Myers, Kitsuse 2000 Constracting the Future in Planning (0)

22 Myers, Kitsuse 2000 Constracting the Future in Planning
Planning’s broad relevance and its interdisciplinary inclusiveness have served as both a strength and
a vulnerability.
One emphasis that has been identified as central to the intellectual and professional
identity or mission of planning is “foresight” (Markusen 1998), “a focus on the future and
pathways of change over time” (Strategic Marketing Committee of ACSP 1997), or “persuasive
storytelling about the future”
A Surprising Neglect (hüljatud). “....planning has lost sight of the future....Planning voluntarily is
sacrificing its role as visionary and idealist and is abandoning its responsibility to be a source of
inspiration and ideas about what might be and what ought to be”.
In planning practice, the recent surge of interest in visioning exercises has raised awareness of
planners’ role in shaping the future, in some cases 3 bringing the future to the forefront of high-
profile community participation campaigns.
incorporated into long-range plans. Also absent from planners’ approach to the future is a systemic
understanding of how multiple trends will extend forward and interact with one another, shaping
new possibilities and patterns of behavior in the process. This unidimensional approach is most
evident in planners’ treatment of population growth, which tends to be conceived as simply today’s
population grown bigger.
At the same time, the planning profession’s effort to become more relevant within the local political
scene has strengthened planners’ emphasis on shortrange planning driven by two-year budget cycles
and the short-term horizons of the electoral process.
This deficiency is unfortunate because academics have the potential to offer practitioners the solid
theoretical background that might inform richer, better developed statements about the future. The
relative absence of academic attention to the future may stem from several causes.
Neglect of the future may also arise as a byproduct of a newly strengthened focus on spatial analysis.
Space and time are two essential dimensions for describing the world, but it is difficult to focus on
both at once.
As opposed to the needed focus on time, recent developments in urban theory have emphasized
spatiality, contributing significant new discoveries about the importance of spatial context for
regional development.
Simultaneously, the rise of a new technical mode of data analysis and display, geographic
information systems (GIS), has intensified emphasis on spatial patterns at fixed points in time.
Toward Planning Intelligent Futures
The recent calls for planning to strengthen its special claim to a future orientation point up the fact
that neither practitioners nor academics are adequately equipped to effectively address the future.
Practitioners continue to invoke the future, but they do so without a theoretical frame of reference
to lead them toward more robust and wellintegrated views of desired futures. Meanwhile,
academics appear to have lost sight of the future entirely.
academics have surrendered the future to practitioners with little comment or guidance. Yet if
practitioners are to construct more intelligent futures, academics must embrace their role in
providing the necessary intellectual reinforcement.
22 Myers, Kitsuse 2000 Constracting the Future in Planning
If planners did want to strengthen their orientation to the future, what would a contemporary
paradigm look like? In the next section we address Isserman’s (1984) distinctions between
projections, forecasts and plans, and accompany this with a discussion of Wach’s observations on the
ethical dilemmas of quantitative judgment (1982). We then discuss the continuities linking past,
present and future, drawing in particular on key insights introduced by Perloff (1980).
Three principal techniques stand out: visioning, scenarios and storytelling.
What is needed today is a new synthesis of skills that includes all of the lessons of the modern era—
political relevance, public inclusiveness, quantitative technique, narrative, openness of
communication, and more—while recovering lost emphases from the past. The present essay is a
first step in identifying useful elements of a new paradigm for addressing the future in planning.
CORE ANALYTICAL CONCEPTS-Projection, Forecast and Plan. A projection is not a prediction but
merely the result of entering hypothetical assumptions into a mechanistic quantitative procedure. A
forecast represents a best guess about the future, achieved by adding judgment about the most
likely future rates of behavior and other assumptions. Part of the judgment required for a forecast
includes decision making about the quality of input data and what type of analytical model
provides the most realistic results. Finally, a plan requires evaluation of the forecasted future for
its level of desirability and potential alterability. Plans can be constructed to avoid undesirable
futures, to make desired forecasts come true, or to create new, more desirable futures.
