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The purpose of this paper is to study the user experiences of the futures wheel method to investigate its suitability to advance futures thinking in the real estate field.

The user experiences of the futures wheel method are investigated through questionnaire answers of 114 master’s level students and real estate experts taking part in future wheel workshops.

The futures wheel method could enhance future-oriented thinking and decision-making in the real estate field. The respondents see futures thinking as an important skill and recognize several advantages concerning the method.

The futures wheel method bears great potential to be used in the real estate sector and it could be a fruitful addition to the curriculums at different education levels in real estate studies.

Futures thinking is essential when aiming for sustainable decisions in the real estate field which again would benefit the whole surrounding society.

This paper is the first published paper concentrating on the user experiences of the future wheel method in the real estate sector. The benefits and the disadvantages of the method are investigated but also the attitudes indicating the potential of the method to be successfully adopted in the field are analyzed.

This paper introduces a generic structure for a futures workshop, developed especially to be used in brief practically oriented foresight projects. Based on experiences of tens of dozens of workshops where this method has been used, this paper aims to inform and educate practitioners of futures studies on the method and discuss its characteristics.

The design of the ACTVOD workshop method was influenced by the need to have a futures workshop design that would encourage creativity and allow for the hosting of a futures workshop in a rather short amount of time. ACTVOD takes advantage from several theoretical insights and methods within futures studies. It combines elements from heuristic problem-solving, scenario workshops (focus on finding action plans towards desired future) and soft systems methodology.

ACTVOD is a rather easy and time-efficient way of producing and collecting good-quality insights on the future and bringing those insights to a practical level. Major challenges using it relate to the transition between workshop stages and on reporting, which relies heavily on participants' activity.

This is the first time the characteristics of the ACTVOD workshop method are thoroughly introduced in an academic journal. Learning of the method would be useful for practitioners of participatory futures studies methods, especially those who are frequently invited to facilitate short workshops for varying audiences.

The chapter aims to reflectively discuss a participatory research project concerning the future of higher education in Hungary. This project can be understood as an ongoing methodological experiment which attempts to engage teachers and students, in order to reveal how key stakeholders think about the future of higher education. In line with this, this methodologically oriented chapter shows how different participatory methodologies can be combined in a so-called backcasting framework. This approach starts by describing the present situation, then moves beyond the present conditions so as to identify the cornerstones of an ideal future state. On the one hand, the chapter gives a detailed introduction to how our participatory research process was set up and what particular methodologies we used during this process. On the other hand, it critically reflects on the methodological and ethical challenges involved.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new approach to the study of the future.

The paper describes six foundational concepts (the used future, the disowned future, alternative futures, alignment, models of social change, and uses of the future), six questions (will, fear, missing, alternatives, wish, and next steps as related to the future) and six pillars (mapping, anticipating, timing, deepening, creating alternatives, and transforming), giving examples and case studies where appropriate.

In an increasingly complex and heterogeneous world, futures studies can help people to recover their agency, and help them to create the world in which they wish to live.

The paper integrates and builds on a variety of futures studies' concepts, ways of thinking and techniques and integrates them into a new approach.

The purpose of this paper is to present findings, based on a report for the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA), of the preferred visions, scenarios and strategies of stakeholders articulated at a workshop held in Dubai from November 25 to 26, 2012.

The “six pillars” approach to foresight was used to articulate visions of preferred futures of over 50 international stakeholders, including representatives from the UAE Government, national and international donors, the private sector and leading scientists from universities and international scientific institutions. These visions were then translated into a strategic and business plan for ICBA.

The research center was successfully able to use foresight methods to develop a long-term strategic plan, continuing its history of innovation in knowledge-based research relating to saline and marginal environments. Novel visions and strategies for water and food futures were developed. A risk assessment of each vision was conducted.

This case study presents visions with scenarios and strategic pathways. It illustrates the utility in setting long-term visions first and then linking with strategic plans. Limitations include that the success of such a venture cannot be judged for at least five to six years. While in the short run, resources – human, partnerships, capital and leadership – have been mobilized, it is too soon to gauge real success of the foresight workshop, project.

The study shows links between visions, scenarios and strategic pathways.

The study includes valuable discussions by leading scientists of water and food futures as well as the organizational and leadership capabilities required to deliver alternative futures.

One of the few workshop-oriented interventions in the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) region using the anticipatory action learning six pillars framework is included. The study contrasts normal expert-based conferencing in the MENA region.

Contemporary urban and regional planning practice and scholarship often fails to address the full implications of technological change (technology blindness), lacks a clear or consistent definition of the long term (temporal imprecision) and seldom uses formal foresight methodologies. Discussion in the literature of time horizons beyond 10 years is, therefore, based on profoundly unrealistic assumptions about the future. The paper aims to discuss why conventional reasoning about possible futures is problematic, how consideration of long-term timescales is informal and inconsistent and why accelerating technological change requires that planners rethink basic assumptions about the future from 2030s onward.

The author reviews 1,287 articles published between January 2010 and December 2014 in three emblematic urban and regional planning journals using directed content analysis of key phrases pertaining to long-term planning, futures studies and self-driving cars.

