 All right, well, I think we'll get started and some other people might trickle in in the next couple of minutes But I just want to start off by saying thank you for all joining us today for this week's lecture and planning series Our speaker this week is Dr. Robert Goodspeed. I'm a PhD student here in the urban planning program My name is Jenna Davis and I'll be moderating this session So I just want to start with a few kind of brief technical and logistic Announcements and then I'll turn to introducing our speaker So during the talk, I'd just like to remind everyone to please meet their microphones We'll be recording today's lecture. So anyone in the in the audience who wishes to not be recorded should turn off their video output and then well the the chat box should be used for Only for discussion regarding the session if you have any technical questions that apply only to you Feel free to either message myself or step in more guard. Who's the other coordinator for today's lecture? And then finally we'll encourage you all to type questions into the chat box during the presentation After a speaker's presentation, we'll have time for Q&A. I will start Q&A around two or two fifteen So we have around fifteen to thirty minutes for questions And I'll be coordinating the Q&A with attention to kind of diversity and inclusion if you have If you already had a chance to ask a question, just please allow others to do so before asking another question So with that, I'm delighted to now turn to introducing today's speaker Dr. Robert Goodspeed Dr. Goodspeed is an assistant professor of urban planning at Tubman College at the University of Michigan He teaches in areas of geographic information systems collaborative planning and scenario planning theory and methods his research investigates how new information technologies can be used to improve the planning process and planning outcomes and involves mixed methods studies of innovative urban planning practice the use of GIS to develop novel methods and theoretical analysis of socio-technical practices like crowdfunding and smart-study He was named a leading thinker in urban planning and technology by the website plan citizen He holds a PhD in urban and regional planning from MIT and MCP from the University of Maryland and a BA in history from the University of Michigan Today, Dr. Goodspeed's lecture called Tours data-driven urban transformation managing and envisioning uncertain futures with scenario planning We'll draw on some lessons learned from his recent book which is called scenario planning for cities and regions Managing and envision envisioning uncertain futures So without further ado, I'll pass things over to Dr. Goodspeed to start the presentation All right, great. Thanks so much Jenna and thanks to the whole committee for the invitation some of you may be aware I was All lined up to come out and give us the similar lecture in April Suffice it to say that did not happen with everything that occurred day So please you find a spot. We're able to do this virtually. I don't miss the flight. Although. It's fun to visit New York. I think maybe I realized I wanted to give a Just a little brief personal practice before I launched into the discussion here today about scenario planning Really mainly focus on scenario planning practice and some related research and scholarship and that's you know after I About where I'm coming from as a scholar and a practitioner after getting my MCP from Maryland I work professionally for a year at for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which is a regional planning agency in Boston very innovative and involved in both scenario planning and other, you know You know innovative types of planning and then while getting my PhD, you know One of my dissertation case studies was with them and I worked there So I think of myself, you know, I am a scholar I definitely papers which are of interest only to academics, but I'm also an AICP Professional and you know carry that credential and try to remain engaged with practice And I think scenario planning is the the topic that's kind of most of the intersection I have some other research interests that you know, there's less engagement professional practice But that will explain my my perspective. So here's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about what is scenario planning? Really starting with its most fundamental theoretical approach to the city I'm going to talk about some specific types of practice and just very briefly look at some examples You know and and then touch on a few kind of you know specific topics some of which You know make links to areas of research for example, I published work in the planning support systems literature Analyzing the effectiveness of various tools. That's not a main thrust here I've learned that that research isn't it has been more of a niche audience but I'll kind of may explain how that plugs into the bigger picture and then hopefully we'll have plenty of time for discussion and As we go along if there's brief clarifications, I am monitoring the chat box and feel free to pop them in there You know where I want to begin which Is really a chapter that I I wrote so most of the materials run from the book But not all of it, but when I ended up sitting down to write the manuscript this chapter sort of ended up Evolving and coming out of the ideas and a little bit to my surprise and it's I think of it as the chapter Which is you know, what is a city and I think it's because it informs You know how I analyze professional practice and also which theories and approaches are suitable for contemporary planning and and so Many of you are familiar with Jane Jacobs classic work. It's planning school. I've read probably read it You may or may not have got to chapter 22 Although at the end of the book where she uses on what is what is what kind of problem is a city? And she speculates that it is a problem of what she calls organized complexity and in a way She's really ahead of her time The state of the of the art in terms of complexity theory and thinking was very rudimentary in the 60s or even late 50s And she was writing and has evolved dramatically, but I think that I am Hopefully I'll convey that I think that scenario planning and kind of the intellectual approach it's assuming takes the same perspective and in a kind of interesting subsequent work Stephen Marshall a very interesting UK scholar points out using Jane Jacobs as the jumping off point that not only our city is Comprised of organized complexity. They have many different types of complexity within them There is Artifactual complexity system complexity about infrastructures about vehicles and technologies they contain ecologies and complex biology and you know The complexity theorists talk about the double complexity of cities because there's the further complexity of human intelligence And how we make sense of the world and how that influences our behaviors and the really the punchline here For him is this result in really dramatic uncertainties. We we have We don't really know the full system as it is today. We can't predict the effects of interventions We don't know the optimal future state or optimal state of the system. So You know reading this it might send you into some planning nihilism, but my point is it highlights the importance of uncertainty and The need for methods which are grappling very directly with uncertainty And in in multiple ways You know in another kind of I think basic conclusion of this kind of complexity view is highlighting these cross-centric Cross-sector connections. This is a diagram created by a planner Peter Calthorpe Very well-known interplanar and the urban designer And it's a kind of classic designers viewpoint of the city seeing all of these different cast of land consumption building performance travel Behavior environmental impacts through the lens of urban form and I think you know, this maybe goes without saying in planning audiences But they you know, almost all of these topics have you know fully siloed disciplines which deal with them largely in isolation with the other ones And it you know, maybe calls attention the kind of hallmark of a of a planning perspective informed by a complexity view And then kind of concluding my Take here, you know, let's pivot to if that's what it says about what we can know about cities And you know, basically how you know what's possible in order to analyze them What does it say about how we should go about planning cities? So, you know, again, I kind of let me be a planning truisms