Exploring how metaphors of change prefigure futures in public policy, social movements, and community projects.

Book chapter, 2026

This chapter explores how metaphors of change prefigure futures in the enactment of transformations. Through comparative analysis of three cases—the EU Cities Mission, the Degrowth Movement, and the Transition Towns initiative—the chapter reveals how metaphors shape cognitive frames, mobilise actors, and guide action. Metaphors like “moonshot missions,” “growth addiction,” and “community in harmony” evoke different worldviews, strategies for change and so resulting futures. While the EU Cities Mission metaphor emphasise large-scale projectification of bureaucracies through goal-oriented planning, degrowth challenges dominant paradigms through provocative language, and critical reframing of economic and social norms. Transition Towns foster local agency and resilience by framing sustainability as a journey of community regeneration. These metaphors do not merely describe change—they prefigure it, making actors value, see, think, live, and act the(ir) envisioned futures in the here-and-now. Drawing on conceptual metaphor theory and backcasting through a lens of prefiguration, the chapter illuminates how metaphor have power to rapidly shift world-views and support in dissolving temporal boundaries to purposefully facilitate systemic transformations. The way futures are framed is not only a linguistic or artistic act but underpin the very types of transformation pathways enacted and associated values. By being explicit and intentional with metaphor use and aware of limitations, transformative agency can be enhanced and increasing coherence might be reached between present actions and long-term ambitions in sustainability transformation work.