Foresight in cities: on the possibility of a “strategic urban intelligence”

Abstract

Background Climate change, urban poverty, financial instability and many other 'grand challenges' of the 21 st century, are not easily tackled with current systems of strategy and decision-making, in either public or private sectors (DG REGIO, 2011). This also applies to problems for cities in the UK, such as the North-South divide, the housing crisis, low productivity and social fragmentation. But at present much urban policy and governance appears to be short-termist, disconnected, and lacking capacity to 'join the dots'. This calls for more radical and creative thinking at all levels. One approach is with strategic and futures thinking, and particularly the methods and tools known as foresight. Looking into the future, building the best evidence and acting on the implications, should in principle be a key role of urban policy and governance. But in reality it seems there are so many barriers and gaps, pressures and crunches, that public policy often doesn't get near to the future: and when it does, such knowledge is often problematic. City devolution context Following the UK General Election 2015, the Chancellor invited "England's big cities to join Manchester in bidding for devolved powers, as long as they agree to be governed by a directly elected mayor" (Tomaney and McCarthy 2015). This so-called 'Devo-Manc' model could be potentially a major change in the fortunes of major cities: or it could be set up to fail, as in Moran & Williams (2015): ".... 'devo Manc' is not doing enough if it only offers bits of money and devolved authority to an elected mayor, whose role will be to manage more cuts and preside over unsolved structural problems. Centralisation has certainly disappointed, but this kind of 'devo Manc' decentralisation is bound to fail." Whether or not successful, the 'Devo' agenda is topical and urgent, and at the moment seems to crowd out discussion of longer term issues. But behind the rhetoric and excitement about new political structures, there are deep concerns: lack of political trust: low productivity: divided and insecure society: crumbling infrastructure: regional disparities, and so on. Cities in the UK may shortly have more aspiration with less resources to fulfil them. It follows, that building their native Page 2 of 38 Foresight capacity for learning, collaboration, strategic thinking and shared intelligence, may be the only option for real progress. Meanwhile in Europe, many cities and city-regions seem to enjoy longer range strategic planning for 20-40 year horizons (CoR, 2011). A major European Commission initiative on 'Cities for Tomorrow' linked a diverse urban agenda with reform of the Cohesion Funds (DG REGIO, 2011). But from UK city foresight projects, there is a common view, that what knowledge there is not well connected: that simplistic policies ignore complex problems, and that strategic planning is locked in departmental silos. For instance the UK National Infrastructure Plan contains few links to the urban or spatial dimensions of housing, economic, environmental or other ...

Using urban foresight techniques in city visioning: Lessons from the Reading 2050 vision

“…Finally, we reflect on the wider dissemination and implementation of the vision. In doing this, a comparison is made with the previous literature covered in 'Background and context' section, and also, where possible, drawing comparison with other GoS Future of Cities Foresight city visions (Cowie et al, 2016;Ravetz and Miles, 2016).…”

“…For example, such initiatives can sometimes overlook functional and spatial complexity in cities (Ferna´ndez Gu¨ell and Lopez, 2016); The quality of the studies may also be influenced by the shape and form of vision leadership (i.e. corporate, local government or academic-led), and this not only raises the issue of whose vision really is being developed for a city, but also the sense that successful visions need to be pluralistic in nature (McPhearson et al, 2016;Ravetz and Miles, 2016). Finally, there are practical issues: for example, in quantitative foresight studies there may be a lack of high quality data (Hartman, 2011), with doubts expressed about whether visioning generally really does make a difference in complementing shorter term urban spatial planning (Shipley and Michela, 2006).…”

“…Others have argued that urban planning today still continues to be unwilling to engage directly with the longer term (Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), 2014). This is an argument made not only in the UK (Ravetz and Miles, 2016;Swain, 2016) but also in other parts of the world (Freestone, 2012). Indeed, this perceived 'deficit' is also seen in the continued lack of formal 'futures studies' or 'foresight' techniques in urban planning, and the reasons for this have been summarised by authors such as Ferna´ndez Gu¨ell and Redondo (2012) and Freestone (2012).…”

“…Similarly, planning, as government and local government practice, is not only linked to electorally-sensitive decision making and relatively short-term election cycles of 3-5 years, but must also reconcile a range of existing complex uncertainties about the future which are multiplied in the longer term. These uncertainties are also compounded by austerity, which has also affected many local authorities in the UK (Cowie et al, 2016;Ravetz and Miles, 2016).…”

“…For example, in Newcastle the vision process was initiated by the University and drew on the private sector, public sector and civic society (Newcastle City Futures 2065; Goddard and Tewdwr-Jones, 2016; Tewdwr-Jones et al, 2015). There has been some broader reflection on the lessons of the Future of Cities Foresight programme (Cowie et al, 2016;Ravetz and Miles, 2016): for example, Cowie et al (2016) noted the wider importance of capacity and leadership in city visions, whilst Ravetz and Miles (2016) highlighted the importance of relative power and influence of stakeholder groups in relation to development of the visions. However, to date, with the exception of Newcastle (Goddard and Tewdwr-Jones, 2016; Urban Foresight, 2018) there has been little or no in-depth analysis and critical reflection on individual case studies that were part of this programme and the ensuing implications for other cities.…”