By Sohail Inayatullah and Ivana Milojević
Metafuture.org, 2022
The End of the Cow And Other Emerging Issues explores five disruptions that have the potential to dramatically impact wellbeing, food systems, climate change, gender equity, the family, and how we learn. It consists of six chapters:
Given congestion, inter-ethnic violence, persistent pollution, and lack of clean water, is there a possibility that Karachi can be different by 2030? 15 experts in the areas of biosciences, media communication, child education and investing met for two days to explore the
alternative futures of Karachi. The workshop was facilitated by the UNESCO chair for futures studies, Professor Sohail Inayatullah with assistance from Puruesh Chaudhary, director of Agahi and founder of the Pakistan State of the Future Index. Full text in Pdf
What does Geelong’s future look like?
The City of Greater Geelong will shortly start community consultations on what you think Geelong’s future could look like. This session is the perfect kick starter for you to become a future creator!
Professor Sohail Inayatullah will speak at the event and focus on:
| When: |
|
||
| Next on: |
(View other upcoming dates and times)
|
||
| Where: | The Playhouse, GPAC 50 Little Malop St Geelong |
||
| Costs: |
|
||
| Facilities: | |||
http://www.geelongaustralia.com.au/calendar/calendar/item/8d3c121ce4aa0ef.aspx
| Contact: | Bonnie Lanham |
| Phone: | 5272 4800 |
| Email: | blanham@geelongcity.vic.gov.au |
By Sohail Inayatullah
January 06, 2012
While there is a great deal of bad, indeed, horrendous, news in the world - global warming, terrorism, the global financial crisis, water shortages, worsening inequity – there are also signs of positive change.
GENOMICS
First, in genomics, the revolution of tailoring health advice has begun. Among other websites, www.23andme.com provides detailed personal genetic information to consumers. It provides, “the latest research on how your genes may affect risk for common diseases and conditions such as heart attack, arthritis and cancers.” Once your genome is analyzed, you will also be able to “see your personal history through a new lens with detailed information about your ancient ancestors and comparisons to global populations today.” This development in genomics is good news in that more
information about your personal health future is available. Of course, these are just probabilities and should be used wisely, helping each person make better health choices today. Avoiding creating selffulfilling prophecies of potential future illnesses would be a priority in teaching individuals to understand their genome map. Bringing wisdom to more information is crucial especially given forecasts that within 10 years every baby will be given a complete genome map at birth.
MEDITATION
Second, there is positive news in meditation research. Study after study confirms that meditation is not only of individual benefit but as national health expenditures keep on increasing (because of increased demand from an aging population) along with exercise, lowfat vegetarian food and a close community, meditation as part of a national health strategy can reduce public health costs. For example, we know that studies show that regular meditators exhibit: 87% less heart disease, 55.4% less tumors, 50.2% less hospitalization, 30.6% less mental disorders and 30.4% less infectious diseases (Matthew Bambling, Mind, Body and Heart, Psychotherapy in Australia, February 2006, 5259). There are even reports on the benefits of meditation for military care providers, not a sector known for spiritual development. Meditation even changes the nature of the brain. Researchers at Harvard, Yale and MIT have found that brain scans reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that dealt with attention and processing sensory input. The structure of the adult brain can thus change, suggests the research. Indeed, research as well suggests that through meditation we can train ourselves to be more compassionate toward others. It appears that cultivating compassion and kindness through meditation affects brain regions that can make a person more empathetic to other peoples’ mental states, say researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
While we have had anecdotal evidence of the importance of meditation, developments in MRI scanning have taken the research to new levels providing us with visual and repeatable (scientific) evidence.
SPIRITUALITY
Third, we are witnessing a rise in the significance of spirituality as a worldview and as a practice. Spirituality is defined broadly as a practice that brings inner peace and love for self and the transcendent as well as being inclusive of others, that is, it does not claim to be exclusive or in a hierarchy of who is above and who is below. In their book, The Cultural Creatives, Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson go so far as to say that up to 25% of those in OECD nations now subscribe to a new worldview with spirituality as a central feature. Overtime this worldview will likely have increasingly tangible impacts on economic, transport and governance systems.
In their book, A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America, Ian Mitroff and Elizabeth Denton found “spirituality as one of the most important determinants of performance.” Of the 200 companies surveyed, sixty percent believed that spirituality was a benefit provided no particular view of religion was pushed. Georgeanne Lamont’s research in the UK at ‘soulfriendly’ companies including Happy Computers, Bayer UK, Natwest, Microsoft UK, Scott Bader, Peach Personnel found lower than average absenteeism, sickness and staff turnover which saved the businesses money. In one example, Broadway Tyres introduced spiritual practices and absenteeism dropped from twentyfive/thirty percent to two percent.
And: research shows a positive correlation between spiritual organisations and the bottom line organisations that can inspire employees to a ‘higher cause’ tend to have enhanced performance because of the increased motivation and commitment this tends to generate.
HEALTHY AND GREEN CITIES
Fourth, we are seeing that while many problems are too big for national governments, local governance is thriving. Many cities are taking the future to heart. In Australia for example, Future 2030 city projects are slowly becoming part of the norm (Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Logan City, for example). Cities are broadening democracy to include visioning. Citizens are asked about their desired image of their city – transport, skyline, design, and community – and are working with political leaders and professional staff to create their desired futures. This leads not only to cities changing in directions citizens authentically prefer, but it enhances the capacity of citizens to make a difference. Democracy becomes not only strengthened but the longterm becomes part of decision making – a type of anticipatory democracy is being created. Those politicians who prefer to keep power to themselves and not engage in the visioning tend to be booted out, suggests some research (Steve Gould, Creating Alternative Community Futures. MA thesis, University of the Sunshine Coast, 2009).
And what type of futures do citizens prefer? They tend to want more green (gardens on rooftops, for example), far less cars (more public transport), technology embedded in their day to day lives a seamless integration of nature, the built environment and high technologies – and far more community spaces. They want to work from home, and many imagine new community centres where people of different professions can work individually but also share costs (and avoid loneliness). Imagine the savings in transport costs as well as greenhouse gas emissions. And time! Instead of expensive new infrastructure, creating flexible homeworkcommunitytime options could save billions, not to mention no longer being stuck in traffic jams.
