Abstract: The article is devoted to the consideration of the variants of the meaning of the scientific categories "image of the future" and "image of the city". The subject of the study is the process of forming the conceptual certainty of these stable phrases. Hermeneutical analysis acts as its leading method, aimed at identifying the meanings in which the analyzed phrases are used. Comparative analysis allows us to establish the heuristic potential of the concepts "image of the future" and "image of the city" used in one study. In the article, the author examines the emergence of the analyzed concepts in the second half of the 20th century, their functioning in various scientific contexts. Special attention is paid to their heuristic potential within the framework of social philosophy. The scientific novelty of the study consists in distinguishing four meanings of the concept of "image of the city" – as "image of a real city", in which, based on personal impressions, a generalized representation is formed that captures the uniqueness of a particular urban space, "artistic image of the city" captured in painting, literature, cinema, music, "stereotypical image of the city" as generalized-the normative idea of a well-known, historically significant city, and the "philosophical image of the city" as a speculative model of human settlement, the main parameters of which are socially determined.
The main conclusions of the behavioral research concern the possibility of considering the image of the city as an element of the image of the future, capturing ideas about society, its structure, economy, politics, spiritual practices, social expectations of the time in which it is created. The author of the article suggests considering the study of the image of the city as one of the methods of studying the images of the future.

Abstract: The authors turn their attention to the study of the temporal picture of the world that exists in the consciousness of an individual and the supra-individual consciousness of society. Ideas about the past and the future are part of the present and their study contributes to understanding the processes taking place here and now, the causes and meanings behind current events. The subject of consideration are images of the past and images of the future as a set of representations representing the past and the future in the present. The purpose of the study is to consider the process of the appearance of images of the past and images of the future both at the individual and collective level. The question of what are essentially images of the past and images of the future, what are the principles of their appearance and functioning is still open. The authors of the article offer their own version of the answer to the question about the genesis of these temporal images. It consists in affirming the dominance of collective images of the past over individual ones. At a certain time period, there is one collective image of the past in culture, formed by ideology and social consensus on the basis of the historical narrative of professional historians based on real traces of the past and many individual images interpreting this semantic core. In the process of forming images of the future, priority is given to individual images reflecting a personal assessment of the dominant trends of the present, which will find their embodiment in the future. Individual images of the future, through the coordination of individual representations, are formed into variants of a collective vision of the future. Therefore, at a certain point in time, not one but several collective images of the future function in society.

Abstract: This article reviews the research approaches, the object of which is future as an element of relevant social reality. The author familiarizes the Russian audience with such trends in studying future as “realization of future”, “orientation towards future”, “foresight”, “projectivity”, “futures literacy”, “anticipation”, and “image of future”. An original interpretation is given to the concept “image of future” as a reflective of collective representations of future that imply a complete or almost complete picture, but yet non-existent social reality.  The author examines the existing methodologies for studying the images of future and proposes the original one – comprehensive humanity analysis, which allows finding common denominator of social expectations in various types of sources. Unlike other angles of viewing the representations on future, the image of future enables reconstructing the pictures of future that functioned in the past, ant correlate them with realistic future. Examination of the image of future allows assessing the inclusion of society into time perspective, its attitude towards the present, level of content with reality, as well as particularize the perceptions of the purpose of social development and social values, within which it exists. Studying the images of future functioning in the past can also help to understand the connection between representations on future and future itself; and in case of establishing such connection it can be extrapolated upon the images of the future of our present and our future.