The global polycrisis, marked by ecological breakdown, democratic fragility, and deepening inequity, reveals the limits of dominant foresight paradigms rooted in reductionist, linear, and technocratic worldviews. This paper develops an alternative foresight praxis grounded in two intersecting frameworks. The first is Ukama, a Shona ethic and ontology of interdependence, intergenerational continuity, and relational harmony drawn from Southern African thought. The second is Quantum Feminist Futures (QFF), which brings feminist futures studies into dialogue with quantum social theory to foreground entanglement, non-linearity, superposition, and the observer effect as resources for reimagining social transformation. Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy is used as a bridging cosmology through which these traditions can be placed in productive conversation. The paper is conceptual and transdisciplinary. It uses comparative theoretical synthesis and Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) to move from the visible symptoms of the polycrisis to its deeper civilisational assumptions. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, it shows that Whitehead’s process-relational metaphysics and Ukama share a common refusal of atomised individualism and a common understanding of reality as a field of dynamic relations encompassing humans, more-than-human life, ancestors, and future generations. Second, it operationalises three concepts through QFF: entanglement, which illuminates how social actors are linked in ways that exceed simple causality; superposition, which affirms the coexistence of multiple unrealised futures and the possibility of rapid non-linear change; and the observer effect, which foregrounds reflexive, participatory co-creation as central to futures practice. Third, it uses CLA to demonstrate that the polycrisis is not only a policy failure but an ontological failure sustained by myths of separability, mastery, and linear progress. The paper positions relational foresight as a decolonial intervention that centres epistemic plurality, intergenerational responsibility, and the agency of communities in co-emerging futures. Rather than forecasting from a detached standpoint, it reimagines futures work as participatory, embodied, and ethically grounded. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing efforts to articulate Global South Futures as a distinctive domain of inquiry and practice oriented not merely toward resilience or survival, but toward collective and planetary flourishing.
Platform power in transactional superplatforms has increasingly shaped market access, labor conditions, and regulatory agendas in Iran, yet much existing scholarship remains present-focused and insufficiently attentive to the discursive and cultural foundations through which platform dominance is normalized and future trajectories are configured. This study examines the accumulation of platform power in Iranian transactional superplatforms as a multi-layered, future-shaping phenomenon. Drawing on an interpretive qualitative design, the study analyzes data from 18 semi-structured expert interviews and two focus group discussions with platform executives, policymakers/regulators, and academic experts. Following full transcription, thematic analysis produced approximately 350 initial codes, which were refined into around 40 core themes. These were subsequently organized through Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) across four layers: litany, systemic/social causes, worldview/discourse, and myth/metaphor. Findings indicate that platform power is sustained by the interplay of market concentration, data and algorithmic monopolization, algorithmic exploitation, the multisided dependence of users and small businesses, and institutional/regulatory gaps. At the discourse layer, two competing framings, “innovation at any cost” and “digital justice,” structure legitimation and contestation of platform dominance. At the metaphor layer, recurring images such as the “digital empire,” “gateway,” “unleashed monster,” and “algorithm as final judge” reveal deeper cultural narratives that stabilize dependency and constrain governance imaginaries. Building on these layered findings, the study articulates three indicative future pathways for platform power in Iran: continued consolidation, discursive shift, and fragile balance, each shaped by key drivers and uncertainties regarding data transparency, regulatory capacity, and discursive legitimacy. The study contributes to platform power research by integrating empirically grounded thematic analysis with CLA to make visible how structural mechanisms, institutional conditions, and cultural imaginaries jointly shape alternative futures. The findings provide a basis for anticipatory digital governance, highlighting the need for coordinated interventions to address data/algorithmic accountability, institutional coherence, and legitimacy struggles surrounding innovation and justice.