On a practical level, solid social science research demonstrates that cities can develop policies that enhance public health. For example in Australia, the Rockhampton 10,000 steps program has attempted to enhance the physical activity of citizens. Given the volumes of epidemiological evidence that show that regular physical activity promotes and improves health in endless ways, active health is a great best buy.
But it is not just physical health that planners are beginning to consider but psychological health. Research shows that green spaces in a city have a pronounced affect on the emotional health of residents, and the higher the biodiversity of green spaces, the more benefits. Thus, keeping green spaces helps in promoting physical and mental health. Enhancing green spaces can also reduce drought as there is considerable evidence that the suburban/strip mall model of development blocks billions of gallons of rainwater from seeping through the soil to replenish ground water (Tom Doggett, “Suburban Sprawl Blocks Water, Worsens U.S. Drought,” Aug 28, 2002, www.reuters.com).
As part of this rethinking of the city, planners are starting to see transport alternatives as being linked to community health. For example, we now know that air pollution is linked to heart disease, that is, clogged roads lead to clogged arteries (the amount of time spent in traffic increases the risk of heart disease. And if they do not design for health, most likely citizens who have been hospitalized will litigate against city officials for not designing cities for wellbeing.
NEW MEASUREMENTS
Fifth, nations, cities, corporations and nongovernmental organizations are creating new ways of measuring their success. While earlier indicators of progress were all about the dollar, now triple bottom line measurements have taken off, and will continue to do so in the future. Instead of only measuring the single bottom line of profit, impacts on nature (sustainability) and on society (social inclusion) are becoming increasingly important, even in this financial crisis. One Australia city has even followed the example of Bhutan and developed a National Happiness index.
This enlargement of what counts as the bottom line is occurring because more and more evidence points to the fact that the economy rests on society which rests on nature. All three have to do well for us to survive and thrive, to move toward individual and collective happiness. Focus on one works in the short run but in the long run having a dynamic balance works best. Even the President of the European Commission, Manuel Barroso, has argued that it is time to go beyond GDP, as this traditional indicator only measures market activity, and not wellbeing. Says, Barroso, writing about GDP, “We cannot face the challenges of the future with the tools of the past.” Confirming this new approach, HansGert Pöttering, the President of the European Parliament writes that: “wellbeing is not just growth; it is also health, environment, spirit and culture.” There are now even calls for spirituality to become the fourth bottom line.
PEER-TO-PEER AND SOCIAL NETWORKING
Sixth, while there are many benefits of the Information and Communication Technologies revolution, one of the key positive outcomes is the development of peer-to-peer power. Traditional hierarchical relations – top down models of relating to each other – are being challenged. And while it is far too early to say the dominator model of social relations will disappear in this generation, slowly over time there are indications that there will be far more balance in emerging futures. Hierarchy will become only one of the ways we engage with each other; the role of partnerships (through cooperatives) will continue to increase as new social technologies via the web make that possible. For example, already wikipedia has challenged traditional modes of knowledge authority. Websites such as kiva.org allow – though at a small level – direct person to person lending. This could have dramatic impacts on the big banks over time. Social peertopeer networking also reduces the ability of authoritarian states to use information communication technologies for surveillance benefits. Power moves from rigid hierarchies to far more fluid and socially inventive networks.
With more information available exponentially, the challenge will be to use information about our genome, our inner lives, and our localities in ways that empower and create harmony. New technologies such as the bodybugg and overtime health and ecobots will help a great deal as they will give us immediate, interactive and tailored information on the futures we wish for (as does the newly invented smart toilet with its likely web links to http://asnu.com.au/viagra-online/ health providers. Health and ecobots will be able to help us decide which products to buy (do they fit into my value structure, are they triple or quadruple bottom line), how much and how long to exercise and through social networking, enlist communities of support to help achieve desired futures.
HAPPINESS IS VIRAL
Seventh, finally, all the good news is infectious. Harvard social scientist Nicholas Christakis and his politicalscience colleague James Fowler at the University of California at San Diego argue “that emotions can pass among a network of people up to three degrees of separation away, so your joy may be [partly] determined by how cheerful your friends’ friends are, even if some of the people in this chain are total strangers to you. This means that health and happiness is not just created by individual behavior but by how they feed into the larger social network (Alice Park, “The Happiness Effect,” Time, Dec. 11, 2008). Happiness can be seen as viral; what the Indian mystic P.R. Sarkar has called the Microvita Effect.
All this does not mean we should dismiss attempts to transform social injustice but we need to appreciate how far we have come and focus on ways to improve material, intellectual and spiritual reality.
Positive steps forward can create more positive futures, for individuals and for societies.
Professor Sohail Inayatullah is a political scientist/futurist at the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies, Tamkang University, Taiwan; and the Centre of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, Macquarie University, Sydney. He also an associate with Mt Eliza Executive Education, Melbourne Business School, where he co-teaches a bi-annual course titled, “Futures thinking and strategy development.”
Sohail Inayatullah (17 October 2006)
Will 30-40% of those living on the Gold Coast be practicing meditation or a similar form of spirituality in twenty to thirty years or will the main practice on the Gold Coast be sun and sin squared?
Will the Gold Coast still be marketed as Very GC or will the Gold Coast become the place to live and visit – a place for residents and tourists?
Will Gold Coast residents and local council develop the capacity to withstand major external shocks, from climate change to dramatic population growth or will the response to crises be more governmentality, surveillance?
These and other issues were investigated by Gold Coast citizens and experts. In a workshop designed to explore emerging issues, scenarios, visions and next steps toward the year 2046, participants expressed the view that Gold Coast’s future should be different from Gold Coast’s today – that a new model of economic growth was required to move from development at all costs to creating green healthy interconnected livable communities.
Participants of being the nightmare scenario of others shires. When shires around Australia, especially southeast Queensland are asked the worst case scenario, more often than not, Gold Coast comes up. But why?
Generally, it is the unplanned development. A focus on cars before other forms of transport. A council that tends to be tribal in its orientation. A place known for visitors but not for residents. A place of imagined theme parks, not really families living normal day to day lives.
