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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.

By drawing on current reports, this paper positions that Homo sapiens could in the near future be faced with an increasingly uninhabitable planet. It emphasises the importance of adventure tourism and its associated activities as a means of supporting individuals to develop more outdoor survival skills.

This study applies a scenario narrative approach in exploring and presenting potential future ideas. The significance of narratives lies at the essential examination of current trends and drivers that could be shaping future scenarios. This paper, through the exploration of past and current trends supports the researcher in presenting future views. The scenario narratives in this research are established via desk-based research and inspection of academic journals, industry reports, ideas and knowledge.

If society is pushed to the brink of extinction due to a catastrophic event(s), people will require survival skills, similar to those shared by our hunter-gather nomad ancestor. Thus, this paper highlights the value and importance of the industry in encouraging soft and hard outdoor adventure in the coming years. It recognises how different adventure travel activities can support people in rekindling with our more basic instincts and ultimately, surviving in different natural environments.

This paper offers original theoretical knowledge within the adventure tourism literature. Offering original consideration to the value of exploring the past as a method of understanding the future, the paper presents an original spectrum of soft and hard skills-based adventure tourism activities.

The purpose of this study is to propose an innovative and efficient process in urban policy-making that combines a divergent and creative method with a convergent and strategic one. At the same time, the purpose is also to propose a useful innovation to enforce the usability of both methods. On the one hand, mission-oriented policies run the risk of being overly focused on the present and of not being able to develop preparedness in organization. On the other hand, scenario development has the reverse problem it often does not point out how to use scenario narratives to inform and devise short-term strategic actions.

The paper proposes an innovative methodological approach, the mission-oriented scenarios, which hybridizes Mazzucato's mission-oriented public policy framework with Jim Dator's Manoa school four futures method. The proposed methodological innovation emerges from a urban foresight academic-led project carried out in the context of the Metropolitan City of Turin, Italy, where a first application of the mission-oriented scenarios was tested on six different focal issues (from reindustrialization to cultural policies) and the scenario narratives were used as sources for the grounding of 12 missions and 48 strategic actions towards 2030.

Mission-oriented scenarios can contribute to the generation of more sustainable and inclusive urban public policies. This methodological proposal is based on an original mix of knowledge exchange procedures borrowed from methodological approaches with different backgrounds: the mission-oriented and the archetypal scenarios. Their conjunction could support the formulation of ambitious yet pragmatic policies, giving a plurality of actors the opportunity to act and establish fruitful and lasting partnerships.

The paper reconstructs one of the first urban foresight projects carried out in a major Italian city by two prestigious universities and exposes a methodological innovation resulting from reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of the project, which opens the door to the development of a new scenario technique.

This paper aims to propose a methodology for managerial decision-making based on scenario planning and a multi-criteria approach.

The methodology consists of two stages, one referring to scenario planning and the other to multi-criteria decision-making. The methodology was applied to a company in the Brazilian agribusiness sector, aiming to help managers face the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The proposal addresses a set of simple methods for developing a scenario analysis based on different approaches. Although the methodology may allow the future addition of new, perhaps more robust strategies, the purpose of the analysis is not only to tell the decision maker which strategy should be adopted, but also to provide greater knowledge about the problem and possible scenarios.

The contribution of this research is to propose a structured and easily applicable methodology that can help managers in the future planning of their companies, especially when faced with complex decisions and high level of uncertainty.

Energy systems are quickly in transition and their complexity has been dramatically increased. Although there are numerous studies and researches about future of energy in terms of technology or fuels, few studies have been done based on comprehensive socio-technical dimensions of energy systems’ futures. One key question to fill this gap is that how can we consider electricity as a sustainable common good/resource, beyond some conventional considerations related to public or private sector orientation? The purpose of this study is to find an acceptable answer for this question..

To achieve the purpose of this study, after reviewing some relevant studies, key effective factors on the future of energy have been recognized in an expert panel and structurally analyzed by Micmac software based on cross-impact analyze method. Thereafter, four scenarios for transforming the electricity distribution from a monopoly good to a common resource have been developed and described based on scenario workshops method..