The author finds that there is no evidence of consistent usage of the phrase long term, that timeframes are defined in fewer than 10 per cent of articles and that self-driving cars and related phrases occur nowhere in the text, even though this technology is likely to radically transform urban transportation and form starting in the early 2020s. Despite its importance, discussion of disruptive technological change in the urban and regional planning literature is extremely limited.

To make more realistic projections of the future from the late 2020s onward, planning practitioners and scholars should: attend more closely to the academic and public technology discourses; specify explicit timeframes in any discussion or analysis of the future; and incorporate methods from futures studies such as foresight approaches into long-term planning.

This paper identifies accelerating technological change as a major conceptual gap in the urban and regional planning literature and calls for practitioners and scholars to rethink their foundational assumptions about the long-term and possible, probable and preferable futures accordingly.

Many emerging technologies are being developed in an accelerating pace and are key drivers of future change. In foresight studies, usually their positive impact on the quality of life is considered or their negative environmental effects. This paper seeks to draw attention to an overlooked “dark side” of new technologies: their potential abuse by terrorists or organized crime. Recent cybercrime events are examples of abuse that perhaps could have been minimized if appropriate foresight studies were performed years ago. This was the aim of the recently completed EU-funded project FESTOS.

Several foresight methodologies were employed. Following a horizon scanning for potentially threatening technologies, a Delphi-type expert survey helped to evaluate critical threat characteristics of selected 33 technologies: the likelihood that each technology will actually come to pose a security threat (in different time frames), the easiness of its malicious use, the severity of the threat, and the most threatened societal spheres.

The results enabled ranking the technologies by their “abuse potential” and “threat intensity”. Certain emerging technologies (or their combinations), regarded as “weak signals”, inspired ideas for potential “wild cards”. In a subsequent workshop, which employed a variant of the “futures wheel” method, four wild-card “scenario sketches” were constructed. These were later developed to full narrative scenarios.

The entire process enables the introduction of security foresight into policy planning in a long-range perspective. The foresight results were followed by the evaluation of policy implications and coping with the knowledge control dilemma. The paper illustrates how a mix of foresight methods can help in a continuous analysis of new and threats posed by emerging technologies, thus raising awareness of decision makers and mitigating the risk of unforeseen surprises.

The paper aims to review all the techniques for developing scenarios that have appeared in the literature, along with comments on their utility, strengths and weaknesses.

The study was carried out through an electronic search using internet search engines and online databases and indexes.

The paper finds eight categories of techniques that include a total of 23 variations used to develop scenarios. There are descriptions and evaluations for each.

Futurists can use this list to broaden their repertoire of scenario techniques.

Scenario development is the stock‐in‐trade of futures studies, but no catalog of the techniques used has yet been published. This list is the start at developing a consensus list of techniques that can be refined as the field matures.

The purpose of this study was to determine in what ways the competence frameworks analyzed converge or diverge and whether they are similar enough to be considered equivalent.

This study is based on a comparative analysis of competence frameworks describing sustainability education and foresight and futures education.

This study finds that sustainability education and futures and foresight education differ in significant ways in terms of expected outcomes as described by competence frameworks. The two educational fields cannot be considered equivalent. Rather, we find that they are complementary.

This study is based on an analysis of competence frameworks that have been published in peer-reviewed publications. They do not necessarily reflect what is actually practiced in educational environments. Also, competence frameworks may be in circulation that have not been described in scholarly publications and are therefore not included in this study.

The results of this study can be helpful for further refining and developing both sustainability education and futures and foresight education by clarifying the different roles that they play in promoting the skills needed to address long-term challenges in uncertain futures.

The rapid rise in prominence of sustainability education, in particular, but also foresight and futures education, is indicative of current concerns about the future of our planet and the beings that inhabit it. There is a sense that a key role of education should be to contribute to a pursuit of positive futures for all. By clarifying how current educational practices address this need, this study contributes to the overall goal of education.

Sustainability education and foresight and futures education have been regarded as being at least similar enough that implementing one may preclude the necessity for the other. This study shows that there are significant differences between the two as they have been defined in published competence frameworks. In particular, it shows that sustainability education emphasizes the use of anticipatory intelligence for strategic planning, while foresight and futures education emphasize the generation of anticipatory intelligence. The two fields are found to be complementary in that they address different, but equally necessary, skills needed to address long-term challenges.

The paper aims to explore the gap between theory and practice in foresight and to give some suggestions on how to reduce it.

Analysis of practical foresight activities and suggestions are based on a literature review, the author's own research and practice in the field of foresight and futures studies, and her participation in the work of a European project (COST A22).

Two different types of practical foresight activities have developed. One of them, the practice of foresight of critical futures studies (FCFS) is an application of a theory of futures studies. The other, termed here as praxis foresight (PF), has no theoretical basis and responds directly to practical needs. At present a gap can be perceived between theory and practice. PF distinguishes itself from the practice and theory of FCFS and narrows the construction space of futures. Neither FCFS nor PF deals with content issues of the outer world. Reducing the gap depends on renewal of joint discourses and research about experience of different practical foresight activities and manageability of complex dynamics in foresight. Production and feedback of self‐reflective and reflective foresight knowledge could improve theory and practice.

Contemporary practical foresight activities are analysed and suggestions to reduce the gap are developed in the context of the linkage between theory and practice. This paper is thought provoking for futurists, foresight managers and university researchers.