Future tense: How might design futures methods enable place-based systemic change?

New approaches to problem solving are required to enable fundamental change at every level of society if we are to tackle interconnected "wicked-problems" such as climate change, biodiversity loss and inequality (Worldwatch Institute 2013, Capra and Luisi 2014). The definition of sustainability as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations" (Bruntland, 1987) directly translates into the urgent need for modern urban lifestyles to reduce consumption by ten times (Charter and Tischner, 2001). Achieving the quantitative indicators for sustainable development is a process wrapped up in broader behavioural and cultural change (Lockton, 2015) and will require new methods, tools and narratives (Beddington, 2010). Design can "change existing situations into preferred ones" (Simon, 1999). More recently, design expertise has been advocated as a "social resource for enabling local innovation which designers are enablers of collective cycles of generating and exploring alternative futures" (Jégou and Manzini 2008, Manzini 2015). Urban sociology, a field within social theory, provides a fluid understanding of cities as "place-based" sites of social encounter and division, as fields of politics and power, as symbolic and material landscapes (Tonkiss, 2005). Lefebvre's (1991) treatment of space as a socially constructed product can provide a meaningful way to tackle the complex web of wicked-problems through locally contextualised approaches that focus on the role of actors (both individual and institutional) in the process of creating change. To address these challenging holistic concepts, this proposal draws upon systems change, design thinking, and futures studies and takes a place-based approach enacted through an action-research methodology.

The research proposal is situated in the context of my work as senior designer in the System Innovation Lab at Forum for the Future, and builds on previous experience in critical design as architectural designer and urban researcher. The aim of the proposal is to develop a formative assessment of how design futures methodologies can help catalyse place-based systemic change. I am proposing to explore this through two work streams conducted under an action-research methodology. The methodology, which has been described as "the study of a social situation with a view to improving the quality of action within it" (Elliott, 1991), is the most appropriate as it builds on my current work at Forum, and seeks to further develop participatory design futures methods.

Work Stream (WS) 1: Interdisciplinary literature review (year 1)
Research question: How might the fields of design methods and futures studies provide approaches to systemic change at a local level? Proposed outputs: An assessment of current methods from the fields of design and futures and their use case potential for enabling systemic change at the level of place.

Work Stream 2: Place-based action-research (preliminary case studies in year 2 and in-depth case study in year 3)
Research question: How might design futures methods support actors in developing practices for place-based systems change?

Proposed outputs: A series of preliminary case studies and one in-depth case study, developed through an actor network (Binder et al., 2011) approach which examine the roles needed for systemic change and the different types of emergent relationships needed to broker new practices and sustain the change. It is envisioned that a series of place-based design fictions (which could take the form of scenarios, prototypes, concepts, visions) will be co-developed through this process.