Abstract While global frameworks such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) call for participatory planning processes that embed local priorities into future-oriented climate action, mainstream urban planning and governance approaches often remain rigid and disconnected from local concerns, leading to a critical vision-to-decision gap. This study introduces and tests a multi-method participatory foresight framework for developing locally grounded climate-resilient urban futures, bridging the gap between community-led visioning and formal administrative prioritization. The framework was deployed in two diverse European Living Labs, the Mediterranean island of Chios, Greece, and the Baltic capital of Vilnius, Lithuania, to navigate different socio-ecological contexts. Our approach integrates: (a) co-creative scenario building for long-term (2050) urban futures; (b) quantitative prioritization via the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to weight stakeholder-defined criteria; and (c) expert-led feedback loops to refine technical feasibility. The results demonstrate that the framework successfully translates qualitative community narratives into structured, weighted data suitable for formal planning cycles. By operationalizing the transition from co-creation to prioritized climate-resilient development pathways, this research provides a model for anticipatory governance, ensuring that long-term climate strategies are both technically robust and democratically legitimate.
European food systems are central drivers of environmental degradation and diet-related health issues, while remaining highly vulnerable to climate, geopolitical, and economic shocks. Against this backdrop of polycrisis and governance complexity, this article develops and tests a framework for designing coherent policy mixes for food system transformation in Europe. Building on four European Environment Agency imaginaries for a sustainable Europe in 2050, the framework integrates participatory foresight methods, the X‑curve transition model and morphological analysis with consistency assessment. It addresses three questions: (1) how participatory foresight tools and transition research frameworks can be combined into a replicable methodology for developing internally coherent policy‑mixes; (2) which configurations of food governance policies are internally consistent and how they differ in their underlying governance philosophies and transformative implications; and (3) how these configurations compare with the current European food policy framework and where critical governance gaps lie. Two expert workshops and subsequent desk research generated phase‑specific transition measures (pathways), which were clustered into ten governance dimensions and subjected to cross‑consistency assessment. This yielded four stylised policy‑mixes. The analysis shows that existing policies of the European Union (EU) are closest to a Mixed-Approaches logic but lack internal coherence, that incremental reform of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is insufficient for transformation, and that just‑transition governance remains underdeveloped. Methodologically, the study’s main innovation lies in combining temporal sequencing (X‑curve) with static cross‑consistency analysis, thereby operationalising both sequencing and structural coherence in policy‑mix design, leading to what we call policy-mix pathways. However, the creation of fully sequenced roadmaps would be part of subsequent research.
As a fossil-dependent industrial system, the fashion and textile industry is operating outside safe planetary boundaries and requires a systemic sustainability transformation. Starting from this premise, this review focuses on natural textile colourants with two complementing aims. First, to examine how the present and future of natural colourants are discussed and framed in the research literature. Second, to explore how these framings situate natural colourants in the larger context of textile industry sustainability transformation. The paper synthesises the literature on natural textile colourants in socio-cultural contexts beyond the laboratory, combining reflexive thematic analysis as a method and the Three Horizons framework of change as an analytical tool. The literature reviewed portrays natural colourants as a re-emerging field with potential to challenge and reshape established textile practices and thus support sustainability transformation in the industry. Simultaneously, natural colourants are burdened by the dominance of synthetic colourants as well as the established consumer and producer mindsets concerning, for example, the abundance, appearance and cost of products. To balance with these tensions requires the fashion and textile industry to consider both (infra)structural and mindset lock-ins, fragmented system perspectives and the unavoidable trade-offs of change. By applying the Three Horizons framework to the analysis of literature, this review carries out a futures-oriented reading of natural colourants, drawing attention to the performative and instrumental roles of our images of the future and a transformative intent in making comprehensive change. Whichever trajectory the textile industry considers worth pursuing will have resources devoted to it, improving it and giving it an advantage over any other alternative future.
As the climate crisis continues, the question of who gets to shape the future, and how, has become increasingly urgent. Visions of the future are the building blocks of the futural public sphere; spaces where futures are imagined, deliberated and pursued. Desirable, alternative futures and pathways for their realisation reveal whom a group considers to be important social actors and what they believe are the necessary political levers for enacting change. Youth, although often marginalised in futural and environmental politics, are no different. In this paper, we ask how a future vision created by a Dutch youth environmental advocacy group seeks to intervene in the futural public sphere of water governance in the Netherlands. We employ techniques of close reading, thematic content and critical discourse analysis, and concepts of protagonists, antagonists and victims and of the future. Our findings reveal that the vision primarily extends existing governance frameworks into the future, reflecting dominant beliefs in Dutch political culture about pursuing change, and point to a potential gap between the politics of participation and politics of imagination in this instance of participatory futuring.
