Speaker
Description
Current megatrends such as urbanization, climate and biodiversity crises, and environmental pollution demand humanity to transform its accustomed ways of operating. Responding to these phenomena requires a sustainability transition and transformative change, through which we move to comprehensively sustainable mode of operation in all areas of society. The extent and depth of these changes increase uncertainty and discontinuity on future development across all sectors of society, including planning. However, planning has historically emphasized deterministic evidence-based comprehensive planning aimed at defining a single desired future. Furthermore, the future awareness and orientation of actors involved in the development of the built environment is often lacking, and long-term or indirect impacts are not sufficiently considered in decision-making. As a result of weak future awareness, the ability to respond to uncertainty, changing conditions, and various potential development trajectories is insufficient.
If planning is to address the challenges and increasing uncertainty of our time, there needs to be a shift to a more innovative and transformative approach that creates new paths and is prepared for several uncertain futures. The tools for creating transformative new paths include, for example, explorative scenario planning and strategies for creating resilient and adaptive plans. However, the use of futures methods as part of planning is still a relatively new topic, and the related case studies and theoretical literature are limited. Furthermore, futures work is usually utilized by conducting individual foresight processes among professional stakeholders to provide supplementary knowledge to the planning process. The risk of this approach is that the impact of futures work remains low and no institutional learning occurs.
To answer these challenges and to generate transformative action, it is necessary to develop futures work as a continuous, organizationally integrated activity. This requires a futures orientated planning culture, integrating the use of futures tools and knowledge across organization, and cross-sectoral knowledge sharing. Futures work integration has been studied in futures studies, strategic management, and innovation research. However, the research field is still fragmented, as the focus of research has mainly been on individual foresight processes. Furthermore, research on planning-related applications appears to be altogether absent. The aim of this research is to investigate how futures work and knowledge is currently utilized in planning and to illustrate how they could be integrated as a continuous activity into planning practices and processes. To achieve the aim, two cases are examined that consider the scales of the city, region, and state: 1) the development process of the Tripla commercial center and transport hub located in Pasila, Helsinki and 2) the development process of the system for monitoring and anticipating urban and regional development in Finland.
The research is qualitative and utilizes varied material such as policy documents, scenario and workshop materials, survey results, and interviews. The analysis of the data is conducted as qualitative content analysis. The research primarily falls under the strategic planning field and the associated scenario planning discourse. Through the futures perspective, the research also has strong connections to futures studies. The contribution of the study is three-fold. First, the study offers knowledge on how futures work and knowledge are being utilized, thus contributing to the discourse on the use of futures methods in planning. Second, the study illustrates how futures work can be integrated into planning practice and processes and what factors inhibit integration, a topic that has not been addressed. Thus, the study generates novel understanding on how futures capabilities of planning practice can be systematically developed. Third, the study bridges futures studies and strategic spatial planning research in a novel way, contributing to the emerging body of literature on integrated futures work from planning perspective.
References
Dufva, M., Ahlqvist, T., 2015. Elements in the construction of future-orientation: A systems view of foresight. Futures 73, 112–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.08.006
Goodspeed, R., 2020. Scenario planning for cities and regions: managing and envisioning uncertain futures. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge.
Mäntysalo, R., Granqvist, K., Duman, O., Mladenović, M.N., 2023. From forecasts to scenarios in strategic city-regional land-use and transportation planning. Regional Studies 57, 629–641. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2022.2058699
Pouru-Mikkola, L., Minkkinen, M., Malho, M., Neuvonen, A., 2023. Exploring knowledge creation, capabilities, and relations in a distributed policy foresight system: Case Finland. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 186, 122190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.122190
Rohrbeck, R., 2011. Corporate Foresight, Contributions to Management Science. Physica-Verlag HD, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2626-5
Tiberius, V., 2011. Path Dependence, Path Breaking, and Path Creation: A Theoretical Scaffolding for Futures Studies? Journal of Futures Studies 15, 8.
Wolfram, M., Borgström, S., Farrelly, M., 2019. Urban transformative capacity: From concept to practice. Ambio 48, 437–448. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-019-01169-y
| Keywords | transformative planning; foresight systems; scenarios; futures studies; qualitative research |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
