Positive Futures

Authors

David Iwaniec - Urban Studies Institute, Georgia State University, Elizabeth Cook - The New School, Marta Berbes - Arizona State University, Melissa Davidson - Arizona State University, Nancy Grimm - Arizona State University, Timon McPhearson - The New School, Tischa Muñoz-Erickson - USDA Forest Service

Body

How do we address persistent and emerging challenges? What are the futures we hope to create? And, how can we guide the development of these futures? The construction of desirable, plausible, and sustainability-based future scenarios is an important component of transformational sustainability research that intends to directly contribute to collective problem-solving. Scenario development frees sustainability research from the dominant focus on analyzing problem constellations and opens it towards positive contributions to social innovation and transformation. We present Sustainability Futures a framework for co-developing sustainability-based future scenarios, and apply it to explore social-ecological-technological solutions and enhance the capacity for sustainability and resilience planning.
Keywords:sustainability, resilience, transformation, futures, visions, scenarios, urban, climate change, transdisciplinary, participatory, co-production

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