Four scenarios for transforming the electricity distribution from a monopoly good to a common resource have been developed and described. These scenarios include “spider grid,” “local grid,” “intermediate grid” and “off-grid.” Furthermore, different dimensions of electricity as a common good/resource have been investigated. As a result, the authors find out that common resource is a creatable concept that can be referred to some goods depending on certain conditions.

Electricity, like any other resource with common characteristics, can be considered and treated as a common resource, depending on the way we generate, share and distribute it, ownership and property rights, management and decision-making mechanisms, social participation processes and governance criteria.

Prior research has indicated that narratives may lead to fantasy which may evoke narrative transportation. Researchers have also established that narrative transportation affects persuasion, changes in attitudes and brand evaluations. To this end, several studies have focused on narrative consumption (i.e. being hooked into a narrative) and the aforementioned consequences of narrative transportation. However, research investigating the role that fantasy plays in consumers’ journey from narrative consumption to narrative transportation is scant. The purpose of this paper is to develop a multidimensional scale for measuring narrative-driven fantasy in order to detail which dimensions of fantasy facilitate narrative transportation. Further, this paper posits that prior research has overlooked the mediating role that fantasy plays within the narrative consumption and narrative transportation process. As the exploration of overlooked mediators is important for theory development, this paper uses the scale developed here to test for fantasy as a mediator.

This research involves four studies, taking a multi-methodology approach including one-on-one interviews and questionnaires. Exploratory factor analysis and sequential equation modeling are used to develop a valid scale for fantasy.

This work results in the development of an eight-item scale of narrative-driven fantasy, highlighting two dimensions of fantasy: identification and passport. Further, this work finds that both dimensions of fantasy mediate the relationship between the level of narrative consumption (being hooked into the narrative) and narrative transportation.

The studies were conducted with respondents only from the USA, potentially limiting its generalizability to other countries and cultures. This research has several implications. This paper introduces a model that highlights fantasy’s role within the narrative consumption and narrative transportation fields of study. It also delineates a scale that measures the different dimensions of fantasy. This scale can be used to gain further understanding of the strength and type of fantasy that narratives consumed via various mediums (music, movies, commercials) evoke, the relationship between these measures and narrative transportation, and the subsequent changes in intentions and attitudes. Further, the identification of fantasy as a mediator in the relationship between narrative consumption and narrative transportation allows for further theory development and exploration.

The fantasy scale that is detailed in this paper may be used to indicate which celebrities, music, images, movies, commercials, products, brands and other stimuli best evoke narrative-based fantasy. The scale should apply to all types of fantasizing, enhancing the understanding of what increases levels of fantasy and the effects of such fantasy on persuasion.

This research extends the literature on consumer engagement in narrative consumption and transportation by providing novel and valid scale measures for narrative-based fantasy. The fantasy scale provided is internally consistent and proves accurate across many samples and stimuli. The scale is also short (only eight items) and easy to administer. Additionally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is the first to generate insights into the mediating role that fantasy plays within the narrative consumption and narrative transportation framework.

Although the significance of technological progress in economic development is well-established in theory and policy, it has remained challenging to agree upon shared priorities for strategies and policies. This paper aims to develop a model of how policymakers can develop effective and easy to communicate strategies for science, technology and economic development.

By integrating insights from economic complexity, competitiveness and foresight literature, a replicable research framework for analysing the opportunities and challenges of technological revolutions for small catching-up countries is developed. The authors highlight key lessons from piloting this framework for informing the strategy and policies for bioeconomy in Estonia towards 2030–2050.

The integration of economic complexity research with traditional foresight methods establishes a solid analytical basis for a data-driven analysis of the opportunities for industrial upgrading. The increase in the importance of regional alliances in the global economy calls for further advancement of the analytical toolbox. Integration of complexity, global value chains and export potential assessment approaches offers valuable direction for further research, as it enables discussion of the opportunities of moving towards more knowledge-intensive economic activities along with the opportunities for winning international market share.

The research merges insights from the economic complexity, competitiveness and foresight literature in a novel way and illustrates the applicability and priority-setting in a real-life setting.