that You know problems is difficult to address them in isolation or interconnection between sectors and between You know scales of analysis There's obviously no optimal outcome But there may be better or worse outcomes And you know, finally that we're planning really from within the system There's no such thing as top-down planning a top-down is just institutional actor Which is invested with certain powers in the whole history of Jane Jacobs and urban renewal demonstrates the you know limited Pistemology limited effectiveness of that. I mean really the myth that cities Can be unproblematically shaped from the top down. And so, you know, I think that planning a collaborative planning theory I feel kind of lonely at times of carrying along the plan to collect collaboration flag. It's the most popular theory to take pot shots at today in planning academia I still believe in it and we can talk about that in more detail if you're curious and so but in essentially I think it's valuable because it gives you a set of tools for analyzing your social role of within a complex social system and thinking through how planning practices can engage You know through the network of individuals institutions, which ultimately collectively shape cities So this is all very abstract Let's let's move to kind of the main entree of the day and in a way Hopefully we can see some of those themes play play through as we get into the method and some of my cases so You know urban scenario planning. It's a form of strategic planning that creates multiple representations of plausible urban futures And, you know, we've two main professional motivations to get into scenarios. Either you're concerned about uncertainty Of different types or you want to envision transformation And so, you know, depending on how it is applied, you could be focused on building consensus focused more on the analytic functionality of looking across functional domains looking interconnections between issues Or focusing on trying to synthesize You know debates about values and policy goals with analysis about both what exists and what's possible and You know, I think in kind of in when I'm speaking to more practitioner audiences These are the two big challenges facing the field seems appropriate to have that scary hurricane with, you know, similar aerial image Like exists the real world But I think the roots of a lot of scenario practice come from a little bit earlier era And, you know, these earlier ideas Peter Calthorpe, a founder of the congress for the new urbanism reformist planners and urban designers seeking methods to not only envision alternatively designed cities, but then realize them and build, you know, the the institutional changes and public will to Make all the changes that are needed to get, for example, transit oriented development So that's you're just kind of an entree And and so as the talks organized next, I'll kind of give you a deeper sense of scenario theory But I realized actually this is a really opportune moment to Ponder a kind of deep a final deep theoretical issues. Okay, it's it's complexity And but really what is the nature of planning practice and And so I really appreciate this quite it's kind of like a Hidden old gem. It's this oldie but goodie book from 1976 talking about the planning profession and How it thinks about the future by sandberg And he makes the point that all planning, you know, in a stylized way can fall into two categories that there is What what he calls a planning that are colonizing the future. It's about Serving the established interests of today and helping preserve them by anticipating And counteracting threats and and crises that might impact them And I think we can all recognize this, you know, when a You know, a private business conducts Scenario planning and strategic planning. It's seeking to perpetuate its own interests primarily He theorizes that there could be such a thing as an emancipatory planning Um, it does not prevent any self-fulfilling prophecies And it opposes reification of any current policies By demonstrating alternatives and I think scenario planning practice can maybe fall in each category In the in the book and I try to make it argument and speculate about how we could push it more in that emancipatory category And in that book chapter, I I discuss a case in the Bay Area where, you know, regional metropolitan planning organizations are now You know, many of them have created scenarios And environmental justice advocates created their own scenario, which was much more aggressive in terms of anti-displacement And expanding transportation access and communities of color And they successfully politicized and enforced that scenario to be modeled as part of the Environmental impact statement, although it did not make it into the adopted long-range transportation plan So I think it's an intriguing case that Highlights, you know, to me that the scenario methodology is flexible and As in the current moment, I think we're lots of practitioners and as students questioning the current approaches of our fields and Wondering if they can be improved or changed to be more emancipatory. Let's say and and my my claim is maybe scenario planning can serve you But you know, the devil's in the details So let's get into the scenario idea and I like to do that through a discussion of for what I consider Anti-seedent and kind of related planning approaches and and I think this this is a super high level map But you know as students and practitioners you may move through different spaces and you'll bump into like passionate advocates of each of these And you know, the book really walks through analyzing them theoretically in terms of their similarities and differences So, you know, first most common planning approach is visioning a lot of designers work in this mode But of course the critiques are whose vision What data or analysis is the vision based on is it feasible or is it a pretty drawing? You have a kind of mirror image to visioning that you may have heard about and You know is uh is forecasting. So this is often quantitative and focused on predicting the future and in the social sciences, you know, there's Philip Tetlock's work in super forecasting great deal of interest in the ability the possibility of Forecasting the future. Here's what I'll say about forecasting You know first our track record on forecasting quantitative change Is is not very good at all. And so what this chart shows Are a series of long-range transportation plans Produced by sim cog the MPO for the metropolitan region here in southeast michigan around detroit And the colored lines show, you know, basically before the boom in the late 90s the plans under Predicted how much driving there actually would be That was the previous time in history when everyone was buying scvs and the big three were doing well During the near the peak peak of the boom They were way overestimated the levels of driving that would exist in the future And then they didn't anticipate the recession as well as other changes in the region and lifestyle and land use Which have resulted in the decrease of driving. So the point is a forecast based plan is always vulnerable To being wrong and in in more than one direction It's not necessarily easier to forecast technological economic trends And here's a few that I like plucked from the scenario planning literature And the last one feels especially appropriate And we all Heard and maybe have collected all these wild av predictions None of which seem very realistic anymore In the the year that we're also supposed to be able to go go buy an av is either this year or next year and it's you know Clearly the world is evolved in a different path Um, but I might say, you know, there is a rigor to forecasting especially demographic analysis where It can provide bounds about the possible, but maybe isn't a sufficient You know, planning approach Another in your organizational lives you may have bumped into strategic planning I I show this kind of overly elaborate Chart in that it has all the strategic planning buzzwords You know, you're and what I like about strategic planning is it's a combination of internal and external It's looking at forces and trends It's trying to focus on certain goals and strategies and not be comprehensive But obviously it's only a organizational method. It's not a full-blown theory of of planting a city And then finally there's been a you know, great deal of interest in consensus building Which has a lot to contribute to planning practice But is is focused on the interests and