Abstract Morocco has never adopted an official document that sets out a development vision with a defined horizon. Royal speeches, especially those delivered on Throne Day and at Parliament’s opening, guide policy and public action, even after 2021, when the new development model report proposed a national ambition for 2035. To our knowledge, no study has examined the royal speeches to determine whether they convey a vision of the future and whether that vision is built through a participatory approach. This research aims to address this gap, drawing on a review of vision theory, including critical success factors for a functional vision, critical discourse analysis, and document analysis. The findings show that the speeches communicate a dominant vision that articulates a long-term societal project grounded in the narrative of “Morocco in transition” and set orientations to guide the political agenda and synchronize collective action. Consultation with national actors and citizens precedes decisions on major national issues. This paper identifies a configuration of an anticipatory governance system in which the King has the legitimacy to decide on the preferred future on behalf of the nation. However, it does not examine the impact of royal speeches across all domains, which could be enriched by further research.
Contemporary European and broader international policy posit within the liberal tradition the peacebuilding and development potential of the profit-seeking corporation, with attendant focus on incorporating MNC perspectives and needs into development narratives and strategies. However, conflict-affected places across the Global South are distinct across multiple dimensions, creating dilemmas for the establishment and sustainability of ethical businesses that contribute to peaceful and inclusive development but all the same must accommodate Northern financial, strategic, and operational logics. This conceptual paper explores these tensions. It is informed by interviews and convenings with diverse thought leaders across sectors concerned with business, human security, and peaceful development in Global South conflict contexts. These deliberations, combined with insights from the political economy of conflict, expose highly divergent understandings of how corporations may need to differ across more and less peaceful places. The problem statements constructed through a mediation lens and presented here can shift research and policy deliberation towards greater imagination of, and consensus on, the distinctive contours of future large-scale businesses that are more reliably able to advance peaceful and inclusive development in contexts of acute socio-political contestation. Such inquiry would help to decolonize scholarship as it adds nuance to policy debates.
The article considers the use of CLA in conjunction with the Futures Triangle and the process of scenario building to shed light on the tension between preferred, plausible and probable futures of Palestinian exiles over 2040–2050 and the implications these futures have for European anticipatory governance. The future dimension can be made explicit in the examination of the Palestinian question, which is most often done historically, legally or humanitarian. Drawing from policy reports, demographic data and scholarship on Palestinian exile, identity and transnational politics, it reads the litany, systemic, worldview and myth layers using CLA and maps the temporal forces that hinder or facilitate change with the Futures Triangle. In this design, based on CLA, the scenario step comes after the scenario building by perspectivists, which takes scenarios as tools for strategic conversation rather than prediction. The following three interpretive archetypes are built: Negotiated Return and Reconstruction (normatively preferred, transformative future); Transnational Diaspora Consolidation (plausible, adaptive future); Permanent Fragmentation (high-risk future trajectory). Every scenario is presented in two registers: a narrative perspective in the future, from 2050, and an analytic meta-discussion. An actor’s game analysis in the tradition of Godet’s Mactor method is then used to test which of these futures the prevailing balance of power makes feasible. The main discovery is that the political divide over Palestinian futures is not between competing political programs, but between the structural possibility of the diaspora future and the symbolic authority of return, exile and sumud. Finally, the article suggests specific European anticipatory-governance answers for each of the three scenarios.
The article explores trends, weak signals, and possible pathways for the feasibility of the post-growth concept in Europe, based on an integrated foresight process. The proper formulation of comprehensive future alternatives or scenarios depends on the ability to identify visible and perceptible changes on the horizon and the possible futures that can be derived from these elements. The integral foresight method combines the processing of literature on possible futures from a post-growth and from a sustainable development perspective with horizon scanning and scenario building methods. The main features of the methodology are online interactivity, a multi-round discussion and learning process between the researchers, experts and futurists working in different fields and dealing with the topic of post-growth or sustainability. The result of the future-shaping collaboration process is a list of filtered, refined, and categorized futures statements covering different STEEPLED dimensions and scenarios in which the vision of post-growth was developed under different assumptions. The findings show that according to the experts’ expectations, many of the current trends hinder European society to achieve strong sustainability, but there are opportunities for intervention, the desirable alternatives are not out of sight, and humanity’s flourishing within planetary boundaries can be reached through the democratic caring for nature.
