Urban planning for the futures; urban foresight

Urban planning for the coming decades must accommodate rapidly changing global conditions and communities that accept the plausibility of multiple futures and more innovative approaches to reach them. The article explores the attributes of the changing contextual conditions and new urban planning requirements, global uncertainty, chaos, urban syntax and complexity of the urban systems. Urban foresight is also discussed within the arguments of Childs, Dixon and Tewdwr-Jones, UNDP foresight manual, and other sources, for a better understanding of its theoretical core. The article ends with a comparative discussion of the urban foresight tools that can deal with “known unknowns” about the future (Childs 2023), so that “not-knowing” the future (Miller 2011) becomes an anticipated normal that requires dealing with cities as open networked systems (Batty 2018). Being interactive, creative, experience-based or evidence based as mentioned by Popper 2008 is briefly discussed for better understanding of the planners’ choice of tools.