Wake up all the builders: Fatigue and utopia in Washington Heights

Abstract

This study explores community leaders’ perceptions of the future of Washington Heights and Inwood, in New York City. Taking a modified ethnographic futures research approach, informants were asked to imagine utopian and dystopian futures of Washington Heights in 2050, eliciting their aspirations, fears, and expectations for the neighborhood. In addition, the author observed neighborhood events and Community Board meetings over two years from 2020 to 2022, while also reviewing historical analysis and social media discussions. Through this research, an ethnography of the future of the neighborhood emerged, illustrating informants’ expansive visions for more just societies built on care, equity, and the celebration of new ways of being in the world. However, this research also makes clear that future visions cannot be understood independently of the troubled history of the neighborhood as well as its challenging present, which has been steeped in the fear and fatigue of the Covid-19 era and the abyss of inequality that the pandemic exposed. To act on informants' collective aspirations for the neighborhood in 2050 will require imagining the repair of injustices from the past, identifying the traces of repair that exist in the present, and carrying forward those traces toward an emancipatory future.