Inspired by the WFSF 2025 conference motto, we ask: is the futures studies community thriving together? We use bibliometric methods to examine the last 54 years of futures studies with regard to the growth of the number of publications (as the quantitative equivalent to thriving), and to the connectedness as expressed in co-publication, in general, and specifically across borders (as the quantitative equivalent to together). We find that the field has experienced rapid growth, especially from 2005 on, and that its level of collaboration and international cooperation are comparatively high. In that sense we can claim that the futures studies community is, indeed, thriving together.
This study investigates the opportunities and challenges associated with infrastructure preparedness for autonomous vehicles (AVs) in emerging smart cities, specifically focusing on Saudi Arabia's urban transformation under Vision 2030. It aims to propose comprehensive policy recommendations addressing physical, digital, regulatory, and socio-economic dimensions critical for successful AV integration. A qualitative exploratory research design was employed, combining systematic content analysis of international policies and technical documents with semi-structured interviews. A total of 27 participants, comprising 14 experts (urban planners, policymakers, sustainable transport planners, and technology providers) and 13 citizens, contributed insights that were analysed thematically to derive context-specific findings and practical recommendations. Five key themes emerged as essential to AVs infrastructure readiness: physical infrastructure gaps, digital readiness, governance and regulatory frameworks, public trust, and sustainability considerations. The findings highlight significant infrastructure inadequacies, fragmented governance approaches, and conditional public acceptance. Addressing these interconnected areas is crucial for advancing AV deployment and realising associated environmental and social benefits. This research uniquely contributes by integrating global readiness frameworks into the specific context of Saudi Arabia’s smart-city initiatives. Unlike prior studies focusing predominantly on technical readiness, this paper emphasises holistic policy approaches, incorporating local governance, societal engagement, and sustainable infrastructure planning. The study provides empirically grounded insights essential for policymakers aiming for inclusive, realistic, and sustainable AV integration within emerging smart urban environments.
Uncertainty is a fundamental challenge for public decision-making in domains requiring long-term investments, such as transport. Scenario planning is increasingly used to explore a wide range of possible futures. Scenarios typically combine several uncertain contextual factors, each of which may develop in different ways. A key difficulty, however, is that the number of possible scenarios grows exponentially with each additional factor. Methods such as Cross-Impact Balance analysis (CIB) address this by reducing the scenario space to a manageable size through filtering based on internal consistency, without requiring extensive data or advanced modelling. To date, CIB has been applied primarily to scenarios composed of external (uncontrolled) factors. The question is how to combine external factors with internal factors (i.e. policy measures) within a single analytical framework, so as to identify policy mixes that are robust across multiple scenarios. To address this, we present Cross-Impact Scenario-Policy Analysis (CRISPA), a dependency-based extension of consistency-oriented scenario analysis. Rather than scoring interrelations as promoting or restrictive impacts, CRISPA models them as logical dependencies, enabling policy mixes and contextual uncertainties to be evaluated in terms of mutual compatibility and contradiction. With the example of a metro construction project in Brussels, Belgium, we demonstrate how CRISPA can be used to evaluate (1) the consistency of scenarios, (2) consistency of policy mixes, (3) fitness of policy mixes under a single scenario or their robustness across multiple scenarios. CRISPA integrates external uncertainties and policy measures in one framework CRISPA represents interrelations through logical dependencies rather than impacts The method identifies internally consistent scenarios and policy mixes It evaluates whether policy mixes are scenario-fit or robust across futures A Brussels metro case illustrates the method in a transport planning context
Although futures literacy (FL) has gained increasing attention as a key concept in futures studies and education, its empirical operationalisation and measurement remain underdeveloped. Existing approaches often frame futures literacy either normatively, as a desirable capacity, or functionally, as a set of skills and methods, while its internal structure and the role of consciousness are rarely addressed in an integrated way. This paper responds to this gap by conceptualising futures literacy as a socially and culturally embedded competence space and by examining how its structure can be explored empirically. The study models futures literacy as a three-dimensional competence pattern consisting of knowledge as uses of the future, futures-related skills and capabilities, and consciousness, understood as the degree to which these uses and capabilities are