Makoko 2036
Within the World Building Course at the University of Southern California, across two semesters, an interdisciplinary group of students are imagining a future world set in Lagos, Nigeria 2036; named Dry City. The team has chosen to focus on Lagos, Nigeria in 2036 due to its current rapid urbanization, booming economy and growing population. In our fictional world build, we understand that water commodification and water scarcity in the future would intensify social inequity, generate conflicts, and require aggressive adaptation even within the upper class. Our group of architects, interactive media designers, theater students, musicians, engineers, urban planners, animators, filmmakers and artists speculate possible narratives in this near-future privatized water society.
The process of world building provides a framework for a conglomerate of creators and designers to imagine our future – dystopian or other. As we work through problems and topics of body, place, culture, society and systems with subtopics such as identity, media, virtual/augmented reality devices, body image, food, education (including the Makoko Floating School), medicine, desalination, synthetic biology, smart materials, vertical farming, war, water parks, the International Monetary Fund/World Bank, informal urbanism, and water economics; we are projecting an alternate reality. Within our world build of Dry City, the theme of technology as intertwined with identity and accountability comes to the fore through multiple braided narratives. The spherical storytelling of this world allows us to research and imagine the real world consequences of our technological, economic, and social trajectories.