To create a new future, the first step, as Fred Polak and others historians have argued, is to imagine it (Fred Polak, The Image of the Future. trans. Elise Boulding. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1973). This workshop was designed to do just that – imagine a new future.
THE VISION
Using a variety of methods – analytic, visual, intuitive – participants developed a shared vision of the future of the Gold Coast.
These had the following characteristics.
When asked to imagine what this would look like, participants said:
There would be community involvement in all facets of life. They did not want an anonymous alienated city. However, they did want a city – urban space was desired. This was not a “back to eden” bush image. But the city had to have greener – environmental design – at every level, from parkways, to beach access, to pedestrian and bikeways (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5386024.stm). Gold Coast was to be come a Garden City. The values would be spiritual – a deep connection with the transcendental. What this meant practically was that individuals were engaged in a variety of practices – meditation, yoga, prayer, for example. These were not based on particular religions but were about connected to self, nature, others and the mysterious.
Participants citing research argued that these practices would be central in creating a healthy city – longer life, less disease, and a more relaxed attitude, not to mention higher productivity.
Technology was not an outlier in this future. Participants assumed dramatic developments in health technology, in artificial intelligence, in robotics – the key for them was the use of these technologies to create more community, a greater quality of life, and more elegant road and city design.
Cars would not be the focus by 2046 – other forms of travel would become more important, from sky trains to walking to bikes to …
SCENARIOS
But while this was the vision, participants did explore more than one future. They engaged in scenario planning. The variables they used were 1. capacity to adapt versus vulnerability to external shocks. 2.the industrial model of development (9-5, mass based, rigid) versus digital green model (flexible, elegant, person, nature and community based). Based on these variables, four scenarios emerged.
The first was the industrial-vulnerable. In this future, Gold Coast is wealthy but it is polluted, congested – the golden goose of nature is eaten.
In the second Industrial-capacity to change, there is a mass switch to solar and wind power. Industry with government lead the way in switching technologies, however, it is generally top-down.
In the third scenario, Green/digital-Vulnerable, the ecological paradigm is adopted but it is insular, unreflective and unconnected communities. Gold Coast is doing well but there is not broader sense of identity.
In the final scenario, Green-digital with capacity to change, there is whole scale transformation. Capacity to change comes from city design but also from community consultation. Government is a partner with small businesses, citizens and the region. Gold Coast along with South-east Queensland begins the process of becoming truly sustainable. There are still crisis but Gold Coast is carbon emissions neutral and citizens band together to meet crisis. There is still tourism but it is far more tailored – some virtual, some green, some pleasure oriented. Even the theme parks have become greener.
WHY DRAMATIC CHANGE?
This last scenario was the preferred. But why did such a dramatic scenario become the preferred.
Participants could see the direction the Gold Coast is currently headed – getting busier, over populated, more and more urban sprawl, and a loss of the hinterland. They also saw the mistakes of the past – lack of coordinated city planning and lack of community consultation, for example. And they could see that if nothing was done, there would be intergenerational conflicts, as the population of the Gold Coast aged. They could also see more cultural disharmony, as the Gold Coast became more culturally diverse (without new social technologies such as neighborhood mediation centres, or peer mediation taught in primary schools, or emotionally IQ classes at all levels of government and industry).
They could see the current direction and they did not like it. They did not want future generations to ask forty years from now – why didn’t you plan better? Why didn’t you design for community and health? Why didn’t you prepare for climate change? Why didn’t you think of us?
FROM THERE TO HERE
But how would the Gold Coast move from the problematic present to the desired future. Using the backcasting technique, participants listed important events in the next forty years.
These included: threats from the outside, such as climate change and regional attempts to manage change such as the SEQ plans.
In response to external changes, city design was developed for more capability for walking. Car free zones were created.
Oil shocks led to use of greener technologies. Government youth violence task force recommended meditation and physical exercise for youth, and this was implemented. Meditation becoming part of daily school practice, with up to 50% regularly practicing by 2030. Education became left and right brain focused.
As well by 2035 there was a workplace revolution – there was far more flexibility at the workplace and thus more satisfaction for workers.
Participants believed that this was all possible because change was possible, they believed that from little things grow big things. One had to start somewhere. They also believed that for real change, change had to be inner and outer based. It had to be leadership and citizen-led. However, they did not think this would happen automatically. External crisis would create the challenge.
Would the Gold Coast respond?
This group of citizen advisors/experts certainly believe that Gold Coast not only will meet the challenges of the future, but it would change itself in the process, developing a new found confidence, becoming a place to live and visit!
By Sohail Inayatullah
July 2006
I never thought I would see the cafés of Novi Sad packed with tourists from all over Europe, particularly 10,000-15,000 youth from England. But with the increasing fame of Novi Sad’s Exit festival, music lovers annually flock to this city by the Danube.
My first memory of Novi Sad was in November 1993. UN sanctions against Yugoslavia were in full swing. It was cold, brutally cold. I watched my partner-to-be, take her check from her position as teaching assistant at the University of Novi Sad and run from shop to shop, trying to find the best deal for groceries. With inflation at record highs, surpassing even the Weimar Republic, currency would lose value over a day. The basket of goods and services that the dinar bought was far from stable. The cost of getting a visa to Greece jumped once from 12 millions dinars on Friday to twenty million or so on Monday. The future was only predictable in the sense that things could only get worse.
And they did: Novi Sad’s cosmopolitan culture took two more serious fits. First were the NATO air strikes on its infrastructure, particularly its bridges in 199
Designed to humble the power of President of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević, Novi Sad’s spirit was broken. The next change was the wave of refugees from Bosnia and Croatia. Predictably the migrant’s politics was nationalistic, they yearned to return to their homes, and voted for the extremist Radical Party, which continues to promise them a glorious return to lands lost.
Recently – the second week of July 2006 – a few days before the Exit Festival, there was a parade devoted to celebrating the difference – all different, all equal was the motto. Youth apparently associated with the Radical party broke up the parade. When the organizers asked the police why they did not provide security for the event, they intimated that it was because they thought it was a gay parade.
And yet young people have managed to organize a major international festival. Even with the tourists gone, the cafes are full. Citizens walk with a bit of lightness that seemed impossible a decade plus ago.
