Futures最新文献

Amidst multiple crises and calls for transformative change, the demand to reassess human-nature relationships has increased. Rethinking the future of cities is vital in this process, yet positive urban visions prioritizing nature beyond human-centred perspectives are lacking. To address this gap, we propose a “nature-based desired futures” approach for envisaging and building collective discussion around transformative change. We explore four concepts underpinning (i) why such alternative urban futures are needed (human-nature disconnect and changing urban imaginaries) and (ii) how they might be approached (transformative change and leverage, and the ‘education of desire’). This provides the basis for a participatory approach that adapts the Three Horizon method to explore desired urban futures for nature in 2050. Six workshops involving 111 participants linked to ‘Conexus’, a project on nature-based solutions in European and Latin American cities, explored emerging desired futures, evolving ideas of nature, human-nature relationships, and agency. The approach offers space for reflection creative exploration, and weaving together of new, hopeful, caring, emancipatory stories. Its effectiveness hinges on the mutually reinforcing power of deep leverage, and of structural, systemic, and enabling approaches, to give purpose and direction to the exploration of desired futures.

Urbanization, characterized by a high concentration of population in cities, presents significant societal challenges. High population density, inadequate living conditions, and mental health problems underscore the need for innovative concepts to mitigate or reverse urbanization’s effects. This paper proposes Dynamic Living Space (DLS), a transformative concept aimed at decentralizing urban populations by extending city-like benefits to non-urban settlements. In the DLS, urban benefits are extended to sparsely populated or potentially uninhabitable regions, such as forests, mountains, and undersea areas. We created a normative scenario for the DLS by utilizing a multifaceted methodological approach, including expert interviews, group discussion, illustrated visualizing, and an international workshop. This research also outlines a roadmap for realizing the DLS by 2050 and discusses ethical, legal, and social issues and their solutions. By decentralizing urban benefits, the DLS concept could reduce the drawbacks of urban concentration, reduce infrastructure maintenance costs, and diversify areas of innovation.

This paper proposes an approach to capture mutual learning within transdisciplinary research to develop future-oriented sustainability solutions to land use conflicts. While quality criteria for transdisciplinary research projects are increasingly discussed, there is still ample methodological potential to enable and better understand mutual learning as a key component of transdisciplinarity. Changes in the specific developments of perceptions of the participants are difficult to be tamed and tracked. To address this shortcoming we propose to apply the Delphi method for longitudinal tracking of mutual learning within transdisciplinary research. We present the application of the methodological approach as part of a transdisciplinary project on sustainable land use in the district of Lüneburg (Lower-Saxony, Germany). Evaluation of semi-structured interviews with seven participants translated into a three-round Delphi survey. A concluding round of semi-structured interviews was performed to validate and deepen the findings. The results showcase that the Delphi method can facilitate the operationalization of the convergence of understandings as a relevant outcome of mutual learning within transdisciplinary projects.

Food security has received much attention since sudden shocks like Covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Resilience to sudden changes and disruptions is called for to maintain food availability in societies. In this study, potential disruptions and changes in the Finnish food system’s operating environment were evaluated. We focused on two future challenges: 1) what key disruptions will confront the food system until 2030; and 2) how will the Finnish food system change based on the experts’ views, and what measures will develop resilience up to 2030? We used the Delphi technique for data gathering. According to the results, the most significant shock at all three levels, national, EU, and global, was the disruptions caused by climate change (the increase in extreme climate and weather phenomena). An increase in the efficient recycling of nutrients was seen as most desirable, and an increase in the costs associated with recovery from disturbances and shocks was seen as most likely. Reducing inputs’ dependence on imports was seen as a key measure for developing resilience. Two constructed scenarios were presented, which highlight the determinants and uncertainties in the development of resilience in Finland.

This article proposes a forward-looking approach to studying societal collapse risks related to climate change. Such an approach should indicate how to study emerging collapse risks and suggest strategies for adapting to them. Our approach is based on three postulates that facilitate a forward-looking approach: (1) collapse, if it occurred, would be a lengthy process rather than an abrupt event; (2) significant collapse risks already exist in some places; and (3) diminishing returns on adaptation to intensifying climate impacts are a key driver of collapse risks. The first two postulates suggests that collapse risks can be studied in process, while the third points to strategies for adaptation pathways that avoid unsustainable diminishing returns. Applying diminishing returns to climate change adaptation, rather than sociopolitical complexity or resource extraction, is also a novel theoretical contribution to collapse literature.