Unfortunately, Isserman concludes that planners have adopted quantitative techniques of projection
as if they described the most probable future (truth) and as if that were desired (ideal).
Plans are of course the workhorse of the planning profession. Plans should be both visionary and
practical.
Ignoring the distinctions between projections and forecasts, or between forecasts and plans,
planners often take the results of a simple mechanical projection as if that were an accurate
prediction of the most probable future (a forecast).
How freely should planners seek to shape the future? An effective planner might introduce judgment
into an analysis that causes the forecast to support a desired future. Forecasting can involve a
complex series of calculations that embed a host of core assumptions, many of which are not publicly
divulged.
The planning researcher often faces uncertainty in his or her own mind regarding specific
assumptions. When supervisors or clients apply pressure to reconsider particular assumptions that
are critical to the forecast result, the researcher often does not possess sufficient certitude to resist.
Continuities of Past, Present and Future-future is not a disconnected end-state that exists only in the
future; instead, the future should be viewed as a continuous unfolding in time that is rooted in both
the past and present
Temporal Horizons and Spatial Scale Just as forecasts may be geared toward short-, medium-, or
long-range futures, so they may correspond to a variety of geographic levels along a spatial scale.
Forecasts may cover the globe, entire nations or regions, or may be more narrowly focused on
specific cities, neighborhoods or individual parcels.
Obviously one forecast can't fit all purposes. Rather, planners should view forecasting as a multi-
tiered enterprise in which shorter forecasts might be nested within longer-range ones.
22 Myers, Kitsuse 2000 Constracting the Future in Planning
Multiple Temporal Processes- The future is often thought of as comprising the end of a single
historical time line. Yet there are multiple temporal processes at work, some made up of the
sequence of historical conditions, and others of life cycles and other temporal relations that are
operating on different time lines.
Parallel Historical Trends- Many different trends occupy the same historical time line. Examples
include population, housing, and employment growth trends, changing technology, financial
markets, and the rise and fall of political regimes. Of course, these parallel trends are not
independent and are clearly linked. But forecasts often address only a limited set of the possible
historical trends, focusing on one part of the future to the exclusion of other factors.
Nested Cycles and Embedded Life-Cycle Dynamics- Distinct from the notion of parallel historical
trends are the concepts of nested cycles and embedded life-cycles. These are among the most
difficult concepts related to forecasting because they are key components lurking beneath the
surface of the historical time line.
The Future is Not the End of Only a Single Historical Timeline
The planning process has become hampered by political impasses at the same time that it has grown
more deeply entrenched in data collection procedures. This has led planners to question the limits of
analytical approaches to planning the future, and to experiment with new, more comprehensive
approaches.
Scenario Writing- Scenario writing is a practice that developed among business planners and
strategists but applies equally well to the urban planning environment.
Science Fiction- Over the past century, science fiction has proven a rich source of creative scenarios
about the future.
Construction of Persuasive Stories As opposed to scenarios, persuasive stories are not meant merely
to prepare their audience for the future, but to convince people to adopt the storyteller’s preferred
course of action.
Conclusion- Current practice in planning addresses the future in ways that are superficial,
shortsighted, or hollow. Academics have contributed very little to this cause, leaving planning
practitioners to their own devices. If they so desired, planning academics could surely help to build a
more intellectually sophisticated and defensible approach to shaping the future.
Taken together, however, these elements form a planning toolkit useful for construction of
normative futures that are firmly grounded in time as well as space.
What is needed today is a new synthesis of skills that includes all of the lessons of the modern
era—political relevance, public inclusiveness, quantitative technique, narrative, openness of
communication, and more—while recovering lost emphases from the past. What is needed is a
new commitment from planners to the creation of intelligent futures that are grounded within our
capacities for change.