The literature on economic forecasting, is showing an increase in criticism, of the inaccuracy of forecasts, with major implications for economic, and fiscal policymaking. Forecasts are subject to the systemic uncertainty of human systems, considerable event-driven uncertainty, and show biases towards optimistic growth paths. The purpose of this study is to consider approaches to improve economic foresight.

This study describes the practice of economic foresight as evolving in two separate, non-overlapping branches, short-term economic forecasting, and long-term scenario analysis of development, the latter found in studies of climate change and sustainability. The unique case of Ireland is considered, a country that has experienced both steep growth and deep troughs, with uncertainty that has confounded forecasting. The challenges facing forecasts are discussed, with brief review of the drivers of growth, and of long-term economic scenarios in the global literature.

Economic forecasting seeks to manage uncertainty by improving the accuracy of quantitative point forecasts, and related models. Yet, systematic forecast failures remain, and the economy defies prediction, even in the near-term. In contrast, long-term scenario analysis eschews forecasts in favour of a set of plausible or possible alternative scenarios. Using alternative scenarios is a response to the irreducible uncertainty of complex systems, with sophisticated approaches employed to integrate qualitative and quantitative insights.

To support economic and fiscal policymaking, it is necessary support advancement in approaches to economic foresight, to improve handling of uncertainty and related risk.

While European Union Regulation (EC) 1466/97 mandates pursuit of improved accuracy, in short-term economic forecasts, there is now a case for implementing advanced foresight approaches, for improved analysis, and more robust decision-making.

Building economic resilience and adaptability, as part of a sustainable future, requires both long-term strategic planning, and short-term policy. A 21st century policymaking process can be better supported by analysis of alternative scenarios.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the article is original in considering the application of scenario foresight approaches, in economic forecasting. The study has value in improving the baseline forecast methods, that are fundamental to contemporary economics, and in bringing the field of economics into the heart of foresight.

In this paper we report on the outcomes of a scenario planning project in Melbourne's (Australia) inner northern suburbs, which was undertaken in the context of an extended lockdown during Melbourne's second wave of COVID-19 infections. In this project, the researchers sought to identify the ways in which young people and youth service providers understood the challenges that the pandemic was creating for young people and the provision of youth services, and through the 5 years up to 2025.

The project was shaped by a scenario planning methodology that produced three research informed scenarios of possible futures for young people in Melbourne's inner north in 2025. The project conducted a series of structured video interviews with young people, and semi-structured interviews with stakeholders that asked participants to reflect on the context of the pandemic, and what the future might hold in relation to young people's pathways and health and well-being, and the futures of their communities and the planet.

The scenario planning methodology revealed many concerns, uncertainties and anxieties that were shared, but which also varied between young people and stakeholders – both about the immediacy of the pandemic, and its aftermaths and intersection with future crises.

The scenario planning approach offers sociologies of education and youth a means to do the future-oriented, “hopeful” work that multiple crises for young people demand. Scenario planning is an “affirmative” exercise in hope by which sociologies can “stay with the trouble” that we find ourselves in, and that the pandemic has amplified.

This study is carried out to evaluate how well legal knowledge can be demonstrated by a built environment professional via the scenario-based approach to the learning of law modules.

A Delphi analysis of the advice provided by an MSC quantity surveying student, on a scenario-based legal problem arising due to a property contract, is carried out. The tendered legal advice was submitted as part of the assessment requirements for an MSc law module, following the university criteria, after the teaching of a law module. The student report, which attained an A-grade, and the assessment criteria used for marking/grading by the university were subsequently sent to 18 practicing lawyers, who were selected to constitute an expert panel, to independently judge the extent of legal knowledge demonstrated in the student report.

The Delphi analysis outcome showed that the expert panel holds a similar consensus view to the university on the level of legal knowledge demonstrated and by extension the effectiveness of the law module in imparting legal knowledge to a non-lawyer. The study outcome shows how well legal knowledge can be acquired and applied by a non-lawyer, within the context of the built environment, via scenario-based teaching of a law module.

This study serves as a preliminary step necessary to arouse further research toward empirically profiling the current outlook of a wider range of graduating students receiving scenario-based legal education in the built environment.