The endless debates on the Greater Serbia, on Croats, on the Bosnian Muslims is no longer the dominant discourse, Yugoslavia is a distant memory. Europe beckons. My wife’s grandmother, Baba Zora, has lived in nine different states in her 94 years, and she has never left her home in Kruševac (except as a young woman from a nearby village upon marriage), a city 5 hours drive from Novi Sad. From the kingdom of Serbia, to the many Yugoslavias, to Serbia and Montenegro and now to just Serbia, she has stayed still while geopolitics has changed with regular seasons. Perhaps Europe will be the 10th ‘state’ that she will live in? Will she be here when Serbia joins Europe, when Novi Sad joins Europe? By 2030?
For this future, there remain many stumbling blocks. First, the capture of Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić – former leaders of the Republika Srpska for their violent siege of Sarajevo and murder of 7000 humans at Srebrenica. And now with the future of Kosovo still unknown, territory and power remain unresolved issues.
Momo Kapor, a Serb essayist, writes in his book, A Guide to the Serbian Mentality that it is inat, that is defining for Serbs. Inat is pique, a revenge, a willingness to ensure that a win-win situation reverts to lose-win. One can imagine Milošević after his death at Den Hague, shrieking out: “I won!” as he had claimed through defeat after defeat during the break of Yugoslavia and military defeats against NATO.
Novi Sad did not win – its rise to Europe (it was known as the Serbian Athens in the 19th century) as with Budapest or Prague or other cities was arrested. It had to go back to square one, watching others in Eastern Europe spring head and join the European Union.
The anxiety of almost about to win, to get the promised bus ticket, the way out, but to be denied over and over again, creates a culture of anxiety. The anxiety is neither transcended nor transformed. Rather the pain is dulled through two narcotics: tobacco and alcohol. Currently over 50% of adult Serbs smoke regularly, although this seems like an underestimate.[1] Walking around the city, it feels like up to 95% of citizens smoke and drink. Certainly smoking is accepted as the norm, even in government offices where there are no smoking signs, these are clouded over by smoke.
Smoking continues unabated even at Court, where judges and magistrates smoke during legal proceedings, despite law that prohibits smoking in closed public premises. If the Court openly breaks the law then what hope is there for cafés and restaurant owners, or other public places? How can they reinforce the law and why would they want to? Indeed while many fear depopulation because of an ageing society (low birth rate) – that they may disappear as the nation the future, very little is done to minimize some of the known risks to premature death. There are of course many reasons for self destructive behaviors in this region, and perhaps inat here also plays a role.
This negative scenario of decay, illness, self-destruction, exclusion and deterioration is the first future for Novi Sad. Never joining and always being apart. Always on the verge of success but failing every time: more than that – the failure coming at the moment of achievement. It is the anguish of waiting in a long line for something of value – a free pc at the internet café; a ticket on a bus, but the queue closing.
The result: more nicotine and more alcohol. In twenty years, we can well imagine the state of Novi Sad’s (and Serbia’s) hospitals. In total stress from:
Without ecological consciousness, the factories and buses of Novi Sad will continue to pollute. And while pollution is not as bad as in Pančevo, another town in the province of Vojvodina, still pollution continues. Moreover, pollutants from the past endanger Serb citizens. This is primarily from the damaging impact of depleted uranium used by NATO during the three months of bombing in 1999. Without serious thought given to ecology, Novi Sad and Serbia will only hasten the drive to this scenario as the most likely future.
NOVI SAD IN A TRANSFORMED EUROPE
In the second future, Novi Sad becomes a European town. The charm is already here. The centre of Novi Sad has cobblestones, places of worship of Catholic, Orthodox Christian and Jewish persuasions, endless cafes… nearby is the Fortress, the site of the Exit Music Festival. And the jewel is the Štrand, the lovely beach along the Danube. No longer blue from decades of environmental pollution but if Europe does become greener, and sustainability becomes the dominant paradigm, Novi Sad could become the small romantic town by the blue Danube. In the last two days, I’ve been surprised by signs of subtle progress. At the beach today, I was able to order a soy hotdog. I never thought I would see that in Novi Sad – the unofficial pork capital of former Yugoslavia. Yesterday, I went to cranial sacral therapist, where for two hours I was in heaven. Even though the room was almost 35C, somehow his ability to call in angels transformed the heat, and coolness descended. Finally, at the baker today, I saw a man holding a magazine with the cover story: the futures of cities. A vegetarian hotdog, a healing therapist, and a book on cities may not be much, but looking back at 1994, none of this was possible. Only depression was. When we were to visit one of my wife’s friends tomorrow, I worried that she was a chain smoker. However, when there, her children told me that they had banned her from smoking at home and she is now no longer able to smoke at work because of company policy. This is true for others as well – a male relative of my wife reports that his children scream when he lights up in the car. This generation may be lost to the horrors of cancer, but the next generation may yet be saved. Finally, there is a tradition of healthy organic food in the region. While it is meat and beer that have made the region – Vojvodina – famous, as climate change continues and Europe eyes the sustainability prize, meat consumption will have to drop, organic vegetarian food will increase. The Exit festival in the future would not just be about music and fun but about music for a sustainable world, about youth going to Exit so as to create a greener Novi Sad. As Europe wakes up, so will Novi Sad. Already the European union is leading on climate changes (Kyoto and more), on health (banning smoking in public spaces), on peace (searching for political solutions to conflicts throughout the world) and on rights (protecting minorities when it can). As Serbia seeks to enter Europe and as Serbs seek to become European, these broader trends are likely to be defining.
BUSINESS-AS-USUAL
Unfortunately, beyond the bleakness of the never satiated queue and the hoped for entry to Europe, there are empty spaces. Novi Sad does not have a 2027 project. City planning done well long ago during the Austro-Hungarian empire, under Empress Maria Theresa, has disappeared today. Build. Find money. Short term thinking prevails. E-governance has yet to take off. Indeed, Novi Sad has not even queued up for the digital revolution. The cybercafé I go to has 8 PCs …all with software from the 1990s, though my digital native son does content that one pc has windows 2005… there are always lines to use the PCs. Once one has managed to secure a spot, the electricity can go out, the mouse may not work, or one of the staff may light up a cigarette and the temperature continues to soar toward 37c even with the air-conditioning on.
