Willing, But Able?: Exploring The Potential Of Critical Futures To Foster Positive Urban Futures Articulation And Motivate Action. A Participatory Approach On Human-Environment Interactions In University City, Mexico.

In a global urban context marked by increasingly unsustainable conditions, the capacity to imagine a fundamentally different future is crucial to avoid being trapped in a precarious present. The cognitive potential of critically challenging and reimagining current degraded conditions is only partly examined in the existing literature. Therefore, a question arises as to whether this process could somehow influence an individual’s understanding of environmental circumstances and the motivations for acting upon them. This study focuses on University City (Mexico) as a case study. It aimed to investigate the potential of critical futures studies (CFS), applied to human-environment interactions in public spaces, to help articulate positive futures and motivate taking action. The question: What should the future look and feel like?, let participants reframe prevailing negative narratives and envision human-environment interactions in an urban public space characterized by diversity, multifunctionality, livability, and democracy. Key findings from a series of participatory workshops revealed divergent responses to the critical futures approach in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation, the inherent desire toward taking action, either increased or was maintained at high pre-existing levels, tentatively explained by the catalytic role of the emotional contrast between current and envisioned experiences. This study also observed narrative shifts regarding intrinsic motivation toward more collective, affective, and change-oriented reasons. Conversely, extrinsic motivation, as the disposition to act based on anticipated outcomes, remained limited after the workshops, which is hypothesized to be an outcome of perceived barriers, such as institutional hierarchies, and participants' unfamiliarity with potential courses of action.  Overall, this study explores and discusses the potential of CFS methods for motivating action toward positive change and underscores the importance of contextualizing motivational factors within present realities and actionable knowledge. Leveraging these insights in participatory settings can sustain motivation, furthering progress toward a desirable and sustainable future.