Sustainable and vibrant communities of the future are a result of proper planning. Shaping our Future: Community Planning Basics for Happier, Healthier, and More Sustainable Cities offers students and engaged citizens an introduction to the field of community planning. It covers a broad range of foundational topics needed by students to become effective city and community planners. Opening chapters provide an understanding of planning history, major actors, and theories. Tools and techniques of planning are presented subsequently along with chapters dedicated to specializations in planning such as housing and community development, transportation planning, land use planning, environmental planning, urban design, historic preservation, economic development, and disaster preparedness and mitigation. Planning ethics, public participation in the planning process, sustainable development, and the advent of big data in planning are also discussed, with a concluding chapter that showcases examples of planning overseas. Throughout, introductions, key terms, and end-of-chapter questions provide students with critical context and opportunities to reinforce key learnings. Planning projects and exercises challenge students to apply what they learn and build practical knowledge for real-world situations.

Where and who do we want to be? How might we get there? What might happen if we stay on our current course? In The Future of British Politics, comedian Frankie Boyle takes a characteristically acerbic look at some of the forces that will be key in coming years, from Scottish independence and post-colonial entitlement to big tech surveillance and the looming climate catastrophe. Despite his fears that 'soon the only red tape in this country will be across the finish line of the compulsory Food Bank Olympics', he manages to locate some hopeful signs amid the gloom, reminding us that 'despair is a moment that pretends to be permanent'. This brief but mighty book is one of five that comprise the first set of FUTURES essays. Each standalone book presents the author's original vision of a singular aspect of the future which inspires in them hope or reticence, optimism or fear. Read individually, these essays will inform, entertain and challenge. Together, they form a picture of what might lie ahead, and ask the reader to imagine how we might make the transition from here to there, from now to then.

Where and who do we want to be? How might we get there? What might happen if we stay on our current course? Comedian, writer and activist Grace Campbell was born into a political environment that suggested only aggressive, dominant men - like her father Alistair Campbell - were allowed power. Seeing this, she decided that if she wanted to be powerful she had to be like him, a decision that baffled the boys she grew up with. In The Future of Men, Grace draws on research, interviews and her own experience to examine how these dynamics and presumptions have shifted in her lifetime, and will continue to change in coming decades. Men have been writing about the future of women since words came into existence - now Grace returns the favour with this sharp, funny and personal essay. This brief but mighty book is one of five that comprise the first set of FUTURES essays. Each standalone book presents the author's original vision of a singular aspect of the future which inspires in them hope or reticence, optimism or fear. Read individually, these essays will inform, entertain and challenge. Together, they form a picture of what might lie ahead, and ask the reader to imagine how we might make the transition from here to there, from now to then.

Where and who do we want to be? How might we get there? What might happen if we stay on our current course? The Future of Stuff asks what kind of world will we live in when every item of property has a digital trace, when nothing can be lost and everything has a story. Will property and ownership become as fluid as film is today: summoned on demand, dismissed with a swipe? What will this mean for how we buy, rent, share and dispose of stuff? About what our stuff says about us? And how will this impact on us, on manufacturing and supply, and on the planet? This brief but mighty book is one of five that comprise the first set of FUTURES essays. Each standalone book presents the author's original vision of a singular aspect of the future which inspires in them hope or reticence, optimism or fear. Read individually, these essays will inform, entertain and challenge. Together, they form a picture of what might lie ahead, and ask the reader to imagine how we might make the transition from here to there, from now to then.

As his health begins to fail, a historian in the year 2084 sets out to document the irreparable damage climate change has wrought on the planet over the course of his life. He interviews scientists, political leaders and ordinary people all around the world who have suffered its catastrophic effects, from devastating floods and mass droughts to war and famine. In a series of short chapters, we learn that much of New York has been abandoned, 50 million Bangladeshis are refugees and half of the Netherlands is under water. This is all fiction. But it is rooted in scientific fact. Written by a professor of geochemistry, James Lawrence Powell, The 2084 Report accurately chronicles the future we will face if nothing is done to address the climate crisis. A vivid portrait of climate change and its tangible impact on our lives, The 2084 Report is a powerful prophecy and urgent call to action.

This handbook shows how the Asian Development Bank (ADB) piloted futures thinking and foresight to understand entry points to support transformational change and ?nance the future of Asia and the Paci?c. Futures thinking and foresight is a powerful planning approach that can help the region meet economic, political, social, and environmental and climate change challenges. The publication compiles lessons from an ADB initiative to apply futures and foresight tools in Armenia, Cambodia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, the People's Republic of China, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste. Futures terminology is introduced as are specific tools such as emerging issues analysis, scenario planning, and backcasting. It also describes how futures and foresight tools were applied in the countries.

A guide to long-term thinking: how to envision the far future of Earth.We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth's past and future life span. In this book, Vincent Ialenti offers a guide for envisioning the planet's far future--to become, as he terms it, more skilled deep time reckoners. The challenge, he says, is to learn to inhabit a longer now. Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises: the Anthropocene, our current moment of human-caused environmental transformation; and the deflation of expertise--today's popular mockery and institutional erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet's emergency. Astrophysicists, geologists, historians, evolutionary biologists, climatologists, archaeologists, and others can teach us the art of long-termism. For a case study in long-term thinking, Ialenti turns to Finland's nuclear waste repository "Safety Case" experts. These scientists forecast far future glaciations, climate changes, earthquakes, and more, over the coming tens of thousands--or even hundreds of thousands or millions--of years. They are not pop culture "futurists" but data-driven, disciplined technical experts, using the power of patterns to construct detailed scenarios and quantitative models of the far future. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to survive the Anthropocene.

Big ideas that just might save the world. the Guardian A serious book on an important subject. Without imagination, where are we? Sir Quentin Blake What if we took play seriously? What if we considered imagination vital to our health? What if we followed nature's lead? What if school nurtured young imaginations? What if things turned out okay? Rob Hopkins asks the most important question that society has somehow forgotten - What If? Hopkins explores what we must do to revive and replenish our collective imagination. If we can rekindle that precious creative spark, whole societies and cultures can change - rapidly, dramatically and unexpectedly - for the better. There really is no end to what we might accomplish. From What Is to What If is the most inspiring, courageous and necessary book you will read this year; a call to action to reclaim and unleash the power of our imaginations and to solve the problems of our time. Meet the individuals and communities around the world who are doing it now - and creating brighter futures for us all. At last, we have a design for our dreams. I believe we have a debt of honour to take action. Please read this book and defy the herd. Are we golden or are we debris? Mark Stewart, musician, The Pop Group and Mark Stewart & The Maffia