Planning for the complexity and uncertainty of urban socio-environmental futures

Abstract

Owing to the rapidly evolving complexity within urban social and environmental systems, planners are increasingly facing the unenviable task of making important decisions about our socio-environmental futures with incomplete information. Rather than sacrifice environmentally responsive projects to future unpredictability arising from myriad, interactive urban complexities, we build on a range of literature on uncertainty in decision-making to develop the RAFT (reversibility, adaptability, flexibility and tailoring) framework. By humbly admitting the inevitability of unforeseen change and knowledge gaps, RAFT advances projects and decisional processes that are reversible, adaptable, flexible and tailored to changing conditions and policy contexts. It therefore supports the development of successful, forward-looking interventions, notwithstanding unpredictable futures. This Perspective looks at the dynamic field of urban social and environmental complexity, proposing the RAFT (reversibility, adaptability, flexibility and tailoring) framework to tackle the socio-environmental challenges in urban contexts.