1975), Slipstream (1989), and the Fallout franchise (1997-) depict a contrast between the urban landscape as a slate wiped clean, or tabula rasa, and the reinhabited and retrofitted urban ruin, a patchwork of past and present that might be connected with tabula rasa’s recently proposed alternative, tabula plena. The success of the tabula plena surface settlements in these texts as a model for rebuilding makes it seem all the more hopeful that the post-apocalyptic city can be salvaged while retaining the functions of memory and memorialization inherent in its architecture, a message especially resonant at a time when architects and urban planners are looking to sustainable building practices and preservation in designing the cities of the future.

Period	Oct 4 2024
Event title	La ville postapocalyptique comme objet critique dans l’imaginaire nord-américain: Perspectives pluridisciplinaires
Event type	Conference
Location	Saint-Étienne, FranceShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International