recognised and applied intentionally. A mixed-methods design was employed within participatory action research in higher education, combining a validated futures skills scale with case-study essays, self-reflective diaries, focus groups and interviews in both intensive and full-semester university courses. Results indicate that futures literacy development is primarily structural rather than linear or purely quantitative. Participants broadened their repertoire of future uses and skills, and overall consciousness increased; however, they show uneven transformation. Post-course data show that much of this shift remained at the level of awareness, with everyday practices often reverting to semi-closed patterns. Intensive-course participants displayed sharper short-term gains in openness and agency, whereas full-course students developed more integrated and durable patterns, including reflexive handling of open and closed assumptions. Across phases, growing openness proved ambivalent, strengthening agency while also generating uncertainty and future-related anxiety. These findings suggest that futures literacy measurement requires profile- and pattern-based approaches integrating psychometric and reflective methods, and that its development represents a gradual conceptual change process rather than a short-term training effect.
Abstract Healthcare systems face escalating long-term uncertainty due to technological advancement, demographic shifts, and heightened social demands, yet foresight is still insufficiently employed within mission-critical healthcare institutions. This article contributes to futures studies by providing a comprehensive empirical case of applied, participatory, and normative foresight conducted within a national ambulance service. Drawing on the ‘National Ambulance Service 2040’ project in Hungary, the findings indicate how classic foresight methods – STEEP analysis, scenario development, futures wheel, and visioning – can be systematically combined and embedded in organizational decision-making under real-world constraints. The case demonstrates how foresight enhances anticipatory capacity building, strategic sensemaking, and normative alignment within a high-pressure public service context. Methodologically, the article advances applied futures studies by evidencing the complementarity of foresight tools and by highlighting the performative role of visioning as a governance and mobilization mechanism. Substantively, the findings show that foresight can be both cost-effective and impactful in publicly funded, resource-constrained healthcare systems. By extending healthcare foresight into the largely unexplored domain of emergency medical services, the article positions healthcare as a fertile site for methodological advancement in futures studies. The article also offers policy-relevant insights into anticipatory governance, workforce readiness, and the ethical incorporation of artificial intelligence in healthcare.
In the context of simultaneous rise of external threats through CRINK and the reprioritisation of transatlantic ally’s global posture, we study how a protracted low intensity conflict with CRINK would affect European allies’ preparedness to protect the security of the citizens and the integrity of the territory. As a worst case, we investigate the trade channel of geo-economic fragmentation in a Cold War 2.0 implying a complete cessation of trade with CRINK and a full blockade of Taiwan in an international multi-sectoral macroeconomic model featuring the defence sector and interlinking countries via global supply chains. Even this less kinetic conflict will create challenges for Europe’s security—challenges that will only grow more acute as the crisis worsens. By quantifying the cost of unpreparedness, we provide an evidence-based rationale for European allies to embark on a gradual de-risking of trade trajectory rather than waiting for a much more costly “abrupt shock” trigger dictated by strategic challengers.
Foresight exercises are often presented as tools for opening the imagination. This article asks how institutional foresight simultaneously broadens the discursive horizon and narrows down the futures it claims to explore. Analysing the complete series of Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR) foresight reports (2007–2020), the study develops a capture–flight lens, adapted from Deleuzo–Guattarian process philosophy, to trace closure, openings, and silences across thirteen years of European bioeconomy foresight. The analysis traces how the apparatus of capture structures the field of possibility through problem framings, actor configurations, and evaluative metrics. Lines of flight—including the sufficiency narrative, agroecology, and short food chains—emerge within the reports but are recurrently recaptured through semantic translation, institutional absorption, and scalar reframing. Silences, including food sovereignty and commons-based governance, mark the boundaries of the thinkable; degrowth occupies a boundary position, its diagnostic language absorbed while its political programme remained foreclosed. The longitudinal design traces an adaptive apparatus: successive exercises incorporated new sustainability discourses while preserving a growth-oriented trajectory. The article contributes an analytical framework for critical futures research with implications for reflexive foresight design.
