Cities as Anticipatory Systems

Analyzing "Weak Signals" to Explore beyond the Predictability of Their Future

Bibliographic Data

ID5948103
AuthorsNora Morales (UAM Cuajimalpa), Salomon González (UAM Cuajimalpa)
Year2021
Volume2021
Issue1
Pages240-257
Publication date2021-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings (CONFERENCE)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1559-890X • E-ISSN: 1559-8918
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/epic.12072
OpenAlexW4200002511
LanguageEN
References cited16

In the last decade, Future Studies have developed a very important corpus of theory and methods aimed to analyze the future of cities. Meanwhile the world is confronted with major challenges like climate change, global pandemics, migration, inequality and poverty, government agencies, professional urbanists, academia and other organizations, concerned with strategic planning, are looking for new ways to provide insight into how we approach unforeseeable challenges and integrate complexity and novelty for better futures.In this paper we reviewed the notion of "weak signal" as a retrospective exploratory method to think of cities as anticipatory systems (Boer, Wiekens, and Damhof 2018) of future emerging problems.Using qualitative retrospective analysis and secondary research we focused on three urban innovations in transportation, workplaces and food domains at different cities to understand how to anticipate unforeseen scenarios and explore new ways of generating possible perspectives of the future.Our findings showed that some urban innovations are preceded by a group of weak signals (usually low in visibility or too diffuse) that need to incorporate more robust signals in their own context but could be a starting point to identify people's underlying assumptions, to sketch collective scenarios and increase their capacity to think about the present in order to move toward a desired and possible future, concept that Miller (2011) describes as "Future Literacy

Context (archaeology · Data science · Economics · Futures contract · Futures studies · Geography · Government (linguistics · Management science · Novelty · Order (exchange · Political science · Public relations · Regional science · Sketch · Sociology · Urban planning · Computer Science · Engineering · Innovative Approaches in Technology and Social Development · Psychology · Sustainable Building Design and Assessment · Urban Transport and Accessibility · Artificial Intelligence · Social Psychology

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