positions of today and a great consensus process may or may not even talk about on massive uncertainties and Coming down the pipe in the future in the book. I create academics feel the impulse to create Simple two by two diagrams So here, you know, my my point is is some are focused on on the future and others are more about Today, but also more open to plural viewpoints That's the two on the bottom And then, you know, there's another difference that you're focusing on trying to build mutual understanding and consensus or on the external trends And so, you know in some a lot of threads in scenario planning practice that you know, planning practitioners today are Doing they've drawn selectively on these traditions. Um, but really they're becoming at Planning in a little bit different point of view and I've already made some illusions to why none of these are Satisfactory, so let's get into what is what is the theory underlying? the practice of scenario planning and to explain that there's a metaphor I really like from a Management book about scenario planning by keys van der huden and he says when you're driving down a road And it's snowing really hard. We've all had this experience or maybe hard rain You know, you you wouldn't turn off your headlamps But obviously the headlight is only going to show you so far down the road. You might prepare for your trip by Taking other steps by thinking about You know the speed you'll travel and when you pull over based on is it curvy or straight? Do you have a map that can suggest the kind of obstacles ahead? So even if you're not sure exactly what road you're on You can you can do planning which will you know improve your ability to get to where you want to go And so the metaphor kind of breaks down at a certain point But I think you get the idea and so he complements that with this chart Which I I you know really like And it points out that forecasting might play a role Especially in the short term so on the x-axis here. We have the the distance into the future And there's a certain momentum to the economy to demographics That we can observe and monitor and to a certain extent predicts Where the strength of scenarios come in is when the force of the predetermined factors today Is becomes overwhelmed with uncertainty But it's it's not a Long-term super long-term thing. That's the realm of science fiction That's why I don't call myself a futurist. They're concerned with the the very long term And you know, it has it's there's a role for that in our culture, but it's not planning And so in the planning field, you know often the the predetermined factors are current infrastructure Current institutions to a certain extent, but then uncertainties you can consider is the location um in character of different types of growth um, and external uncertainties like climate change uh, natural hazards, uh, even cultural and technological change um, I liked Stefan's question and I'll think about it and we can address it at the end And then to kind of finish the thought here In scenario planning literature that there are many versions of this chart, which um, is called either a scenario cone or a Scenario funnel and the point is that we are at a particular moment in history and time and there's You know various futures that are plausible and they may be more or less likely more or less desirable And but the the forces that will influence which one we get to could be decisions that certain individuals or institutions make It could be disruptive events. It could also just be long-term trends playing out like shifts of in preference or shifts in attitude and so the art of scenario planning is Creating a set of these plausible futures that serve the goals of the particular project and some versions of this Cone have more or less detail, but this I think captures the basic essence of it And so then kind of shifting to a little bit more specific Realm, you know, okay, I get this general idea. It seems interesting How do we actually use this in our field and I divide practice into three basic categories? It's a little bit artificial, but I think it helps map it out but first are what sometimes called normative projects that are focused on really trying to The whole purpose is to get a single scenario everyone likes But the the purpose of creating the scenarios is not only to ensure the desired scenario is very rigorously developed and thought through but also clarify why that scenario is the choice Then there is another big category called exploratory And within that I subdivide that into two categories Some are more focused on decisions and discrete options and they tend to be more technical and more Quantitative and I'll show some some examples others are more qualitative and They're more about let's build an understanding of the future. We're not sure what decisions we may want to analyze or regret so let's do an exploratory analysis of What could be plausible and only then decide exactly the kinds of more specific Plans that we might need to produce and so, you know, my point here on all these is they're aiming in quite different professional outcomes You know, is it you're building a consensus? You're trying to make better decisions. Do you just want to be enlightened and therefore You know, they it's just something to be mindful of that, you know, there's there's no one Clear outcome that cuts across all of scenario planning if you want to evaluate how successful was this given project So then I want to just show some examples again these there'll be citations It's like super brief just show some graphics and then we can discuss these or others in more depth Okay, like normative scenarios. What is the conceptual approach? There's really two out there That I'm aware of that kind of common The organ model, you know is used a lot of land use planning. So you start with your base year you create your reference scenario You know, it's it's really kind of what if we don't really change that much? What would the world look like? We're careful not to say it's a prediction because often and often if we don't change anything it's going to be Have horrible traffic and you know, nobody really wants that future But you know, what would it result in and then you create a set of alternative scenarios and again often it's like You know smart growth new urbanists Crusading practitioners using this as a framework to highlight for stakeholders the choices that they face And then from the alternatives you you typically develop a kind of synthesis of of ideas that have support into a preferred scenario It leads directly to implementation Rezone this build the brt, you know, so on and so forth One critique of that approach is you often don't result in a very Aggressive scenario, let's say, you know, you're a lot of compromise involves and I just want to point out that you can do this differently And so back casting is like let's start with a very aggressive goal and they define that as sustainable mobility Which for them is like, you know, zero C or two emission and then how do we Work backwards to figure out the set of policies that are needed to achieve that goal So so I think that's been a little bit less common, but you know, the more and more Urgency communities feel around transformation the more maybe we should promote this as a as an alternative Just a couple examples just give you a sense of the diversity This comes from the city of Madison, Wisconsin And they were doing a master plan You know a lot of the regional projects use scenarios to look at alternative land use patterns And this is this one was a little bit different. They said, well, you know, actually we we we have a land use pattern that we Have agreed on and there it is a kind of classic land use Map and what we want to do is use the scenarios to Explore what would happen under our existing, you know, land use categories If more or less of the growth was contained in the in their urban core versus at the periphery And that they thought that was important because they want were Debating things like whether to build high capacity transit and whether and where to Prioritize infrastructure to really try to catalyze greater growth And they model these scenarios using a tool called urban footprint, which I use in my in my classes One of many different scenario planning tools and created Quantitative metrics about different environmental outcomes And again, this is a scenario that all the the total amount of growth is the same across all three It's just like, you know, if we put people in different types of neighborhoods You