European societies are undergoing profound transformations driven by globalization, migration, demographic change, digital acceleration, and increasing social uncertainty. These dynamics are accompanied by rising levels of psychosocial distress, identity-related conflicts, and challenges to social cohesion, positioning mental health as a central arena for shaping European and global futures. This article introduces the concept of the Global Psychotherapist as a future-oriented professional role that responds to these developments by reframing psychotherapy as a culturally embedded, value-based, and anticipatory social practice. Drawing on Positive and Transcultural Psychotherapy (PPT), the article conceptualizes psychotherapy as a micro-level space in which uncertainty, value pluralism, and future orientation are emotionally processed and ethically negotiated. Central to this framework is the Life Balance Model, which structures human experience across the domains of body and health, achievement and work, relationships and contact, and meaning and future orientation. Interpreted through a futures research lens, the model functions as an anticipatory guiding framework for navigating uncertainty, diversity, and plural value systems in contemporary Europe. By linking psychotherapy, futures studies, and transcultural competence, the article highlights complementarities between psychological and systemic perspectives on social transformation. It contributes to theoretical debates on European futures, professional education, and the evolving role of mental health professions in fostering resilience, agency, and unity in diversity within increasingly complex and uncertain societies.
This study examines plausible long-term futures for Ecuador’s entrepreneurial ecosystem toward 2040 using a foresight approach grounded in the voluntarist tradition of the French School. The study adopts an integrated analytical design that combines structural analysis, actor-based analysis, and dual morphological analysis to explore how key drivers, governance dynamics, and institutional conditions interact under deep uncertainty. The empirical assessment is supported by a panel of high-competence experts selected through a structured evaluation of knowledge and argumentation capacity. The results identify five strategic drivers located in the zone of conflict—financing, entrepreneurial education, collaboration culture, access to international markets, and public governance—whose interactions shape the system’s long-term dynamics. Actor-based analysis highlights asymmetric power relations and convergence patterns among dominant and bridging actors, delineating the system’s capacity for coordinated transformation. Building on these findings, the morphological exploration generates internally coherent structural and transformational configurations that organize plausible future states and clarify alternative pathways of ecosystem evolution. The cross-integration of these configurations results in five narrative scenarios, ranging from fragmented and transitional trajectories to a consolidated, innovation-oriented ecosystem. Rather than forecasting outcomes, the scenarios function as analytical devices that illuminate critical tensions, leverage points, and strategic choices relevant for anticipatory governance and public policy design in Ecuador’s transition toward a science- and technology-based entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Abstract The convergence of science fiction imagination and technological reality offers unique insights for urban technology planning and policy development. This technology foresight review examines the evolution of smartdust technology from its conceptual origins in hard science fiction to current research trajectories, using Peter F. Hamilton’s Great North Road as a focal analytical framework. While the concept of autonomous micro-scale machines in fiction traces back at least to Stanisław Lem’s The Invincible (Lem, The Invincible. A Continuum Book, 1964), Hamilton’s detailed treatment provides the most comprehensive framework for analyzing contemporary smartdust trajectories. Through systematic analysis of publications spanning smartdust research, edge computing, urban surveillance, and science fiction studies, we trace the technological pathways between fictional speculation and emerging reality. Our analysis reveals that while current smartdust prototypes operate at millimeter scale with limited autonomous capabilities, the convergence of edge computing, energy harvesting advances, and distributed artificial intelligence suggests achievable progression toward micron-scale, intelligent sensor networks within 30–50 years, though such projections remain contingent on breakthroughs and investments that are far from guaranteed. However, technical challenges in miniaturization and energy autonomy pale compared to the social, ethical, and governance barriers that fiction often glosses over. This review contributes a systematic methodological framework for extracting actionable technology insights from hard science fiction and demonstrates how speculative narratives can inform evidence-based urban planning while highlighting the critical importance of addressing privacy, behavioral autonomy, and democratic governance concerns proactively rather than reactively.
