City Sci-fi: Speculative Movie Making Towards the Design of Future Cities

MIT Media Lab - Spring term

gallery team

This semester-long class is a hands-on workshop on fiction narrative and filmmaking. Students envision how emerging technologies might shape urban life in 50 years and produce a short film to immerse broader audiences in their futuristic world concept.

While traditional urban planning often emphasizes the physical structure and appearance of cities, it sometimes overlooks the human experience within them. Over time, the gap between urban design and human life becomes more apparent. The future of cities depends on careful attention to the human experience, and narrative can both reinforce and explore this connection.

In this workshop, students from diverse backgrounds form teams to envision future urban experiences using filmmaking as a medium. We delve into the basics of sci-fi world-building with a particular emphasis on the role of urban settings in the narrative, and learn techniques for crafting stories into short films.