Heterotopias of transition: notes from a research program

Ecological transition is generally seen to ask for profound changes. The city condenses many aspects of the issue, not least the variety of spatial and temporal scales involved. The article examines different declinations of the concept of change and the relationship between space and time that they entail. The issue is placing this relationship in the context of modern spacetime topology. This has recently seen new anticipatory approaches come to the fore, that abandon the linearity of the relationship between present and future in favour of recursive structures centred on eschatological, catastrophic or regenerative visions. Such emerging topologies, which would seem to evoke the traditional concepts of utopia and dystopia, are examined in the light of the notion of heterotopia formulated by Foucault, with which they share much while contradicting its transgressive scope, its ability to open up at once to the elsewhere and the otherwise. The question is how to think transition in heterotopic terms. Some current experiences can be read as heterotopias, but we need to develop the ability to distinguish heterotopias from ‘autotopias’, which are designed to prevent any real change.