know what the impact could be And this interesting thing here, you know, does any of these scenarios claim to be an extremely accurate Kind of prediction and I I think that kind of Philosophy going on here is the of course, you know, no one can predict today if you grow here Here's how many miles they'll drive the philosophy is a little bit different. It says that if you were to However, the tools and methods we have enable us to sensibly compare the scenarios So, you know, we we do have a sense that certain land use patterns will result in more sustainable travel And the tools can help us compare them Even if we recognized all of these are kind of point estimates with an unknown margin of error around them And so you just have to believe the tool is pragmatically useful enough for that comparison Not necessarily that it's giving you a super accurate point estimate in the future and and You know, and I think again the scenario logic calling attention to that level of uncertainty about what we know But also the need to make thoughtful decisions today even given our inability to make Predictions, you know You know highly accurate predictions about the future of cities So what do they do with this outcome? Well, they adopted what they call growth priority areas not mandated, you know, in their State enabling law at all and that coordinated investments and transportation and other infrastructure choices Around nodes that had been identified through the whole process of constructing the scenario So I thought that was kind of an You know, classic spatial planning endpoint and in the lots of debates about how do we Densify and increase housing supply, you know abolishing single-family zoning may be fine and good But actually enabling and deliberately planning for greater density is a whole other challenge And that's the type of thing that they're tackling here And then Kind of shifting scales from the city scale back out to the city scale To a regional scale I found the small MPO in Idaho for this whole working paper. I was seeking Small unusual suspects whose work hadn't ever been written up in the planning literature and and this You know little crossroads. It was a little it's a trading center along the Oregon Trail Crossroads town has a small university And they created conceptual scenarios that have some spatial elements and they realized they had no consensus about how to grow And so they created, you know, a great place to business outdoor life. There's the trend, you know, There's a university living scenario and then from that exercise identified a set of land use changes and transportation investments That they called their preferred scenario So they're if they in Idaho can do it then the MTC in New York or sem cog in Detroit can do it as well It's not super expensive I think I might I'm not going to pause to explaining great depth only to say that these qualitative exploratory studies are Based in, you know, in-person workshops. This is what a lot of business leaders have done And they involve brainstorming and categorizing Different uncertainties affecting the city and this is a case study from the city of Denver It was an internal exercise before they launched their comp plan And there's a whole I could there's a whole someone's written a whole management book about this And they kind of resulted in descriptions of possible futures and the outcome here was really to identify issues and Set the stage in a broader more conceptual way for the more specific planning as a follow-up for the book I did a more I have a more recent japa paper is published this summer and What's the point of the graphic on the right? Well, what we showed was when it comes to exploratory scenarios there's lots of different ways of Incorporating that into professional practice and some of these projects the exploratory exercise more or less is a kind of like interesting boardroom exercise to Kind of generally set the stage for a more conventional plan And in others the exploratory exercise is very much about constructing A concrete scenario which does evolve into a kind of preferred, you know Consensus plan and the point of our article is to map out this whole spectrum of approaches And really all of them are you starting with a kind of qualitative analysis of uncertainty? And then some go more into analytics others go more into other forms of qualitative analysis and So, you know read the paper. Um, so there's no one Right way which I think you know makes this idea both attractive but also a little intimidating for practitioners And then You know shifting through my categories here, and then there's a category about Decision-oriented analytical scenarios. So, okay You're so well, that's yeah these management scenarios that are just kind of a gestalt about what might happen in the city. That's nice but what about using it for modeling and this is a Project it's the MPO is housed in the city of Bloomington, Indiana Which is where Indiana University is located But the way that the MPO is drawn is they they're they include their whole county. And so there's lots of Very politically conservative rural areas, and they're also not, you know Not at all seeing eye to eye with their state department transportation around building a freeway and freeway exits and so They use their planning their plan to Really analyze and highlight the range of choices. So they first created Nine socioeconomic land use scenarios. So there's different levels of growth and then there's different development styles Maybe a note about this. I'm not sure that this project is Let's just say it's a little bit unusual and I'm not sure that everything they did is that effective But I think it's a sort of extreme case that we could reflect on so each of these land use and Economic scenarios has you know different percentages of employment in different places different, you know, mixture of housing densities And a bunch of other things and so different school enrollment numbers And so then just when you think you can wrap your head around this they Combined the these kind of land use scenario with a whole bunch of different network scenarios. They say well people are talking about Building a bunch of different projects, you know as I-69 extension Interchanges in different places two-way streets in the city of Bloomington And so let's run you all these through so the result is this mind-boggling set of scenarios It spills over into two pages to show all the different indicators And so then they furthermore, you know are saying well, we not only care about top-level transportation indicators. We want sustainability, you know You know traffic fatality estimates all kinds of things and so that you can see they've resorted to the kind of excel Shading to show try to give you a sense of the performance of these of these different scenarios. So Okay, this breaks all the rules in terms of the cognitive theory around scenario planning because there's too many to keep in your head So I'm not sure this exercise is like convincing an elected official that smart growth is the way to go on which You know the a four scenario project can help clarify But the purpose of this project was to create a plan so that when the MPO was debating very specific projects They would have at their fingertips the impacts of the of those choices already computed and I think in those terms They think the plan was very useful and you know, they created something which they can refer back to and when The state DOT says well, we still want to really build that that interchange they can say well, you know here We've run the numbers. We know it's going to increase VMT and You know increase accidents and we can achieve a similar performance through other other measures in the region So that's the kind of debate they're getting into Being mindful of the time here. I have some slides about tools, which the last example gets into um, but I think maybe I'll Skim over them and we can revisit them in discussion You know only to say that they're you know in theory you can use You know a wide variety of tools the cases I've shown have certainly used various technologies Although there isn't a special You know affiliation with these place type development and analysis tools Which is a subcategory and scenario building and I do have a sidebar and kind of comment in the note I think that urban sim and models like it tend to to have Bake in a conservatism which hinders their ability to Realistically model different scenarios whatever assumptions you put in you always get like the outcome that looks