The exhibition “Post-Oil City: The History of the City’s Future” is a collaboration between the German Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V. (ifa / Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations), and ARCH+, Zeitschrift für Architektur und Städtebau (Journal for Architecture and Urbanism).
At a time when more than half of the world’s population is living in cities, the effects of climate change on urban life can no longer be ignored. The exhibition as well as the accompanying catalogue edited by ARCH+, address urgent questions: How will the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy affect the process of urban planning and the city? How will the use of renewable energies affect urban metabolism and the politics of sustainability and mobility?
“Post-Oil City” is as much about the future as it is about the past. By contrasting 11 current projects in the field of sustainable urban planning with 9 from the past, the exhibition aims to show that many of today’s developments have their roots in the urban utopias of mid-20th-century modernism.