Designing Hope

When did we stop dreaming of a better future?

What happened to the sci-fi golden age of the 1950s, when futurism flourished as a discipline and drove innovation?

As a society, either we struggle to imagine something good for the times to come or we fail to picture any future at all. Our world is in polycrisis; we face climate breakdown, societal fracturing, governmental collapse, war, and rising inequality.

The exciting outcomes we dreamed of, from the space race to the wonder material plastic, have brought contingent problems of their own. We haven't yet developed mainstream and accessible new narratives to replace these failures, and if you ask someone to imagine 'the future', they'll probably still picture flying cars.

Designing Hope resets expectations. Through the lens of four emerging futures, Sarah Housley shows us visions of hope that inspire action and critical thinking about how we'll live in the decades to come.

'We've stopped believing in or imagining a future. That's deadly. Housley's visionary yet bracingly practical book is an antidote to despair and a manual for our very survival.' - Charles Foster, author of Cry of the Wild

'We need some adventure in the fight for a workable future — some stuff to be aiming at and dreaming about. This book will fire up your imagination!' - Bill McKibben

Designing Hope by Sarah Housley is essential reading — an antidote to doomscrolling in an age of mounting crises. Housley offers a rare and spirited optimism, made all the more powerful by its grounding in fact. The book reminds us that, before we can build a better future, we must allow ourselves to imagine that it's possible. I finished the book with the sense that, if we can hope enough to try, human ingenuity will triumph.' - Emily Buchanan, author of Send Flowers

Many of us today feel trapped in the present; absorbed in the anxiety of consequences, resulting from the many failed promises of the industrial and technological age. Climate and ecological threats, layered with escalating armed conflicts and the inevitability of a techno-authoritarian abyss, obscure our ability to form collective pathways towards a world we want to live in and enjoy. Designing Hope offers us a powerful and pragmatic alternative to be part of a creative force imagining new horizons.' - Nick Breeze, author of COPOUT and host of the ClimateGenn podcast

Through four emerging possible futures for the planet, the design futurist resets expectations on what the years to come might look like in this thought-provoking and eye-opening volume.' - Waterstones