Considering uncertain futures in shrinking regions: Inventing, reinventing, and responding to narratives through scenario planning

Shrinking places experience a number of social, political, and economic barriers to engaging in future planning. Often, these barriers manifest through the form of narratives and stories which can inspire selective retelling and an inability to adequately address and prepare for uncertain futures. Narratives in shrinking regions tend to produce and reproduce themselves through the lens of the growth paradigm, ultimately leading to narratives that emplot experiences of shrinkage as “bad”. With the ‘entrepreneurial city’ or the ‘growing city’ as the dominant narrative attached to urbanism, cities experiencing shrinkage often reproduce narratives that push them towards growth-oriented planning responses. This thesis discusses the role of narratives in planning, narratives of shrinkage and how those narratives are produced and reproduced in shrinking places, and how scenario planning might create a process for reversing or challenging the reproduction of narratives and provide a platform for imaginative revision. Narratives of shrinkage are engaged through the analysis of planning documents and news stories from Peoria, Decatur and Danville using deductive coding. These documents and narratives perpetuate the growth paradigm through measures of success and planned strategies and highlight embedded feelings of defeatism and poor self-image. Scenario planning is discussed as a possible process to engage and transform these narratives while engaging future uncertainties, allowing communities to challenge growth-oriented ideas of success and prepare for the future with resiliency and robustness.

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

2022

Author dc:creator

• Walters, Emma Louise

Contributors dc:contributor

• Greenlee, Andrew J
• Chakraborty, Arnab

• Urban and regional planning

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2021 Emma Walters

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/113922

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F113922