Not only is it not digital, it is also an environmental disaster. Garbage is littered throughout the city. Residents have no qualms about throwing litter as they walk around the city. Bottles, cigarette butts, and gum destroy the landscape. As does graffiti. Novi Sad could be renamed Graffiti land – and while many try and clean up the mess, the next day, the vandals are at it again. It is not the graffiti per se but its poor quality. Obviously the young are looking for a venue, a form of expression of their anger.
This is then business-as-usual. An unplanned city. Money through the market and power through the state (party) rule. The small charming European town scenario disappears and creates the polluted crowded have and have-nots divided future. The migrants from Bosnia and Croatia vote radical while locals vote Democrat. Those that have understood capitalism make quick gains. Those still living the one future, one job, standardizes rules based, customer is always wrong approach become poorer and poorer, more depressed. An underground drug, sex, organized economy grows. The mafia links with politics and Novi Sad loses its way becoming a horrible mixture of environmental degradation, insider politics and divided houses – and there is gum all over the city that no one will clean up. The market works but only for the wealthy – the poor walk around, drinking, smoking, and waiting for the strong leader to help them recover. In this future, the Exit festival would just be about making money. Environmental costs, binge drinking, drug use, irresponsible sexual behavior would be externalities – issues that the organizers would not see themselves as responsible for – but rather as someone else’s problems. This is the used future, lacking innovation.
A FEMININE – SALAŠ CITY OF NOVI SAD?
But there are some wild scenarios. Serbia has two sides. Besides its history of wars, being conquered and conquering, or at least trying to, there is a feminine side. This is expressed in stories of peace, of women not just taking care of men (as in patriarchy) but women taking care of each other and those that are marginalized by patriarchy (nature, children, minorities). A salaš city integrates the human soul and the soil of the Earth – in the words of Mika Antić, a famous poet from Vojvodina, “ a handful of earth and a handful of human spirit is the pillar and the roof of the world’. What would a women’s future for Novi Sad look like? Feminist scholar Ivana Milojević has argued that:
In this scenario, the Exit festival would not only be green – caring for the local and the global – but also about ensuring that the festival had music from around the world; that music would be about creating cohesive communities; that festival goers would be themselves be transformed, becoming part of the community. Exit would be an eco-spiritual festival, an entrance into a new world.
While this scenario is not plausible from today’s politics, the last 20 years have shown us that changes can be dramatic. Moreover, the seeds of these changes are in Novi Sad and spreading throughout the rest of the world. Finally, the purpose of scenarios is not just to point out likely futures, but to point out what can be.
This is my sixth trip to Novi Sad. From the freeze of 1994 to the growth of 2007, seeds of promise have emerged. I hope for a future around sustainability and women’s perspectives, however, a transformed Novi Sad in a transformed Europe would also enhance the lives of citizens. However, the fear of the endless queue – hope never delivered – and the business-as-usual future of unplanned poisonous and polluted growth remain likely.
I hope for a bright future for Novi Sad. I need to. My children intend to keep on returning and visiting their relatives. I want to make sure I can continue to learn from and enjoy the beauty of this European city.
Notes:
[1] Anu Molarius et al, “Trends in Cigarette Smoking in 36 populations from the Early 1980s to the Mid-1990s: Findings from the WHO MONICA Project. American Journal of Public Health, February 2001, Vol., 91, No. 2. 206-212. Also see, Tolonen H, Kuulasmaa, K and Ruokokoski, E. Monica Population. Survey Data Book. Available at:
[2] http://www.cfwbr.org/press/details.php?id=54. Accessed July 4, 2007.
http://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/facts/impact.html
Also, see Lynn A Karoly, and Constantijin, W. A. Panis, The 21st Century at Work: Forces Shaping the Future Workforce and Workplace in the United States. Prepared for the US Dept of Labor. Santa Monica CA: RAND, March, 2004.
By Sohail Inayatullah
Article from Courrier Mail, 28 September, 2006
IF THE South-East Queensland Regional Plan is not successfully adopted what will happen?
The plan proposes communities be built and managed using the most up-to-date and effective measures to conserve water and energy and for the design and siting of buildings to take advantage of the subtropical climate.
So what might southeast Queensland in 2026 actually look like? While we cannot know the future, we can reduce uncertainty and gain a better sense of the possibilities through looking at different scenarios.
There are four “futures” that could present themselves in southeast Queensland.
In the first, the southeast Queensland 2026 plans were achieved and our region is still liveable.
By 2026, the population has dramatically increased but through good governance, community consultation and foresight, negative possibilities (crime, congestion, pollution) have been mitigated and positive possibilities (job growth, green belt protection, water and energy management) enhanced.
People still want to move to SEQ even with higher housing prices. A two-class society has not resulted as government has intervened to deal with inequity. A fair go is still possible.
A second scenario could be where SEQ could arrive at the fate of being “hot and paved”. Looking back from 2026, it was clear the plan needed far more teeth.
While it was an admirable effort to take power away from local shires and put the region first, that is not how things have turned out.
Market pressures kept housing prices going up. Developers gave lip service to green and social concerns and a two-class society has started to emerge. Traffic problems did not decrease, rather, every effort to widen highways led to more congestion. SEQ is a long highway between Coolangatta and Noosa.
Global warming has only made life worse – temperatures continue to rise, water shortages increase. SEQ is full of hot, paved cities with higher than normal temperatures. Many people have made money but the quality of life for others has gone down.
Health indicators continue to worsen – citizens look to local government to solve problems. Local government looks to state government which looks to federal.
The federal government just seeks to stay in power. Capacity continues to shrink.
Worse yet, 2026 could be wired and miserable. If the next 20 years play out like this we could face several dire consequences.
Under this third scenario, the past 20 years have been a series of confrontations between local authorities and regional government; between developers and environmentalists; between individual freedom and security; young and old; rural areas and the beach; and new migrants (many environmental refugees) and old migrants.
There is endless sprawl, congested highways and gang warfare which has made SEQ a miserable place to live in.
Peace is kept via surveillance and tough regulations. Citizens are monitored in every possible way. Technology and power is used to keep collective peace.
If our attempts to plan for the future, while admirable, are met with resistance at every level, with local concerns taking precedence over regional, this is the possible end result.
