Strelka Institute’s The Terraforming program is an interdisciplinary design research think-tank convened to preemptively address issues of planetary urbanism. The name refers to the need to fundamentally transform Earth’s cities, technologies, and ecosystems to ensure that the planet will be capable of supporting Earth-like life. Artificiality, astronomy, and automation form the basis of that alternative planetarity. With the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, what began as speculative has become real-time.

The Revenge of the Real is an open call for papers, projects, and research related to these urgent topics and how they are now and will continue to affect urban life, systems, and futures. This joint initiative with Strelka Mag will feature ideas and projects that are surprising, pragmatic, unconventional, and honest—even if productively controversial. We presume that the work that most directly confronts the implications today is full of risk.