The gloomy prospect of climate change and ecosystems' collapse calls for an urgent rethinking of all aspects of our life: how we work, produce, eat, spend, take care of each other, relate to nature, and organize our societies. Prefigurative initiatives are attracting a growing amount of attention from scholars and activists precisely because they are envisioning alternative futures by embodying radically different ways of living in the present. Thanks to the contribution of leading researchers, 'The Future is Now' represents the go-to book for anyone seeking a comprehensive, state-of-the-art, and thought-provoking introduction to the thriving field of prefigurative politics.

Contents:
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Glossary
1. INTRODUCTION
Travelling and representation, travelling as representation
Mobility and the Tôkaidô as Scholarly Subjects
Structure of the Book
2. INFRASTRUCTURE AND CARTOGRAPHY OF THE TOKAIDO IN MACRO
THE TOKAIDO AS A GEOPOLITICAL TERRITORY
INFRASTRUCTURE UPON THE TOKAIDO ROUTE
Inland Infrastructure in the Edo Period
The Tôkaidô as a Highway
The Introduction of the Railroad
THE TOKAIDO'S CARTOGRAPHY
Roadmaps in the Eido Period
Popular and Official Roadmaps
From Scriptual to Visual Cartography
Roadmaps in the Meiji Era
Railway Maps of the Maiji Era
Representational Character in Meiji Era's Road-Cartography
From Absolute Space to Abstract Space
3. TRAVELLING PRACTICES AND LITERARY TOKAIDO
ROAD COSMOLOGY - THE ROAD AS A MICROCOSM
TRAVELLING PRACTICES OF THE EDO PERIOD
Reasons for Travelling
Travellers-Positions
Meiji Era's Travelling
LITERARY TOKAIDO
Travel Literature in the Edo Period
Travel Literature in the Meiji Era
A Geographical Treatise: Nihon fûkeiron (Theory of the Japanese Landscape)
Literary Nostalgia
4. PERFORMANCE, VISUALITY AND IMAGINATION AT THE TOKAIDO'S MICRO-SCALE
TRANSPORTATION-STATIONS: SPACES OF PERFORMANCE, SPACES OF REPRESENTATION
Physical and Anthropological Characteristics of Post-Stations
Railway Stations as Border-sites: Between Performance and Spectacle
TOKAIDO AND VISUALITY
Pictorial Tôkaidô in the Edo Period
The Tôkaidô in the Official Arts of the Edo Period
The Tôkaidô in the Popular Arts of the Edo Period
Recurring Characteristics in Edo Period's Travel Representations
Pictorial Tôkaidô in the Meiji Era
Recording Reality through the Lens of Ukiyo-e
The Tôkaidô in Nihonga
The Tôkaidô through Western Eyes
The Tôkaidô Subject through a Prism of Modern Attitudes
Influences and Anachronisms: From the West to Japan, From Japan to the West
5. CONCLUSIONS AND OPENINGS: THE TOKAIDO AS MEDIUM OF NATIONAL KNOWLEDGE
NATIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND EPISTEMOLOGY
Japan as History/Japan as Nature
Technology as Expansion of Nature
Geography as National Ideology
Recasting History as Progress
HISTORY AS NOSTALGIA, HISTORY AS PLAY
Tôkaidô Renaissance
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES

The gloomy prospect of climate change and ecosystems' collapse calls for an urgent rethinking of all aspects of our life: how we work, produce, eat, spend, take care of each other, relate to nature, and organize our societies. Prefigurative initiatives are attracting a growing amount of attention from scholars and activists precisely because they are envisioning alternative futures by embodying radically different ways of living in the present. Thanks to the contribution of leading researchers, 'The Future is Now' represents the go-to book for anyone seeking a comprehensive, state-of-the-art, and thought-provoking introduction to the thriving field of prefigurative politics.

This book examines, through an interdisciplinary lens, the relationship between political dissent and processes of designing. In the past twenty years, theorists of social movements have noted a diversity of visual and performative manifestations taking place in protest, while the fields of design, broadly defined, have been characterized by a growing interest in activism. The book's premise stems from the recognition that material engagement and artifacts have the capacity to articulate political arguments or establish positions of disagreement. Its contributors look at a wide array of material practices generated by both professional and nonprofessional design actors around the globe, exploring case studies that vary from street protests and encampments to design pedagogy and community-empowerment projects. For students and scholars of design studies, urbanism, visual culture, politics, and social movements, this book opens up new perspectives on design and its place in contemporary politics.

The Tokaido Road offers a comparative study of the Tokaido road's representations during the Edo (1600-1868) and Meiji (1868-1912) eras. Throughout the Edo era, the Tokaido highway was the most important route of Japan and transportation was confined to foot travel. In 1889, the Tokaido Railway was established, at first paralleling and eventually almost eliminating the use of the highway. During both periods, the Tokaido was a popular topic of representation and was depicted in a variety of visual and literary media. After the installation of the railway in the Meiji era, the Tokaido was presented as a landscape of progress, modernity and westernisation. Such representations were fundamental in shaping the Tokaido and the realm of travelling in the collective consciousness of the Japanese people.

