The city of Atlanta wishes to tap into the creative and visionary potential of its citizens and involve them actively in thinking about (planning for) the future goals and needs of their city and the wider region. They are looking

“to explore possible future scenarios for metro Atlanta and forge an action plan to ensure future livability, prosperity and sustainability.”

In order to facilitate this open process, they have set up Fifty Forward: Metro Atlanta’s Futures Forum. The first forum challenges people to think about sustainability and needs-balancing between current and future generations of people. Other forums may focus on challenges in terms of energy, healthcare, population and employment shifts, technological innovations etc. Check out the blog.

Among others, 4th and 5th graders were invited to design postcards from the future (looking 50 years ahead). Postcards are wonderful future artifacts for foresight & visioning projects in city or regional, spatial contexts etc., especially in terms of stimulating people to think about possible/wishful changes in the physical environment. After all, postcards feature pictures that highlight certain features, areas, icons that a city considers attractive, beautiful, important, etc. (cf. positive inclination). Furthermore, they can be often easily contrasted with ‘images of the current situation’ as to link past, present & future.

Via FringeHog

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 12:04 and is filed under future, scenarios, society, visions, visualization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.