like the training data the past and four-step travel models have a whole set of well-known flaws which In the scenario realm there they are used the last project did use them, but there's some concerns around the their suitability And these place type Tools because they're a little bit of the oddball in terms of the planning realm You know really created by kind of analytical designer minded planners you build up from a building Set of building ROI models and you create development types which describe neighborhoods you can paint them You then can compute this is how Imagine Madison could come out with quantitative numbers Because they have a quantitative assumptions around the land uses and then they're applying You know either some of these are just calculated And then others are applying empirical studies from the planning literature to create future estimates or predictions Okay, so you've gotten you know the main ideas just make some notes for those who are curious about additional Kind of chapters the whole section about evaluation and the evaluation literature and planning And how we should think about Evaluating practice. I made a brief reference to the transformation chapter which goes much more in depth about Racial equity as a particular dimension of transformation on which I wrote before the recent Black Lives Matter protests and but I think You know, it's been no secret in planning That's something that we've been seeking to grapple with more effectively and I Try to provide some fodder for that in the book And then I do say a little bit more In the book about collaboration collaborative planning theory Happy to talk About those issues in the discussion In the abstract for the talk I optimistically suggested I would share about some ongoing research and I have three projects That I'm I'm seeking, you know, so a lot of my research is some of it is You know really observing and learning from practice Um and some of it is in more conventional social science or GIS methods But then I've become involved in three more ambitious engaged research projects with stakeholder involved in where I hope in different ways to bring in and implement scenarios really to kind of create Let's say methodological scholarly outcomes like how like how what scenario approaches could practitioners use and but but I think You know because of the pandemic and And my own time, you know, they're the other two one is about regional land use Change and green infrastructure planning in southeast michigan So we have the first paper out about that just a remote sensing change analysis And we're looking at how do you bring in scenarios to plan green infrastructure to incorporate climate uncertainty? so And then there's one a smart mobility project working very closely with a lot of engineering faculty But you know the pandemic not only do we cancel our in-person workshops has slowed down some of the The other aspects so I don't necessarily have the slide on that and then the third project or thread You know the kind of as a side project in the last year and a half I Partnered with a legal organization and conducted the first big empirical study of evictions in the state of michigan and getting Invictions filing data statewide and we have a paper Under review at housing policy debate in their evictions issue that reports the kind of social science findings around neighborhood determinants But from that work, you know, we in that paper we we realize that really evictions are Like many urban issues a function of a broader, you know systemic process where landlord behaviors Certainly planning policies housing affordability But also the you know legal advocacy and the legal system itself play a role And so my kind of idea there, you know evictions a very hot kind of topic and you know with good reason But I think planning You know can and should engage with it in a different way than than say a housing expert and and I was intrigued I found this paper in the annual review of public health It's you know a little too quantitative for my like this is they actually turn their conceptual model into a system dynamics quantitative model, but what they're Calling attention to is looking at homelessness From a systems perspective and thinking about how do we coordinate? policies across multiple sectors and think about how they might be mutually reinforcing or mutually contradictory in order to you know aim at the outcome where we're heading heading for it So I have a vision eventually post tenure, you know of Attempting something similar and we've formed a lot of stakeholder relationships Locally, and I think you know, there is a lot of funds in the homelessness and housing realm and a lot of different programs But they're not necessarily We learned through our consultation on the eviction project well coordinated to minimize eviction And we think there is ideas about how to Make changes across multiple, you know Institutional actors, you know that might include legal reforms, but also changes to how emergency housing funds are allocated things like that That actually might help move the needle on the high volume of evictions, which we now know From Matthew Desmond and others research is very detrimental to a whole host of kind of outcomes that we care about so so that's what I can say about evictions and Just to conclude, you know my Point here, you know where to go further So I've made reference to a number and on the slides of some of the specific publications that so most of it's from the book But then there's some other things I've created a kind of faculty page that kind of catalogs all of that But maybe more broadly if I've Pete your interest in scenario planning practice. There is a professional initiative hosted by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. They've been a huge supporter of Scenarios and advancing scenario practice and this is an organization, you know full disclosure. I'm on the board but it what I really enjoy about it is it's it's kind of You know public sector planners. It's private sector consultants and tool creators. It's academics and You know some kind of more citizen activists and we're all You know interested in this issue. We have an annual symposium This year it'll be virtual in January although virtually hosted in Salt Lake City And we also have other educational peer exchange activities sponsor publications Do an RFP to sponsor innovative tools and and research, etc So anyway, there's our website and I'm happy to discuss that So I think with that said I will wrap and then really Excited to engage with those of you who are on the line about what resonated with you what questions you have And we can take this in any direction you like Thank you so much Thanks, Dr. Grisby. Um, yeah, so as I mentioned at the beginning of the call Anyone who's still on please feel free to just type your questions into the chat box and we'll try to Address those and we're happy to have a little bit more of a discussion as well um, so I think the the first question that I see is coming from Stefan who asked um Why do you think scenario planning practice typically has a reputation of being normatively constrained For less emancipatory and what are some of the historical and social factors that explain the origin of that subject? This is an excellent question and I'm going to give you some it's a question that I I I just have some rudimentary thoughts about that I I hope to Further develop and give you the article. I think this question can only answer by an article eventually, you know So so but that's a side of a great question. So, you know, here's what observation is I think the scope of what is accepted to be considered by plans either in terms of alternative policies or Uh, is actually it varies by place and it varies based on the planning culture and it's because you know planning Is interacting with the kind of political culture of a place and one dimension of politics we appreciate is You know the the public policy field that there's a lot of talk with the overton window You know, what are the set of policies or possibilities? Which can be discussed in play company and that evolves over time And I think you know an activist player role in stretching or pushing the issue on certain dimensions But also the interests of the institutions and the powerful actors themselves themselves and about, you know What they'll allow be discussed and what power they have to squelch discussion So I think that explains like maybe one thing which is The the sheer choice to use scenarios is itself something