Once a specialist genre, the speculative city has gone thoroughly mainstream. Some have doubled down on urban boosterism, while others have warned against indulging in “urbanist fantasies” during and after a period of widespread suffering. Familiar ideas about what design can “solve” have been deeply complicated by a growing recognition of huge, systemic inequities that predate (and presage) our current crises. Beyond being a vehicle for either optimistic or skeptical predictions, to Galen Pardee and Lindsey Wikstrom, the future is a prism for thinking through a more immediate question: How can architecture be useful to people and communities?