There is one other possibility, one that could see SEQ transformed. In this instance, the concern for the long term future becomes the passion for many. The SEQ vision will enhance the capacity of councils all over Queensland to develop their own visions, for example: Logan 2026, Gold Coast 2046 and so on.
As a result, there is a community capacity to innovate. The people known as “cultural creatives” – less than 20 per cent of the population in the early 2000s – would have grown dramatically. The values of sustainability, spirituality, innovation and global governance will have become the official values.
Instead of suburbs, hubs electronically linking work, home and community have grown. Working in these hubs would have resulted in dramatic jumps in productivity (less time lost on the road, more control of one’s work life).
Travel choices have been renegotiated – walking, bikeways, car, light rail – have increased. Organic gardens have sprouted everywhere. Smart green technologies exist all over Queensland.
Indeed, not only does this transform the state but exports of these technologies are slowly but surely changing Asian cities.
Personal carbon credits have led to reconfiguration of energy use, making SEQ a world leader.
There are still conflicts, but neighbourhood mediation centres (not to mention peer mediation in schools) resolve many of them.
It is too soon to tell which of these futures is the most plausible.
We must change the nature of the city, finding new ways to work and live. Which future do you want for southest Queensland in 2026?
Dr Sohail Inayatullah, an eminent futurist and political scientist, will be speaking at the international conference Subtropical Cities 2006 at QUT today.
By Sohail Inayatullah
SEVEN HYPOTHESIS AND DOORWAYS TO A KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY
Speech, July 11, 2006
Creating a Knowledge Economy for the Sunshine Coast
The image of the future and the learning community
The Sunshine coast currently stands between different images of the future. The first is the traditional, small scale, strong community, fishing village. Basically, this was small scale tourism resort with some of the economy corporatized (local plus national) This image and reality has quickly disappeared in the last few decades. And with population growth likely to continue, it is unlikely that the 1950s Australia can be created. Globalization, cybertechnologies, the genetics revolution, aging and other variables make this unlikely.
The other image is that of endless urban growth, short termism, no concern for the environment, generally becoming totally integrated into southeast queensland, with no real self-identity. Tourism is heavily corporatized here (international plus national with very little family scale ventures). This would mean a conflictual divided society along the lines of access to jobs, eduation, housing and wealth. One group would be the tourists and international investors and the other single parents trying to make a basic living. This appears likely unless government policy, citizen demands and an alternative shared image of the future develops.
There are other images as well. A transformational image, for example, becoming small scale electronically connected communities based on sustainable development and alternative lifestyles – a different type of tourism, a more localised economy.
Also, transformational would be the coast finding some role in the globalized economy, perhaps as a niche player in specific types of emerging tourism – its internationalization. Government working with small scale enterprises, creating some spaces so they are not swallowed by bigger players.
Part of the challenge then is for the Coast to envision the futures desired and develop broad agreement on it. While technologies, global economies and demographic changes push the future, there is a pull of the future – the vision that defines what can be. There is also the weight of the future – traditional practices that limit our capacity to adapt, to meet citizen,market, human needs.
Central to adaption is creating a learning community. This notion is important in that it provides a context for creating an alternative future. It is not a recipe. Recipes for economic success come and go. In the 1980s it was Japanese management. In the early 1990s it was export, export and export. By the late 1990s it switched to Silicon Valley and the notions of clusters of innovativeness – university plus research centers plus the government providing incentives plus a tolerant creative workforce. Success creates success as the image of what is possible changes – the image becomes realizable.
The issue of how to respond to the knowledge economy is not only the problem of the Coast. Taiwan has the same issue. It knows that while copying has served well in the move from agriculture (self-reliance) to manufacturing (low cost producer and exporter), it needs to shift to the new technologies. But how to do so? And which new technologies. The response from the Prime Minister has been the vision of Green Silicon Island ie sustainability plus high technology plus independence. Singapore has met the problem of innovation by legislating creativity – ie pushing art and poetry, buying university leaders, buying biotech industry, but it is still top down governance, soft fascism. The question is can Singapore make the transition from manufacturing and finance to an innovator in other areas, the emerging technologies.
The knowledge economy is in some ways not recent, that is, all surplus, profit is based on knowledge. It is more the percent engaged in agricultural/manufacturing and services has dramatically changed in the last century. Less and less people are needed to produce goods.
In the USA today, 16% of the workforce is engaged in manufacturing, 3% in agriculture and 87% in knowledge and services. Australia is quite similar.
Moreover the mode of producing is changing. What is means is putting knoware in everything, smartness in everything. This is crucial in that while productivity in agriculture and manufacturing has increased 50 fold, changes in knowledge are quite small in comparison.
Thus it also means changing organizational structures so that creativity and questioning can blossom – this is essentially the notion of learning communities. Learning communities can 1. Increase productivity. 2. Weave communities. 3. Create meaning and purpose, that is the framework of the triple bottom line of prosperity, people and environment, that is, what is the triple bottom line for – it is for the vision of the community. Brisbane has focused its entire framework around the vision of the liveable city and now Brisbane 2010. This of course now needs to be updated. We need a similar shared vision for the coast.
Thus, for the Coast, with agricultural in continued decline, manufacturing not likely, and tourism generally low paying, what are the alternatives? Can it produce knowledge on a global scale? Is so, what knowledge can be produced here better than elsewhere; who are the buyers, what is the competitive advantage? How can tourism be smarter? While all reasonable questions that must be answered, I see the “solution” elsewhere, in capacity building, in creating learning communities.
The context of this issue of the rise and fall of collectivities. In Toynbee’s model, it is the creative minority that meets the challenge. For the Coast, the challenge is multifold: 1. Economic transformation, moving away from the uni-dimensional tourism model and toward a knolwedge economy, learning model. 2. Cultural transformation, moving away from uni-culturalism to multiculturalsim and 3. Shared vision, finding shared direction when there are deep cleavages between shires and between interests groups. The learning community model is creating contexts for learning so that the creative minority is far less important, where knowledge is democratized.
However, the notion of a learning community, I hope does not become another recipe, but rather a vision that creates more visions as well as a context that builds the capacity to create better futures.