which says something politically and there are certainly planning contexts where planners are never asked or never supported to create scenarios and The powerful interests don't want to know those alternatives. They they own the land They they only want a single future and they you know, they So there's a kind of a little bit of tension there. Um, now I don't think it's predetermined. I think practitioners um Do do and can exert agency and say you've asked me to write a plan. I'm going to create scenarios I'm going to show that our current policies are bad Simplified and I'll y'all give an example in arbor is a small city We were growing really rapidly our former council majority was all Mindy's who were opposed to High-density development and almost all neighborhood and so the the uh, the planner was writing a new comp plan Kind of they're very intrigued by scenarios. They've met me But they weren't politically in a situation where they could even do that type of plan Well, there's been a change the the council's totally changed over And so they're going to move ahead and do their scenario based plan. So that's that's kind of one level of analysis um, you know, and I think maybe a deeper one is If planning has done collaboratively, it has to be, you know, you're you're not entering Like from like a speculative future like an architect would like like here's my dome over Manhattan You're entering into the intellectual world that exists Which is so that speaks to the political but it's also speaks to the level of understanding and of What what a city is today and what it could be in the future and that that itself varies as well And so you see a lot of regions go through an evolution where the first Scenario plan is like very minimal like let's just look at a few land use options And it's like an appendix on our report But they use that to educate people to think differently and then they can build on that with You know more and more ambitious or elaborate They're not only normatively pushing the envelope but then also once you get people to kind of accept the Framework then you can add on issues they can say well, we're going to do it again But we're going to add in sustainability like you know Whereas if you hit them rate it from from the front they might say well, I don't care about sustainability I want to know only the travel metrics and plus, you know, it's kind of confusing there's too many new ideas coming at them So so that's another kind of evolution But then there's an element of collaborative practice I think a lot of practitioners aren't that collaborative and you got to get through You can't just plan within the framework that you're starting from you have to figure out a process that will help you You know kind of Foster the education that will get beyond it and to open people's minds and there's a whole art there And there's an art of how you engage stakeholders who you engage There's an art in how you convey the scenarios and I have a chapter in the book kind of talking about You know, so there's not much social science on that stuff But it's obviously super important to the effectiveness of the methodology. So so anyway, um So collaboration is hard and has a bad rap as Only leading to the lowest common denominator, but I you know, there's I agree that orchestrating public education is Is hard and is costly and it is risky and there's plenty of places where the practitioners, you know I think the Bloomington one they they didn't really It was kind of a back room exercise and that's You know, they made their own choices around what to do, but you can appreciate You know now they have the super technical plan that they probably have elected officials that don't really understand And so even if you say look look at column 11, you know, that says we shouldn't do that How how much is that going to resonate based on that? You know the the Idaho example, which is more similar to what's been done in lots of metros where Yeah, the elected officials. Well, I remember we we looked at the blueprint You know the the accepted, you know scenario with these centers performed a lot better You know now you're making sense to me. So so those are a few different thoughts about that Um Whoops about that issue. Thank you and I'll Now we I talked so long. We have a lot more questions, which is great. And so we'll Jenna you can tell me where to go next. Yeah Uh, yeah, sure. We have another question from joe who asked How does scenario planning work in shrinking regions? Maybe like southeast michigan where The issue is managing decline rather than growth and where perhaps none of the reasonable scenarios are good Is there An inherent bias in this method, especially since it's usually instigated by political actors Towards positivity and inspiring visions of the future Yep, absolutely. So you can hear there's definitely a link there in that shrinking regions There's like a more intense commitment to boosterism, you know, the elites are like cling into it and that's definitely Like why like the city of Detroit being like, you know case number one of them. Um However, uh, there's a few Other responses one would be I think the vibrant neo project done for the Cleveland region Was very intriguing. It's an obama sustainable communities. You're all, you know, big regional planning initiative and they have They actually modeled and considered not only regional Scenarios that how it have total growth in employment and jobs but also decline and then they compared if we Let's see they had two axes to create four scenarios. This is the power of a simple framework I can remember it off the top of my head. One of them was do we You know, basically we Stayed the same or grow and the other one was do we grow, you know, grow the same way or do we grow different? And so they're kind of a mixture of growth and it actually come to think of it It wasn't declined per se but let's just say stagnant totals that may be restructuring within the region And so, you know, I think they showed Absolutely, they did have to like figure out how to tweak urban footprint to like model decline But they showed that the framework where you have support for it can in You know be used to look at a more rust belt situation And then a kind of follow-up is the consortium for scenario planning We've been very aware that a lot of the practice is very growth oriented our recent Uh, kind of research RFP was around methods for shrinking regions and I know participants The creators of community biz Have an idea for how to technically model decline And I've convinced them to do The a small city of st. Joseph and benton harbors between city and michigan with a kind of post industrial Past and a lot of racial segregation And we're getting local stakeholders there to be there kind of anything so so, you know The point is that's an area that practitioners and All of us in the field are trying to improve But I you know, I completely concede that it's another dimension of planning culture, which is You know that you have to reckon with if you're if if you want to implement this methodology in different regions so There you go So the next question comes from monish who asked Can you talk more about how your book might help us think about multiple futures? We're long-standing social processes like race racial discrimination effect planning outcomes like transportation equity or housing equity Yeah, so I I remember when you when you write a book For academic publishers and this is published by Lincoln, which has a kind of quasi academic approach Your manuscript is read by experts and one of the Comments they gave me on the draft is they said We you we have a sense you you want serpents to be Different than the way it's practiced and that was really clarified for me and that that's why I pulled out those ideas about How do we be more emancipatory and Address equity better equity is a minor theme and a few scenario-based projects, but I don't mean here. I'm not super Satisfied about it and I put it in its own chapter, but so that's a way of explaining that Let's see what the chapter I point out that You know, we we already know that you can do things like opportunity mapping to empirically analyze Current equity, there are also some examples of You know, then taking a further step of analyzing a scenario through an equity lens So that's being done another dimension of equity is obviously inclusion And the politics of planning I made reference to that case of each of kind of ej activists Making substantive arguments and shaping the plan and you know, but then