Ordinary Ecologies of Repair

Ordinary Ecologies of Repair: Beyond the “Future Generation”

Across South Asia, the climate crisis is not a future condition. It structures the present. Young people are already negotiating heat, polluted air, saline intrusion, and recurring floods. Yet policy discourse continues to frame them only as vulnerable dependents or as a symbolic “future generation” who will someday fix the world.

Ordinary Ecologies of Repair begins by rejecting this framing. Young people are already sustaining urban life. Across informal settlements and contested peripheries, youth are keeping infrastructures operational, caring for communities, and inventing provisional solutions. We call these practices ordinary repair: forms of work that often remain invisible, yet prevent everyday breakdown.

Organized by the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) at the University of Minnesota as part of an Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series Award, this seminar series (2025–2026) connects five cities — Karachi, Dhaka, Delhi, Chennai, and Hyderabad. Each city offers a distinct lens on repair, from memory and conflict to justice, vocabulary, and trust.