On the Edge of Future: Narratives of the Making of a City, a three-part series, began with “Constructing Infrastructure” in November. The series’ inaugural dialogue invited international and local speakers to explore urban and infrastructural transformations and contemplate currencies that give infrastructure new life.

As San Antonio is celebrating its 300th birthday the city is sitting “On the Edge of Future.” In the next 25 years, the city is expecting its population to grow by an estimated 1.4 million residents. San Antonio’s already extensive sprawled landscape is not a result of spatial design, but a product of economic and logistic optimization and neglecting the role of spatial form and citizen agency in finding urban solutions. While San Antonians are optimistic about their future and becoming more directly involved with public interest design, questions remain about the future of natural resources, transportation, urban policy, social justice, affordable housing, and civic infrastructure. How do we increase the scope of design in San Antonio and simultaneously leverage new technologies with social, cultural, political, and economic currencies to more directly engage in the processes of spatial production? How do we capture the emergent nature of San Antonio while recognizing the city as a collective cultural artifact?