Rebecca Journey

REBECCA JOURNEY, then a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, was awarded a grant in April 2017 to aid the second phase of research on ‘Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow: Copenhagen, Eco-Metropolis,’ supervised by Dr. Joseph Masco. Through an ethnographic study of green infrastructure design and experience in the Danish Capital Region, the grantee investigated Copenhagen Municipality’s urban master plan to build the world’s first carbon-neutral capital, and by extension, to shape a citizenry equipped to realize its promise. This phase of research entailed participant observation and interviews with residents of Copenhagen and several civic groups, as well as multimedia documentation of municipal infrastructures. With a particular focus on the sensory and affective dimensions of urban life, the grantee sought to understand how large-scale changes to the urban built environment alter the experiential landscapes of inhabitants. The data generated through this research will serve as the empirical basis for a broader argument within the grantee’s dissertation that considers what it means to frame climate change as a problem of urban design in a Scandinavian welfare city, and then locates this question within contemporary discourses of wellness and livability.