As the first copies of the Rough Planet Guide to Notterdam 2045 have made their way out into the world, they have been provoking very positive feedback and endorsements from a broad audience:

“Truly a visionary way to present research results. As a reader, you are swept directly into the future… [the Guide] provides a basis for the need for continued efforts from industry, the state and research, and inspires action.”

 — Eva Blixt, Jernkontoret (Swedish steel-producer’s association)

“As a long term investor I always seek to try out frontier technologies as early as possible... this book takes that concept to a range of interesting applications, whilst extending the perspective further than most forecasts, which makes it both interesting and useful.”

 — Ludvig Nilsson, managing director, Jade Invest (Shanghai)

“Definitely rewarding, refreshing and fun... you’ve put together a lot of intriguing yet realistic examples of concrete changes in city life [and] tell the tale of how different movements and motives can create the decarbonized future we want.”

— Carina Borgström Hansson, WWF Sweden

 We are thus very pleased to announce that we have the opportunity to build upon this success and extend the approach in new directions. The Notterdam Guide’s “editor-in-chief”, postdoctoral researcher Paul Graham Raven, recently secured a prestigious international fellowship grant under the Horizon2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme (grant #895807); furthermore, Paul and PI Johannes Stripple also submitted a successful bid to the Swedish research council FORMAS (grant #01990) for a very similar research concept. With the working title “The Rough Guide to Zero-Carbon Skåne”, the resulting combined project will (as the name implies!) continue with the travel-guide format as a vehicle for research communications and speculations about sociotechnical change. 

There are three key differences, however. Firstly, rather than inventing a fictional city, this new project will be working with real locations in Skåne, Sweden’s southernmost county; secondly, it will focus upon the everyday human practices and lifeways which contribute to aggregate demand upon carbon-intensive systems and industries. And thirdly, as a consequence of the first two differences, this project will enrol ordinary people in the creative and speculative (re)creation of the locations in which they live.

Meeting these objectives will involve exciting and challenging new forms of work, from talking with scientists, engineers, modellers and policy-makers in order to do the necessary “worldbuilding” required to root the Guide in cutting-edge understandings of climate change mitigation and adaptation, to working alongside Swedish citizens and residents in order to co-create coherent visions of how they might live in the futures thus described.

A project website will be appearing before the end of 2020—please follow along here at Climaginaries in order to stay updated, or contact Paul Graham Raven directly at paul.raven@svet.lu.se