Imagination as a Research Method: Spatial Futures for Pyongyang in 2050

Abstract

Conventional methods are necessary for addressing certain types of problems, but they are inadequate for investigating subjects that cannot be known in an increasingly complex and emergent world. The method proposed in this paper acknowledges the role of imagination as a cognitive function involved in all human activities from perception and reasoning to experiment and speculation. It forms the theoretical basis for an inter-disciplinary research method that combines the scenario method from Future Studies, fictive narrative, and design thinking and visualization for examining the projects for alternative plausible spatial futures of Pyongyang in the context of a unified Korean peninsula.