the final one would be You know, take it to its kind of conceptual extreme as like how do you Not only model where we place the affordable housing or something or how transportation can improve accessibility But also like what if the underlying mechanisms that produce segregation and inequity are modified and No planner has done that There's a strategic planning process that actually some corporate leaders in metro Detroit ran where they They had like race relations, you know their term in the 80s as a major theme and they really discussed it And so I think there's a taboo in professional practice around Engaging too much in conversations about race, but I think that's being Challenged and I think there are you know counter examples and another example I mentioned the book is Gwinnett County, Georgia, which went from in the 90s being You know overwhelmingly White bedroom suburb of Atlanta to being a very diverse multi ethnic county with lots of immigrant enclaves And so the the scenario based plan that they wrote Actually discusses The racial and ethnic diversity and they map out all the communities they did engagement And then they kind of build their land use and economic strategy on Like speculating about like what if the entrepreneurial activity and some of these immigrant communities we is reinforced and so it's again, it's like You know from a black lives matter point of view It's like pretty milk toast stuff But I thought it was pretty intriguing because it's like a county government That is not afraid of ethnic diversity and talking about it And is is not afraid of being creative and and recognizing You know, not only that these different communities exist and they have different interests, but also like You know thinking about how do they relate to one another and how do we build on them as an asset and in order to you know Functionally, you know economic development Isn't always aimed at empowering immigrant communities, but that plan kind of gets into that realm a little bit So so I guess I don't have a whole lot to tell you but I did my best with what I learned about and I have some Speculations in the chapter and and I'm really excited to see the kind of next generation of practice and Where we we've all read Richard Rossi's book, you know, we're all we're all there in a different way than Five ten years ago Or even older some of these earlier projects and therefore I think the stage is set for more creativity And then I see Melissa as a comment Uh, yep. So Melissa asked or Melissa said, uh, I work in post disaster recovery planning with FEMA I often come across communities that would love to do scenario planning But they do not have the capacity in house so they may seek consulting services and that can take a long time I'm wondering how I can connect these communities to tools or services quickly after disaster Are there tools that you can recommend with low barriers? That are less technological or more intuitive Um, great question. Um Uh, I have yeah, there's Um, two quick answers. Um, and I'm Doing what you should never do is trying to pull off something in real time here Um, uh, one answer is one colleague of mine here in my program, uh, Dick Norton Richard Norton um has Has done a lot of work, um with Coastal communities here in the Great Lakes and has a japa article Where they you know, and the the climate change impact here is not So the Great Lakes, it's very dynamic. So actually climate change may mean higher or lower lake levels as well as more increased severity of storms and flooding and so So anyway, he's created a more streamlined Kind of analytical approach of like mapping out those those options and helping local communities Um Under, you know, look at their current land use regulations under alternative climate scenarios and so His whole point was now he did get some additional funding to do it but As that kind of applied research project, but he is seeking to to systematize it as you know, so I think for every You know FEMA category, you know, there might be things like that which Sure, it takes some capacity building, but it but there could be a kind of technical and methodological toolkit that you provide them And and so that's one answer It it's that was it's kind of a GIS based analysis. The other The other answer is the I kind of made brief reference to these more qualitative approaches to Scenarios and scenario planning and you know, they The resources that they require I found it so Is um now it requires a different type of resource It requires really an expertise to guide an expert to guide you through the methodology But I think in terms of opening up interest in the method and creating a space to Just think about like what are the hazards we want to consider and our need to consider And so the the the methodology um Jeremy Stapleton Actually was involved in that Denver case and has recently written this Lincoln publication, which my copy is a home Full color very detailed workshop agendas You know process maps. I mean it really is like The gets to that nuts and bolts level which my book doesn't doesn't really get to And so if you could interest somebody who either Is very intrepid and would like sit down and read this and like try it out And and it's a little bit intimidating but like, you know, it'll tell you how to do it Or you know, you just have to create the resources for like the single consultant or something to come in and help you through it So um, so anyway, those are a few answers that come come to mind. Well, we're talking I'll try to Find the The other reference so Yeah, here we go So, um, this is uh, Dick Norton's work. So it was written written up in Planning magazine here and then um, this is the japa article explaining it so Thanks for that. Um, does the um link and institute for land policy ever Have interest in connecting for example, like in Right now I'm working with Hurricane Laura um Yeah, what I can say about that is I think I'd convene the One area of practice where scenario planning is most mature is more in the land use realm But the consortium for scenario planning has been very interested in making inroads in the hazards area and uh, and You know conceptually one thing that I find exciting about scenario planning is it doesn't really respect these Little silos that we have that are field in it, you know A land use issue can be natural hazards issue can be an equity issue all at once. So Um, I I invite you to follow up with me. We would love to talk with you and we've been making Efforts to build bridges to that community. Yep Thank you Let's see. I'm not seeing any other questions in the chat box. Um, But I would definitely welcome anyone else to Ask their questions now I do I do have one question. Um So it seems like scenario planning sort of has the potential to bring up Kind of uncomfortable or controversial Conversations about the future particularly when thinking about something like climate change And I was curious whether in your research or any of the case studies you looked at whether uh communities have Whether uh communities have sort of encountered pushback about scenario planning as sort of A tool to guide future planning decisions and if so how Have those communities kind of navigated that Yeah, there's um One example that immediately comes comes to mind. Um is um Uh a case study that I Mentioned in the book, um the Was in the austin texas Region and it was a recipient. Um, what was it called the sustainable places project spp? And it was a regional Sustainable communities regional planning grant recipient to do Basically, they had already identified Communities at the periphery that um where there was high growth And so the funding was not to do a regional visioning thing which they'd already done But instead look at in very detailed collaboration with the local jurisdiction not within the city itself It's these outlying cities to do basically land use planning To accommodate growth in a way that would advance the community's goals and and you know, there's an overlay here of You know the sustainability concept in terms of urban form and and That kind of thing and so anyway that project There is a conservative talk radio host who heard about it And so you might recall that there was this agenda 21 conspiracy theory that held that the obama administration through the sustainable communities program was seeking to impose un world order and build super high density housing and You know violate our freedoms or something. So um that he encouraged people to come to their public meetings And so then um, I