Designing the Olympics claims that the Olympic Games provide opportunities to reflect on the relationship between design, national identity, and citizenship. The "Olympic design milieu" fans out from the construction of the Olympic city and the creation of emblems, mascots, and ceremonies, to the consumption, interpretation, and appropriation of Olympic artifacts from their conception to their afterlife. Besides products that try to achieve consensus and induce civic pride, the "Olympic design milieu" also includes processes that oppose the Olympics and their enforcement. The book examines the graphic design program for Tokyo 1964, architecture and urban plans for Athens 2004, brand design for London 2012, and practices of subversive appropriation and sociotechnical action in counter-Olympic movements since the 1960s. It explores how the Olympics shape the physical, legal and emotional contours of a host nation and its position in the world; how the Games are contested by a broader social spectrum within and beyond the nation; and how, throughout these encounters, design plays a crucial role. Recognizing the presence of multiple actors, the book investigates the potential of design in promoting equitable political participation in the Olympic context.

Travel, Space, Architecture defines a new theoretical territory in architectural and urban scholarship that frames the processes of spatial production through the notion of travel. By aligning architectural thinking with current critical theory debates, this book explores whether dissociating culture from place and identity, and detaching the idea of architecture from both, can reframe our understanding of spatial and architectural practices. The book presents seventeen key case studies from a diverse range of perspectives including historical, theoretical, and praxis-based, and range from interrogations of architectural travel and notions of belonging and nationhood to challenging established geopolitical hierarchies.

Travel, Space, Architecture defines a new theoretical territory in architectural and urban scholarship that frames the processes of spatial production through the notion of travel. By aligning architectural thinking with current critical theory debates, this book explores whether dissociating culture from place and identity, and detaching the idea of architecture from both, can reframe our understanding of spatial and architectural practices. The book presents seventeen key case studies from a diverse range of perspectives including historical, theoretical, and praxis-based, and range from interrogations of architectural travel and notions of belonging and nationhood to challenging established geopolitical hierarchies.

Design, Displacement, Migration: Spatial and Material Histories gathers a collection of scholarly and creative voices—spanning design, art, and architectural history; design studies; curation; poetry; activism; and social sciences––to interrogate the intersections of design and displacement. The contributors foreground objects, spaces, visual, and material practices and consider design’s role in the empire, the state, and various colonizing regimes in controlling the mass movement of people, things, and ideas across borders, as well as in resisting forced mobility and immobility, or enacting new possibilities. By consciously surfacing echoes, rhymes, and dissonances among varied histories, this volume highlights local specificity while also accounting for the vectors of displacement and design across borders and histories. Design, Displacement, Migration: Spatial and Material Histories shows displacement to be a lens for understanding space and materiality and vice versa, particularly within the context of modernity and colonialism. The book will be of interest to scholars working in design history, design studies, architectural history, art history, urban studies, and migration studies.

Designing the Olympics claims that the Olympic Games provide opportunities to reflect on the relationship between design, national identity, and citizenship. The "Olympic design milieu" fans out from the construction of the Olympic city and the creation of emblems, mascots, and ceremonies, to the consumption, interpretation, and appropriation of Olympic artifacts from their conception to their afterlife. Besides products that try to achieve consensus and induce civic pride, the "Olympic design milieu" also includes processes that oppose the Olympics and their enforcement. The book examines the graphic design program for Tokyo 1964, architecture and urban plans for Athens 2004, brand design for London 2012, and practices of subversive appropriation and sociotechnical action in counter-Olympic movements since the 1960s. It explores how the Olympics shape the physical, legal and emotional contours of a host nation and its position in the world; how the Games are contested by a broader social spectrum within and beyond the nation; and how, throughout these encounters, design plays a crucial role. Recognizing the presence of multiple actors, the book investigates the potential of design in promoting equitable political participation in the Olympic context.

This book examines, through an interdisciplinary lens, the relationship between political dissent and processes of designing. In the past twenty years, theorists of social movements have noted a diversity of visual and performative manifestations taking place in protest, while the fields of design, broadly defined, have been characterized by a growing interest in activism. The book’s premise stems from the recognition that material engagement and artifacts have the capacity to articulate political arguments or establish positions of disagreement. Its contributors look at a wide array of material practices generated by both professional and nonprofessional design actors around the globe, exploring case studies that vary from street protests and encampments to design pedagogy and community-empowerment projects. For students and scholars of design studies, urbanism, visual culture, politics, and social movements, this book opens up new perspectives on design and its place in contemporary politics.