Scenario planning & its manifestation in plans

Urban planning deals with shaping communities, cities and regions with the aim of making them sustainable for future generations. One of the ways to plan for an unexpected future is by using scenario planning technique. This planning method produces a set of structurally different, but plausible futures that highlight outcomes of relevant policies / regulations and helps a community to prepare for the future. While scenario planning efforts are common, the extent to which it affects plans is not well understood. In this project, I study regional and city-wide plans of Austin and Denver with a view to analyze whether results of scenario planning process (preferred scenarios and ensuing policies and regulations) are incorporated into various planning documents of cities/regions or not? I started the process by reviewing scenario planning exercise of respective cities and regions, followed by review of regional and city plans with an aim to find connections between planning documents and scenario planning effort. It is a narrative account of how scenario planning exercises have helped in making informed decisions to address future concerns through respective plans. It is found that scenario planning helps in making informed decisions as to how regions and cities want to address and shape an unpredictable future. However, its usage lacks consistency as it is not used uniformly by local governments and organizations within a region. Austin benefits more from scenario exercise as complete process involves interaction between members of the community and representatives from local governing bodies, whereas Denver region predominantly uses it for policy making. Scenario planning is also recommended to be used with consistency within an entire region in developing and updating relevant plans so that there is a uniformity in the complete region as to how it wants to plan for and address the future both at local and regional level. The variation in the employment of this technique among cities / regions may be attributed to several factors including financial constraints, staff resources and non-availability of relevant data for creation of meaningful scenarios. The limitation of the study is that scenario planning results are hard to assess since they warrant time and implementation of all the prescribed policies / regulations elucidated in local and regional plans. Therefore, evaluation of the results should be carried out after due course of time in consultation with relevant authorities who can comment on implementation on policies.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.U.P.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Urban Planning

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2019

Author dc:creator

• Usman, Muhammad

Contributors dc:contributor

• Chakraborty, Arnab
• Lee, Bumsoo

• Future
• Planning

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2019 Muhammad Usman

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105825

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/105825