Ravetz, J

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The University of Manchester ResearchUrban futures – what will we need to know?Link to publication record in Manchester Research ExplorerCitation for published version (APA):Ravetz, J. (2013). Urban futures – what will we need to know? Town and Country Planning, 8(10), 443-448.Published in:Town and Country PlanningCiting this paperPlease note that where the full-text provided on Manchester Research Explorer is the Author Accepted Manuscriptor Proof version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use thepublisher's definitive version.General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Research Explorer are retained by theauthors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Takedown policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please refer to the University of Manchester’s TakedownProcedures [http://man.ac.uk/04Y6Bo] or contact uml.scholarlycommunications@manchester.ac.uk providingrelevant details, so we can investigate your claim.Download date:09. Jun. 2022Town & Country Planning October 2013 443Cities, city-regions and urban systems around theworld are changing fast, with new pressures andopportunities all around. But in contrast many kindsof development seem quite fixed: we build housesor roads on a semi-permanent basis. For such fixedassets, spatial planning would seem to need a long-term view, with detailed projections and modelling –but often the reality is a few housing numbers,anything more being too complex. Seen from onefrom angle urban change is smooth and predictable;from another, urban change happens through‘surprises’ and ‘transitions’ – one example being the‘Facebook’-style transformation of social and economiclife in just a decade. Is it possible and/or desirablefor spatial planning to anticipate this kind of change?The role of future studies in urban governance isan issue for European policy, which looks for waysto improve urban governance for cross-cuttingchallenges.1 One approach is scenario planning,which systematically explores uncertainties andalternative futures, and follows the implications backto present-day decisions.2 A wider scientific scopeis seen within ‘Foresight’, promoted by the UKGovernment Office for Science, with a ‘Future ofCities’ programme just starting.3 At CURE (theCentre for Urban and Regional Ecology) we took afurther step with ‘Synergy Foresight’: this uses amapping method for complex interconnectedproblems; engages a wider network of stakeholdersthrough multi-channel media; and looks for creativecollaborations and ‘synergies’ to enable ‘pathwaysthrough the jungle of uncertainty’.4,5An urban-scale Synergy Foresight sees cities/city-regions as interconnected communities, shaped bymultiple forces – social, technological, economic,environmental, political, cultural, etc. – wherechange can ‘emerge’ through major transitions aswell as gradual trends. The role of city-region policyis then more about enabling and guiding suchemergent change, rather than command andcontrol. For example, urban decline and deprivationare seen not as simple ‘cause and effect’, but as acumulative causation of economic, social, andphysical factors – where effective regenerationcannot be imposed by diktat, but comes throughthe creative self-organisation of communities.A similar perspective on the problems ofinterconnected and emergent cities is found inparallel ‘foresight’ and ‘outlook’ type studies at EUand international level.6,7 This suggests that urbanforesight is not only about projection and forecasting,but more about anticipation and envisioning –building on creative synergies, but also facing moreproblematic ‘wild cards’ and dark forces.8The ‘City-Region Game’ The ‘City-Region Game’ was developed as anapplication of Synergy Foresight, in conjunction withthe International Futures Forum’s ‘World Game’.9 A game/role-play format can make it easier forparticipants to think creatively and ‘out of the box’and immerse themselves in ‘the future’ and a spaceof possibilities.The game starts with three simple questionspresented to each player: ‘Which department/industry would you like to run (as CEO or Secretaryof State)?’; ‘Who are three others you most workwith/have a problem with?’; and ‘Which threeuncertainties could most change what you do?’ The responses can very quickly build up a complex‘landscape mapping’ of stakeholders and issues(‘actors and factors’). The game can be run in twourban futures –what will weneed to know?Joe Ravetz outlines a 20-year prospect produced by the ‘City-Region Game’, and considers the ‘knowledge outlook’ for planning – what will we need to know, and how?Special Issue: Urban and Regional Ecology and Resiliencehours, two days or even two months, depending ontime and resources and the level of detail required.It can be run as a one-off snapshot or as part of afull programme – working systematically withcomplex issues, alternative scenarios, risks andopportunities, and strategies and policies.9Fig. 1 shows a typical summary game output,from the CURE workshop series on ‘Knowledgeoutlooks’ – exploring the question ‘What kind ofknowledge will we need for the forthcomingchallenges and opportunities in UK city-regions?’ This summary ‘outlook’ is arranged in fourcorners, each one a stage in the Synergy Foresightmethod. This begins with a ‘landscape mapping’ ofinterconnections between ‘actors’ (stakeholders), or‘factors’ (issues or themes). Secondly, the ‘changemapping’ corner shows critical change drivers anduncertainties in the general form of ‘problems444   Town & Country Planning October 2013versus opportunities’, leading to different scenarios(this kind of mapping of interconnections is veryhelpful compared with using a list or matrix). Third,the ‘synergy mapping’ corner overlays new potentialopportunities on the previous landscape. Lastly, the‘road mapping’ corner sketches the pathways,objectives and actions needed to realise the desiredopportunities. Experience so far shows that this is apractical format for combining complex issueanalysis with creative joined-up thinking. In the example shown in Fig. 1, the ‘landscapemapping’ shows a deeply problematic situation.Deregulation of housing, health, education and otherservices continues; and austerity increases socialstress, with pockets of ‘breakdown and crackdown’.The globalisation and financialisation of the economywidens the North-South gap and disparities withScotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland; and the wholeSpecial Issue: Urban and Regional Ecology and ResilienceAboveFig. 1  A typical ‘City-Region Game’ result – ‘The knowledge outlook for UK city-regions: a synergistic mapping’Town & Country Planning October 2013 445UK looks increasingly vulnerable in the global market.The urban built environment struggles, particularly in cities outside London – as jobs and incomes dryup, large areas crumble from lack of investment and social infrastructure. The housing shortagecontinues, but, without consensus on locations anddevelopment patterns, we may see worse conditionsin declining neighbourhoods, with fewer services athigher prices which more vulnerable residents canhardly afford, and with diminishing safety nets.The future prospects in the ‘change mapping’show climate change as a destructive force, but onethat might also lead to new kinds of ecologicalresilience and social co-operation. Conflict betweenglobal supply chains and local economies seemsinevitable, but likewise could bring new opportunities.Information and communications technology hasimmense power to change economic and socialsystems, but also opens up new possibilities.Demographic trends are not just about ageing, butabout ‘third-ageing’, with people of 70 years of ageor older playing a very active role in society.Following up these opportunities, the ‘synergymapping’ shows new ‘value-added’ connections –not only financial, but social, cultural and ecological.We could link urban regeneration with localeconomy and social enterprise; or housing withurban food, health and renewable energies; or greeninfrastructure with regeneration and climateresilience. Overall, there is huge potential in linkingeducation, research and knowledge with ‘socialgovernance’: this emerges as a counterpart to the‘social economy’, with a wider set of groups andnetworks, enabled by new social media and withnew forms of participation and social innovation. What will we need to know, and how?This question is addressed in the ‘road-mapping’,with a sketch of pathways in the knowledge domainlinking ‘objectives’ to ‘actions’, to enable theopportunities above to be realised.First, there may be ‘big data’ on a scale hard toimagine: artificial learning, wearable ubiquitouscomputing, and an internet of things, digital speechand body language – and perhaps thought itself.Such data would be increasingly valuable, protectedand sensitive – and also the target of surveillance,profiteering, theft or sabotage. The data oceangenerates a whole new industry, turning informationinto ‘intelligence’ – a more human-scale process,partly dependent on physical proximity. We canimagine a near-future data-driven urban planning, withdetailed overlays and analyses of places and spaces,activities and connections, demand and supply, allthe way to experiences and aspirations.10 This couldbe framed as a ‘smart city’ knowledge outlook.Secondly, there is a ‘social knowledge’ agenda,for a fully participative governance system, withevidence and evaluation which is ‘multi-valent’, i.e. bringing together economic, social, cultural,ecological and other values. This is not so muchabout data, but more about the processes ofdeliberation and elicitation, with creative content,role-plays, ‘edutainment’ and social media.Thirdly, there is an ‘integrated knowledge’ agendawhich links the social, economic, ecological andother activity systems. At present we can tracksupply chains, travel patterns, housing markets, andso on; but as yet there is little capacity to see theinterconnections and to respond to system-wideproblems such as exclusion, unemployment orclimate change. This could be the ‘integral city’knowledge outlook.All this points towards a longer-term goal ofenhanced global-local ‘urban intelligence’ – a city-region with built-in capacity for social learning,Special Issue: Urban and Regional Ecology and Resilience‘All this points towards alonger-term goal of enhancedglobal-local ‘urban intelligence’– a city-region with built-incapacity for social learning,thinking, deliberating,collaborating, innovating anddecision-making’AboveFig. 