Puerto Rico 2054

The day after Hurricane Maria, the country had no electricity but the university insisted that teachers continue to teach classes. Maria de Mater O’Neill reached out to a fellow educator for support, Lesley-Ann Noel. Together, they developed a methodology centered on resilience. Amid the chaos, the class became about designing climate futures, thinking about what climate relief might look like in 2054, and imagining that a better future was still possible. The students were undergraduates, 19–20 years old at the time. Many of them are now emerging designers.

Puerto Rico was in full disaster mode. The students and the teacher met twice a week for almost six months. Communication was so poor that sometimes in order to call her colleague Leslie, Maria had to walk to the middle of the highway! Everyone was under a lot of stress. But Puerto Ricans have a strong sense of community. The government was absent; there was no organized response. It was the communities that maintained order. While the attitude was one of disorientation, everyone moved forward. Students kept a diary. Everything had to be done on paper because there was no electricity, no digital tools. The projects emerged from direct, lived experiences of disaster.

The course outline was divided into four parts as follows:

• Understanding what happened
• Thinking about Utopia
• Making in times of catharsis
• Reflection and critique

The students were designing while living in a disaster. Some didn’t even have roofs over their heads. Despite that, they showed concern, creativity, and resilience. They gradually shifted from being overwhelmed to being more focused and hopeful. Their visions of the future were not dystopian, they were practical and optimistic. It says a lot about young people’s aspirations and how they want to face climate change. Policymakers, scientists, and activists should pay attention to these grounded, hopeful visions.

The process gave students emotional grounding. By the end of the semester, they felt more in control. The class became a form of therapy, a way to stop focusing solely on the disaster and instead imagine the future. They worked with cardboard mock-ups because computers weren’t an option. They embraced the power of imagination. This project was blessed by the sense of community it created.

“The anticipated result at the end of the semester was a selection of usable prototypes that addressed problems in their community. In the project, the concept of community was defined as the people with whom the students commune with such as their friends, family, and people who live on their street, among others. The final prototypes did not have to be fully functional, and could in fact be conceptual proposals, so long as they responded to the needs of users.”

The following themes were identified in the responses to the questions:

1. Inside and outside of the catastrophe – where some people seemed to live in a bubble because very little had happened to them when compared to people whose lives had been devastated within the same community. Gabriel, who identified this theme was working with his own community
2. Apagado (turned off) - where some people had a lack of energy and emotional engagement to confront coping with the disaster. Luisa, who identified this theme, was working with a community in a nearby town, Humacao, and also with a close friend who had lost everything. She also used the resilience toolkit as she said it helped her to focus. 
3. Survival mode – Where people accepted any job as a response to the massive rise in unemployment. Luis, who explored this theme, was working with people who lived on his street.
4. Mobility – People lacked access to places since roads were blocked, and bridges had collapsed. Post-María it took a very long time to travel from one place to another. Tonio was working with a relative who has a farm. He was also using the resilience toolkit to support his research. 
5. Emotional regulator - where people had to learn how to be stoic and level headed. Ana worked with her family as her community. A family member who had maintained calmness and strength despite the stresses of the situation had inspired her. She also used the resilience toolkit as part of her process.
6. One day at a time - The act of planning under these circumstances had become impossible. Josefina, who was researching this theme, was focusing on her own family.
7. Reusing resources - Trees were denuded and uprooted in the storm, and they are being discarded and not used. Greta proposed this theme.
8. Garbage – Although the garbage continued to be generated, garbage collection and recycling services had stopped. The professor, O’Neill, who also took part in the brainstorming and prototyping activities, proposed this theme.

(To read more about the themes identified, read the research article)

After the identification of problems and themes, students were asked to create sketches about their selected theme. Emphasis was placed on imagination and not trying to solve any problem. This gave them a chance to reflect on their feelings.

Though they could have chosen utopia or dystopia, students chose to envision a utopian Puerto Rico, and all but one future scenario described a Puerto Rico with a better future and better prepared for natural disasters. Without naming climate change implicitly, Climate change and disasters ruled the students daily lives during this exercise.

When Maria teaches foresight and speculative writing, she steers students away from dystopias. She thinks it’s important to focus on plausible, positive futures—realistic enough to strive toward, but hopeful enough to motivate action. Her dream is that students become conscious of what they can do now to shape those futures.

Since the end of the project, she has also been encouraging students to work with soundscapes and storytelling, to develop richer, more immersive future scenarios.