flew down to austin to collect data and I was like kind of consultant to you know Helping them evaluate their workshops and using new tools So they had to figure out what to do and so they they kind of said um at the onset They were like if you're not here to put us in this project We'll physically remove you and they had a police officer there and um It was a little tense, but it was intriguing because some of the people that stayed Also told me that they like hated zoning and hated liberalism But they were like not a conspiracy theorist. So it's kind of interesting distinction. Um, they're like, but you know They're smart enough to know like yeah, the The municipality does do these things and if they want their viewpoint considered They should be at the table. Um, but they were willing to participate in what they're just making points. So um, you know So anyway, that was one experience. Um, I guess overall though The way it has played out is I think scenario planning really focuses not on rhetoric and political positions, but more on like the um, you know You know data driven is in the title kind of on data or the evidence and and you know, I it would be an interesting meeting where someone to say Oh, here's the You know, so the climate change experts I'm working with in this green infrastructure plan have also run into this They work in various Michigan communities. We have a bunch of tea party legislators Bright red parts of our state and they say well the first thing first presentation We give is always just the historical trend in terms of precipitation intensity increasing the overall amount of precipitation increasing which is Average temperatures increasing. So we don't we don't even need to talk about climate change. We can just ask today Are your plans and policies? You know appropriate given the weather we have today and climate we have today and then from there They then will get into climate science and you know, the the various scenarios of the future climate, but they They they don't claim to know any which one they they present kind of the climate scenario works So so nice they feel that that has worked pretty well on So I think that those are that's you know, some different points of view I mean that's something I realize is You know, let alone what we think about the appropriateness of decisions We're making today for the future is are the decisions are making today based on the best knowledge of What the world needs today, you know, we're still widening freeways and plenty of places. We're still You know Have certain types of zoning and so the whole act of planning can just be about Asking people like hey like these are this is like what's happening. Is this working? Is this what your goal is for your community and You know, the answer is no I think there's a deeper thing here. Maybe a metaphysical issue where Deeper cynicism about the future will further threaten the viability and supportive planning. So that's a kind of Cocktail party conversation I don't know how to think about that other than you know, there's this element of you know of hope or pragmatism that The whole profession sort of rests on and if you kick that out, then you're kind of left with Dialism or maybe just pure politics or something or some other mode of social action So but i'm still committed to planning, but I got to say current events are not encouraging So, you know, like, you know, we're all wrestling with that about what is the nature of the practice that we want to commit to Thank you. Yeah, I see I see one more question from Christine She said i'm interested in combining scenario planning with adaptation pathways by identifying transfer points that indicated it's time to move to an alternate scenario And she's curious what you thought about that Yeah, our uh christine, are you referring to the sustainability transitions literature Or more from the adaptive management literature Or both or Uh more from adaptive management literature Okay. Yeah, I have some some knowledge there What one area of practice, um, I think And this relates to like I showed you that code, right? So it's very Seductive can't we shouldn't scenarios also be about the path we're going to move through the possible future? That's you know, it's a kind of an adaptation lens. Um, and I think in certain around but to do that you often have to Uh, the the the challenge in doing that is the kind of planning I'm talking you know talked about you can we can appreciate that there's Multiple dimensions simultaneously being considered in terms of like the performance and the choices of a set of things so Where I've seen people who have a more kind of pathway mindset It tends to be in planning realms like largely concerning water and water resources planning and it kind of makes sense because The decisions are are often just very discreet. Do we build this? reservoir project with this pipeline and also the resource is very discreet and readily modeled And although there's high uncertainty about climate and about precipitation You know If you can kind of vary that and deal with that and then you know model out, you know, um Everything else and you can see very clearly like oh at this under this climate scenario Like we run out of drinking water. So therefore we need to like do something else and go on a different path And there's a really great paper. Um, if you email me if you really want it That kind of takes this logic to an extreme It's done by some Europeans and they have a very complex set of like decisions And like I'm all for it in that realm But I suppose I haven't seen it done more broadly and I think it's more because it's just so much complexity like adaption for what ends and Also the whole evidence of I don't know how would you even identify a transfer point? It's Is a lot there and I think maybe we need to go in that direction Maybe people have and I'm not aware of the work, but but I think you can appreciate some of the challenges and In go in, you know that type of more elaborate practice Is that helpful do you have any follow-ups or thoughts? It's it's totally intrigued by the idea. It's and I think is very needed. It's just Maybe hard to pull off Yeah, thank you okay Yeah, and I think you know there's hard to pull off Maybe another element here like in the environmental field. I come to appreciate there there's a lot of proponents of adaptive management, but it's um Doesn't seem to be implemented in practice because you have to like kind of commit to I don't know. You know, there's still like a political stumbling block of like Even convincing people to manage in a different way. So I guess I'm not sure it's I think it's a management approach, but I think maybe scenario planning could further the arguments for alternative management You know paradigms including more adaptation It's not an either or is what I'm trying to say and and because I think like my knowledge of literature Like all the theorists and academics are like, we should all be doing adaptive management Collect its scientific data real time, but then the reality is hardly anyone does that So there's this the question of okay, how do we get to that point and and You know cascading ecosystem failures and wildfires. Okay. Well, maybe you know There maybe the politics are shifting so that and and or maybe scenarios can Highlight that to be ready and to manage better. We need to You know revisit fundamental assumptions about when and how policies are changed so But I my appointment is not at our natural resources school. So I think I'm it's probably like Bad adaptive management theory that I'm telling you so anyway Any um further questions here I'm not seeing any more questions in the chat. So unless anyone would like to jump in with A final question. I think we'll wrap things up around now All right, sounds great. Well, thanks again for the invitation and it was great to share The work and you know, I think you're the quite the questions you ask. I mean I Really exciting and suggest, you know, hopefully you and your different You know topical realms or professional careers can take something from this. It's useful and you know, there's Kind of no shortage of need. I think for for a field now and and I look forward to, you know, learning from you Maybe in in terms of following up or making me aware of different resources You know, how we can, you know better empower communities to plan with scenarios So I appreciate the the time and best of luck with your Semesters all things considered Thank you. Dr. Christine. I appreciate you coming. No problem Thanks