Icade Publishes '2050, The Odyssey of the City', a Design-Fiction Magazine to Imagine the City of 2050

A Tale of Urban Anticipation Co-Written by Science Fiction Authors

The magazine, co-written by Romain Lucazeau and Marguerite Imbert (winners of the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire), narrates the odyssey of Ulysses, an astronaut returning to Earth after twenty years who rediscovers his transformed hometown. The story explores future uses and architectures: multifunctional buildings that change their purpose according to needs, green corridors integrating biodiversity into the urban core, urban nomadism responding to evolving lifestyles, offices reinvented for more flexibility and collaboration, renaturing of major tertiary infrastructures, and refuge places in case of crises.

Each chapter is supplemented with interviews from experts (geographers, demographers, scriptwriters), architects' notebooks, and illustrations. The project is based on a reflection led by Icade for over a year and a half, in collaboration with Sonia Lavadinho (urban anthropologist), Maud Caubet (architect) and Madeleine Masse (urban planner and architect).

A Vision to Justify the Urgency of Transforming Today

Icade justifies this approach by the urgency to transform urban spaces to build a more sustainable, resilient, and humane city by 2050. According to Véronique Mercier, Director of CSR, Communication and Public Affairs, the fiction is based on 'very concrete reflections and projects that will be launched in the coming months'. The publication is presented as an invitation to reflection addressed to local elected officials and mayors, as well as those who 'think and make the city', to adapt urban projects to the uses and demographics of 2050.