The article investigates the relationship between planning and future by presenting and discussing the application of the scenario-making approach to an inner periphery in the Italian Northern Appennine, the semi-abandoned village of Ebbio, in the province of Piacenza. Inner peripheries are commonly described as the territories that have “no future”, namely those where the idea of the future is most problematic due to socio-economic decline, marginalization, and demographic shrinkage. In particular, we present two explorative scenarios and discuss them comparatively, looking at their space and time declinations, and their capacity to shape different patterns of human-nature relationships. The two scenarios imagine the case study transformed, respectively, into an “agroecological village” in which food is interpreted as a key component in the creation of a new local economy based on agroecological practices, and into a “wild village” with the invasion of nature in the village according to a “more-than-human” perspective. Results highlight the relevance that the scenarios’ reflexive and dialogic construction can have for exploring possibilities about the future that were not previously considered by local institutions and civil society. Moreover, the scenario-making approach proved a relevant means to guide local communities to change their relationship with and perception toward nature, passing from a traditional view of “dominance” over natural resources and habitats, toward more balanced patterns of coexistence shaped by reciprocal socio-ecological relations.

Against the background of continuous calls to democratize futures research and practice, this paper reports the results of a systematic literature review of the involvement of publics in participatory futuring processes. The paper considers three key research questions: Who participates in public futuring processes? Why are publics included in these processes? And what roles do they occupy? By considering practices of participation in futuring, we aim to build a comprehensive picture of the participatory futuring landscape and highlight elements of process design that may enhance or diminish a process's democratic potential. We conclude by suggesting directions for possible future research that could serve the field's continuing desire to democratize and further integrate participatory and critical approaches to futuring.

We propose modifications for scoping (and by extension systematic) review methodologies to improve their contribution to horizon scanning exercises. As a means of systematically collecting, coding and synthesising literature, we argue that scoping reviews are ideal for conducting initial environmental scans of a topic of interest, trend analyses and scenario developments. To demonstrate this utility, this paper uses a futures-oriented scoping review of technology-enhanced money laundering and terrorist financing risks as an example. At the forefront of the proposed modifications is a quality assessment framework assessing reviewed publications for their neutrality, evidence, relevance and clarity (NERC). This proposed framework is not only ideal for appraising publications but also as an indication of likelihood, namely whether their discussed insights constitute possible, plausible or probable alternative futures. The validity of the NERC framework in achieving these aims is assessed successfully through statistical correlation tests. The overall aim of this paper is to motivate the proposed modifications, the NERC framework and (modified) scoping reviews more generally as a formidable tool for informing horizon scanning, decision-making and pre-emptive policy development.

The aim of this article is to examine the epistemological conditions of a sociology of the future. This article offers three conditions for a grounded sociology of the future: 1) It must be more than a study of utopia and dystopia, 2) It must be able to think of the future as something rather than nothing, 3) It requires an accessible understanding of time as it pertains to emotion, imagination and reason. There are already examples of successful future oriented sociology that satisfy these conditions, but the markers of a sociology of the future are often implicit rather than explicit. Together, these conditions are necessary to transcend the limitations of speculative futurism, while offering an alternative pathway to stagnation or reactionary thinking. Where Mark Fisher has described the slow cancellation of the future (2014), and Barbara Adam and Chris Groves have described a commodification and colonisation of the future (2007: 13), this article will investigate the topic of alienation as a means to ground the future in the everyday. This article is admittedly speculative and aims to bring generalist sociological readers into a futures discourse that can be applied in a vast range of research contexts.

Visual Literacy enriches the field of anticipatory assumptions and Futures Literacy by taking into account basic biological premises of our brains and minds related to images. It explores why our individual and public spheres act as sources of authority conditioning assumed realities and ‘staging’ a limited world in our consciousness. The study unravels where our perceptions originate from, their ramifications with our cultural frameworks, memory mechanisms and ensuing identities, and their direct effect on how we assume and anticipate. Visual Literacy workshops broaden the alternative storytelling Futures Literacy Labs apply. They provide the tools for user-friendly iconological analysis that make explicit and ‘visible’ the role of culturally mediated visuals in the construction of thought patterns. The experiential process of the workshops make tangible the ‘subtexts’ behind the visuals, and answers, as well, why and how they shape perceptions and regulate deriving assumptions and anticipations.