My analysis of the learning community is the following. The criteria is:
Example, Biology professor complaining about lack of understanding of species categories versus pokemon.
People visit Gaudi in Barcelona because they can’t see it anywhere else? What do we have that is distinctive? How can we embed learning and healing as well as the other points in everything we do ?
And what is our vision for the future of the Sunshine Coast?
Professor Sohail Inayatullah
October 2006
The SEQ 2026 plan intends to: “protect biodiversity, contain urban development, build and maintain community identity, make travel more efficient, and support a prosperous economy. At the same time, the Regional Plan proposes that communities be built and managed using the most up-to-date and effective measures to conserve water and energy and for the design and siting of buildings to take advantage of the subtropical climate.”[1]
This is certainly a step in the right direction. SEQ provides a vision, direction so as to deal with expected demographic change and the resultant problems and opportunities.
Reflecting on lost opportunties, John Minnery writes that in 1944,” planners proposed a one mile wide ‘green belt’ of rural land encircling Brisbane’s developed suburbs, together with future satellite towns linked by road. Supporters argued that cities were spreading ‘like spilled treacle, engulfing everything in its path’. Such treacle cities city covered good agricultural land. They led to the overloading of water and sewerage mains and to insurmountable traffic problems.”[2]
However, this proposal was not implemented.
Asks Minnery:
“But just think how different South East Queensland would look today of the idea had been implemented. Clear breaks in the continuous suburban landscape now stretching from Noosa to the Tweed and beyond Ipswich. Public effort put into towns beyond the green belt with a better distribution of jobs and the infrastructure to serve them. And no public concern about the looming sprawling ‘200 kilometre city’.”
SEQ 2026 has learned from this lesson in setting out a vision and new directions for the future.
But what might 2026 actually look like? While we cannot know the future, we can reduce uncertainty; we gain a better sense of the possibilities through scenarios.[3]
I offer four futures for the SEQ region.
SEQ STILL LIVABLE
SEQ 2026 goals achieved. It is 2026 and there is plenty of opportunity in SE Queensland. The population has dramatically increased but through good governance, community consultation and foresight, negative possibilities (crime, congestion, pollution) have been mitigated and positive possibilities (job growth, green belt protection, water and energy management, travel choices) enhanced. People still want to move to SEQ even with higher housing prices. A two class society has not resulted as government has intervened to deal with inequity. Green spaces are plenty and urban design is far more sensitive to local conditions.
A fair, green and healthy go is still possible. Queenslanders still look to government to solve their problems but they are less dependent on the State. They are also more globalized, looking to live, work, travel, learn from, import and export to the broader world. Using dramatic new technologies, Queenslanders are planning for 2046.
SEQ HOT AND PAVED
SEQ 2026 goals failed as growth was too dramatic. Looking back, the plan needed far more teeth. While it was an admirable effort to take power away from local shires and put the region first, that is not how things turned out. Market pressures kept housing prices going up (demand from other parts of Australia and overseas) continued. Developers gave lip service to green and social concerns. A two class society has started to emerge. Traffic problems did not decrease, rather, every effort to widen highways, in a matter of years, led to more congestion. The vicious cycle continued. SEQ is a long highway between Coolangatta and Noosa. Global warming has only made life worse – temperature continues to rise, water shortages increase. SEQ is full of hot cities – paved cities with higher than normal temperatures. Many have made money but the quality has life for others have gone down. Health indicators continue to worsen – citizens look to local government to solve problems. Local government looks to State government which looks to the Federal. The Federal seeks to stay in power. Capacity continues to shrink.
SEQ WIRED AND MISERABLE
The last twenty years have been a series of confrontations between local authorities and regional government; between developers and environmentalists; between individual freedom and security; between councilors and state governments; between young and old; between rural areas and the beach; and between new migrants (many environmental refugees) and old migrants. Endless sprawl, congested highways, gang warfare have made SEQ a miserable place to live in. There are many gated communities – high gate, big dog – that give some peace to the elderly. But outside these communities social tensions fester. Peace is also kept via surveillance – live Google – and tough regulation. Air has been digitalized and citizens are monitored in every possible way. Discipline is the buzz word – SEQ returns to the political climate of the 1980s. The attempts to plan for the future, while admirable, were met with resistance at every level. Local concerns took precedence over regional – and it is all a mess now. Technology and power is used to keep collective peace.
SEQ TRANSFORMED
The concern for the long term future was ignored by some but became the passion for many. The SEQ vision enhanced the capacity of shires all over Queensland to develop their own visions (Logan 2026, Gold Coast 2046, Maroochy 2020, Brisbane 2026, for example). Community capacity to innovate resulted. The cultural creatives – less than 20% of the population in the early 2000’s – has grown dramatically in the last twenty years. The values of sustainability, spirituality, innovation, global governance have become the official values. These values have been reinforced through systemic (legislation, city design, tax regimes) changes.
Instead of suburbs, work-home-community electronically linked hubs have grown. Working in these hubs has led to dramatic jumps in productivity (less time lost on the road, more control of one’s work life). Travel choices – walking, bikeways, car, and light rain – have increased. Organic gardens have sprouted everywhere. Smart green technologies exist all over Queensland. Indeed, not only has this transformed Queensland, but exports of these technologies are slowly but surely changing Asian cities. SEQ is known has not just the smart centre for Australia but also the shanti centre. Yoga, for example, a three billion dollar business in the USA 20 years ago, has now become a trillion dollar business and SEQ has done well from it. Healthy eating and living were once a dream but the obesity crisis of the first ten years of this century led to a dramatic turn around. Systems became smarter and individuals took personal responsibility for their health. The invention of the personal carbon credit system[4] also led to reconfiguration of energy use. SEQ is a world leader. There are still conflicts but neighborhood mediation centres (not to mention peer mediation in schools) are used to resolve many of them. While population has increased, energy consumption has maintained steady. Innovation continues to breed technological and social innovation. While there are many global changes, SEQ can meet them as citizens do not see themselves at the mercy of large institutions, their capacity to influence their lives continues to increase.
WHICH FUTURE?