2  ‘Scenario work’© Joe Ravetzthinking, deliberating, collaborating, innovating anddecision-making. The implications for research andknowledge systems are way beyond today’stextbooks on economics or land use: we need tothink in terms of complex systems, multi-culturalnetworks, and creative co-production of sharedresources. This could be a next-generation‘intelligent city’ knowledge outlook.How to put all this together? An urban planner ofthe 2030s can be envisioned as a knowledge-basedsocial/built environment entrepreneur – a creativehub for ideas, visions, needs and resources, fromcitizens and organisations at every level. She/he willfacilitate social learning and community enterprise,online and in real time; assess values and priorities– social/economic/ecological; address systemicqualities such as resilience, social capital andlearning capacity; and enable forward thinking andcreative collaboration. Planning for urban energy/climate resilience, for example, is a highlyinterconnected kind of problem (including social,economic, built environment and governanceissues). As a research strand in response – to befollowed up – we can envision a highlyinterconnected kind of planning which links energysystems, building design, housing finance,community enterprise, social care, urban food andgreen infrastructure. Overall, the current hiatus and confusion in UKplanning might just bring longer-term opportunitiesto rethink the role of planning and its knowledgebase. Synergy Foresight and similar methods offernew tools which might be more suitable for moreinterconnected and anticipatory ways of thinkingabout cities and city-regions. The research andknowledge base, too, is shifting towards a moremulti-valent, interconnected, creative-collaborativeapproach to social learning and urban intelligence.There are no blueprints for how this will all work;but we are indeed lucky to live in such interestingtimes.446   Town & Country Planning October 2013● Joe Ravetz is Co-Director of CURE, at the University of Manchester, and is Guest Editor for this Special Issue. Theviews expressed are personal.Notes1 Cities of Tomorrow: Challenges, Visions, Ways Forward.European Commission, Directorate General forRegional Policy, Jun. 2011.http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/studies/pdf/citiesoftomorrow/citiesoftomorrow_final.pdf2 G. Ringland: Scenarios in Public Policy. Wiley, 20023 See the Foresight website, at www.bis.gov.uk/foresight;and details of the new programme on ‘Future of Cities’at www.bis.gov.uk/foresight/our-work/projects/current-projects/future-of-cities4 J. Ravetz: ‘Urban Synergy-Foresight’. In UrbanGovernance in the EU: Current Challenges and ForwardProspects. EU Committee of the Regions, 2011, pp.31-44. http://urban-intergroup.eu/wp-content/files_mf/corurbangoverancefinal.pdf5 J. Ravetz: ‘Exploring creative cities for sustainabilitywith deliberative visualization’. In L.F. Girard and P. Nijkamp (Eds): Creativity and Sustainable Cities.Heinemann, 20116 State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013: Prosperity ofCities. State of the World’s Cities Series. UN Habitat.Earthscan, 2012. www.unhabitat.org/pmss/ listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=33877 A. Piorr, J. Ravetz and I. Tosics: Peri-urbanisation inEurope: Towards a European Policy to Sustain Urban-Rural Futures. Synthesis Report of the PLUREL project.EC Communications Unit, with University ofCopenhagen, 2011. www.plurel.net/Synthesis_report_Peri-urbani_-sation_in_Europe-115.aspx8 ERA Toolkit: Applications of Wild Cards and WeakSignals to the Grand Challenges and Thematic Prioritiesof the European Research Area. Manchester Institute ofInnovation Research, University of Manchester.European Commission iKnow project, 2011.www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:151944&datastreamId=FULL-TEXT.PDF9 A. Hodgson: Ready for Anything: Designing Resiliencefor a Transforming World. Triarchy Press, 201110 CURE is developing two ICT prototypes, aimed atassisting the planners of the future. The ‘SynergyForum’ simulates a roundtable discussion on complexissues – a working prototype is available athttp://synergy-demo.hedtek.com. The ‘Local Forum’enables ‘spatially explicit’ participation with interactivediscussions at neighbourhood level – an earlydemonstration is available athttp://www.ppgis.manchester.ac.uk/projectsSpecial Issue: Urban and Regional Ecology and Resilience‘Overall, the current hiatus andconfusion in UK planningmight just bring longer-termopportunities to rethink therole of planning and itsknowledge base...There are no blueprints for how this willall work; but we are indeedlucky to live in such interestingtimes’

Urban futures – what will we need to know?

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Urban futures – what will we need to know?

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