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This chapter considers how to, following David Harvey (1973), produce a genuinely humanizing smart urbanism. It does so through utilizing a future-orientated lens to sketch out the kinds of work required to reimagine, reframe, and remake smart cities. I argue that, on the one hand, there is a need to produce an alternative “future present” that shifts the anticipatory logics of smart cities to that of addressing persistent inequalities, prejudice, and discrimination and is rooted in notions of fairness, equity, ethics, and democracy. On the other hand, there is a need to disrupt the “present future” of neoliberal smart urbanism, moving beyond minimal politics to enact sustained strategic, public-led interventions designed to create more-inclusive smart city initiatives. Both tactics require producing a deeply normative vision for smart cities that is rooted in ideas of citizenship, social justice, the public good, and the right to the city that needs to be developed in conjunction with citizens.

Due to the limitations of conventional urban planning, it is essential to develop novel techniques of urban futruing. This paper aimed to use the scenario technique to create four plausible narratives of the future of Isfahan. Also, the authors described the problems of city foresight in the Global South.

This paper chronicles the Schwartzian steps taken to build explorative scenarios of Isfahan City in Iran in 2040. After using a STEEPV (Social, Technological, Environmental, Economic, Political, Value) analysis, the authors prioritized the collected variables by combining influence diagrams, the iceberg metaphor and an expert-based survey. Once the key uncertainties were derived, four scenarios were developed and discussed.

Through thematic analysis of the official visions of Isfahan’s future and the juxtaposition of these narratives with insight yielded in the scenario-development process, the paper concludes that the Northernness of the prevailing urban imaginaries, uncritical mimetic benchmarking, depoliticization of urban futures and the decorative reductionistic visions colonize urban futures in Isfahan/Iran. Critical/deconstructive city foresight and application of discomfort/ignorance criteria in the generation of scenarios can improve the rigor and quality of city foresight in the Global South.

The application of city foresight in the Global South has been limited. The paper is a step toward bridging this gap and providing some recommendations on how city foresight in the Global South might differ from its counterparts in the Global North.

Thinking and deciding about the future of the city as a combination of complex and uncertain systems is extremely difficult. This complexity, uncertainty and difficulty will be increased when our thoughts and decisions address the city’s long-term future. Considering these issues, the need for future thinking and alternate thinking in the process of urban management and planning becomes even more necessary. The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain the alternate futures of Tehran.

For this purpose, this study have tried to study alternate future images of Tehran in an archetypal form of “growth, collapse, disciplined society and transformed society” using “Dator’s Four Generic Alternate Futures” method.

These alternate futures, after identifying their key trends and drivers, have been narrated in the form of four scenarios called: “capital business center,” “crossing the fate of ray,” “Tehran family” and “Tehran investigators.” Increasing the authority and responsibility of the local governance, modification of Tehran urban management model and development of voluntary cooperation and democratic participation, are among the policy recommendations made on the basis of these images.

Achieving these images in parallel with identifying the most important challenges and opportunities in alternate futures will provide the basis for policy-making in Tehran’s future urban governance. It can be a creative model for developing future images for other cities.

The purpose of this paper is to map the outcomes of four influential South East Queensland city visioning and foresight initiatives conducted by the cities of Maroochy, Logan, Gold Coast and Brisbane.

This paper applies causal layered analysis to map the outcomes of four city visioning and foresight initiatives.

It is averred in this paper that cities need to map their experiences of past futures initiatives for what worked and what has resulted today, and for recommendations of futures actions and innovations.

This paper deepens the discussion about the critical features of the four initiatives by focusing on their outcomes and alternatives they could produce to influence the futures of their cities.

This chapter explores collective imageries of the distant future and unpacks how fuzzy frames that anticipate things-to-come lead to variations in “technological solutions” envisioned for the distant future. It suggests that these frames are characterized by the struggle over the construction of different future plots and the proselytization of divergent pathways to the future. Such frames are a product of collective anticipation, which refers to a set of ideas, imageries and beliefs about the future that can be located in the form of structures of knowledge, such as cultural artifacts, scientific products and political frames that shape the thinking of the collective. This chapter posits that the “fuzziness” of our frames anticipating the distant future could be reduced through a selective process where alternatives of the future are winnowed out by processes of selection and exclusion based on faith, values and evidence.

Over the last five years, governments, think‐tanks and public alike have re‐focused their minds on the future development of British cities. Why are such diverse social organizations producing visions of urban futures? What kinds of techniques and tools are they using, and what are their implications? What types of city do they envision? And most significantly, what are the resonances and dissonances between the development paths they propose?

The recent debate on smart cities research is challenged by the arrival of brand-new technologies and new ideas on their social impact. Beyond the hype and the expectations, the next generation smart cities research has to be grounded on the lessons learnt and the experience of the current extensive implementations of smart cities projects worldwide. Additionally, it is required to revisit the basic assumptions for the added value of smart cities research to the strategic blueprints around the world. This chapter is aiming to communicate a new agenda for future smart cities research including social, economic, technological, and community factors. The main contribution is organized around a framework that intends to integrate the technology sophistication, the human and social dynamics, and the strategy orientation of smart cities.

This paper aims to review the challenges of urban foresight via an analytical method: apply this to the city demonstrations on the UK Foresight Future of Cities: and explore the implications for ways forward.

The methodology is based on the principles of co-evolutionary complex systems, a newly developed toolkit of “synergistic mapping and design”, and its application in a “synergy foresight” method.

The UK Foresight Future of Cities is work in progress, but some early lessons are emerging – the need for transparency in foresight method – and the wider context of strategic policy intelligence.

The paper has practical recommendations, and a set of propositions, (under active discussion in 2015), which are based on the analysis.

The paper aims to demonstrate an application of “synergy foresight” with wide benefits for cities and the communities within them.

Large cities are and will continue to become important tourism destinations in foreseeable future. Tourists' motives of the present is the prognosis for their future tourists' behavior. In respond to the longstanding critics in city tourism study, the present research aims to examine the underlying motives of tourists visiting large cities and offer insights into fashioning tourism future for visiting large cities. The identified motives inform three distinct implications fashioning tourism future of large cities.

A quantitative investigation was performed by surveying city tourists. Measurements on the survey form were derived from both scholarly and grey literature in relation to tourists' motivations. 326 valid questionnaires were netted to attain the study aim. Three-quarters of respondents were from Europe, Australia and Pacific. Descriptive analysis and exploratory factor analysis were conducted to achieve the research aims.

Five underlying motives of tourists visiting large cities were revealed: shopping indulgence, urban commons, city icons, cultural and lifestyle and personal advancement. Mapping the findings with a conceptual scheme depicting tourism product in destination, the author revealed a new dimension, urbanity and offered critical reflection on three implications for the tourism future of large cities.

Literature examining city tourists' motives neglect the context-specific measurements while administering the investigation. The research design embraces the urban-specific measurements in the data collection tool, contributing to deeper understanding on how tourism functions in cities. A new dimension, urbanity, which illustrates tourists' motives exclusive in large cities, was identified. Furthermore, three implications fashioning tourism future of large cities are revealed with the support of empirical evidence.