Which of these futures is the plausible one? It is certainly too soon to tell. But decisive factors will be (1) A shared vision of the desired future. (2) Good governance through enhanced community consultation and anticipatory democracy. (3) Use of smart, social and sustainable technologies to solve problems and enhance community capacity). (4) Moving away from quick fixes to the deeper issues (for example, not just expanding highways but increasing travel choices; not just speeding up all processes but exploring the slow city; not just training more doctors but changing the hierarchical structure of modern medicine). (5) Ensuring performance indicators are linked to the direction SEQ seeks to move toward and (6) Creating transitional strategies and cultures to move from the industrial era to the digital/sustainable era.
Which future do you want for SEQ 2026?
[1] http://www.oum.qld.gov.au/?id=468
[2] Full article available from John Minnery j.minnery@uq.edu.au, University of Queensland.
[3] For additional scenarios, see the work of Phillip Daffara at www.futuresense.org.au. Also see Steve Gould – <steve.gould@optusnet.com.au> who focuses on: divided seq; developmentalist seq; outlier seq and green villages seq.
[4] First thought of by social planner and Brisbane resident Jennifer Bartlett in 2004.
Sohail Inayatullah
Professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan, Sunshine Coast Uni, Australia, Queensland University of Technology, Australia.
CITIES AS AGENTS OF GLOBAL CHANGE
In 2005, the Mayor of Seattle stated that even though the Federal government did not sign the Kyoto Protocols, Seattle would do its best to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The former Lord Mayor of Brisbane, at the onset of the Iraq war, raised the UN flag above city hall. These two events should not be seen per se as challenging federal sovereignty but more of evoking the agency of the city.
Cities are beginning to imagine alternative futures for themselves, going beyond the tradition of only supplying roads, rates and rubbish. With many of them bursting with growing populations and with citizens feeling overwhelmed, even exhausted, by the roller coaster of globalization and associated systemic crisis (financial, health, natural), the local has become even more important.
In this context, cities have begun to plan their future. Often this is a shallow adventure of merely purchasing the used futures of other cities. For example, while many American and Australian cities have moved away from the “big city” model of Los Angelization (sprawl, size and money with associated problems of loss of place, crime and health) and toward creating urban , most Asian cities remain locked in the battle for the tallest building (see villages http://www.apcsummit.org/history/content/?id=175).
In contrast is the emergence of the healthy cities movement. Healthy city futures are predicated on the physical determinants of health (the quality of water, air, efficient transport systems), the social determinants of health (social inclusion, walking areas, ie city design that enables individual and group health, and community making) and more radically, as I argue the spiritual determinants of health (issues of meaning, medical research on the impacts of meditation, diet on individual and collective health).
From the days of roads, rates and rubbish, city issues are now associated with the triple bottom line – prosperity, environmental sustainability and social justice – and now perhaps the quadruple bottom line, spirituality as the organizing and the depth factor.
EMERGING ISSUES
Is the spiritual city next? Perhaps, in the meantime the classical definitions of the city (city beautiful, city efficient, city radical) are being challenged by emerging issues. These issues include:
(1) Smart Growth, especially, urban husbandry – creating civil spaces
(2) Transforming Transportation Planning, rethinking the role of the car in the city (car free cities and dual-model transportation systems) and rethinking the role of transport (from a Car to all to Mobility for all)
(3) The Smart City, wired city, moving to the intelligent city, even imagining the E-topian city.
(4) The Green City, moving from recycling to green architecture to deep sustainability (sustainability as the operating paradigm)
(5) The Community and Healthy City, moving from creating community through appropriate design to a community bill of rights to new indicators of economic development that are community matched. And:
(6) Globalization. This last issue is fraught with tension and diversity, between the grand super cities (in size, postmodern) and global-local variations.
MACROTRENDS
Taking these trends further, we can speculate on some possible macro trends of city futures?
The city defined by geography (by a river, for example) to city defined by temporality. While cities have focused on land use policy (spatiality) the next wave is likely to be temporal policy. Cities are caught in, and part of, multiple temporalities – industrial 9/5 time; cyber 24/7 time, slow time and the slow city movement; and hyper time (the quickening of time). Developing temporal policy will be an important challenge as more and evidence comes out from the health costs of industrial 9/5 time (deadlines and heart attacks – http://www.ediets.com/news/article.cfm/cmi_990411) and postmodern 24/7 time (the frazzled family)
City as one space (vertical) to multiple space (flat) to desired space (vertical plus horizontal). Imagining and creating desired city futures is becoming a new, while not core, certainly an important activity (See the work of Steve Ames –www.communityvisioning.com/stevenamesbio/). Of course, there is resistance here, not from citizens but from local counselors. Staying within traditional notions of representative democracy, they question the role of citizens in visioning broader city futures. Is that not the role of the local counselor. More forward looking politicians, however, are likely to see this as a way of enhancing the efficacy of their role and the role of local government, not diminishing it. To do, the counselor will need to rethink their fundamental role as that merely of representing their constituents to that of leadership, brokering ideas and mediating disputing visions
The city as “neutral” arbiters of interests groups to city as ethical space. With triple bottom one, a long term orientation, cities more and more are challenged to do the right thing, to be central actors in creating and modeling the good society. They are no longer merely facilitating in a neutral manner various interests (developers, community groups), they have their own meta interest. See, for example, Galtung, Cities for people, cities for peace, cities for the future.http://www.transcend.org/t_database/articles.php?ida=138
The city as a place where public policy occurs to city as public policy
Cities, particularly, the postmodern city is now seen as policy, its actions (naming of streets, for example) iconic. Public policy is not a political process but a representational process – essentially this means that the city itself is a global brand, not only a place where people live. Economy policy is now moving to the notion of a dream economy. At the very least, creative policy is becoming a crucial dimension in being a global economic player.
CHANGING THE GLOBAL POLITICAL LANDSCAPE
Can we then imagine a world future where along with nations, corporations, nongovernmental organizations, cities will be full players. Are we entering a spiral turn with the return of the City-State (is Singapore a leading indicator). It is far from clear if this is the case, certainly as the nation-state loses its relative importance, other actors are moving in. Cities are crucial in this transformation of global space.
Along with global changes are local changes. Citizens are far more active. E-democracy, neighbourhood mediation centres, community visioning and even local community consultation are changing local politics.
From above and below, cities are influencing what is, and what can be.