Our Future(s)

At the Dynamic Cities Project we’ve been working to fill the niche between peak oil advocacy groups and the mainstream planning/design/development crowd. Central to this effort is a desire to shape an inclusive dialogue that embraces multiple visions of the future – while making transparent the assumptions implicit in those visions.

The Powerpoint presentation on our site (~1.2mb)is a first step at capturing some of the assumptions, values, and thoughts that we’ve garnered from the past year’s worth of work.

Our hope is to flesh out these scenarios to the point where they can support dialogue and decision making at the municipal and regional level. Please assist us with this effort by providing any thoughts or insights here:
www.dynamiccities.squarespace.com/our-futures-discussion/

Thanks,
Bryn Davidson
Dynamic Cities Project
www.dynamiccities.org

The four scenarios are:

• Lean Economy (aka “Powerdown”)
• Collapse (aka “Mad Max”, “Easter Island,” “90s Cuba/Russia”
• Techno-Markets (aka “Sustainable Development”)
• Burnout (aka “Climate Chaos”, “Business as Usual”

One slide reads:

Peak Oil and Climate Change are unprecedented global challenges: defined by uncertainty while requiring decades of dedicated effort to address.

We can be reactive
(leaving our choices to the market).

..or proactive
(making investments today that will pay back in either version of the future)