Dejan Đorđević
Tijana Dabović
DOI: 10.35666/28310438.2014.3.74
UDC: 911.3:711.061
Abstract: Prospective is primarily a philosophy, an attitude, a way of life, even. By rejecting the idea that the future is predetermined (by God or somebody else), it invites us to look upon it as a land to be explored – the reason for watching and anticipating – and as a land to be built upon – the reason for policy and strategy. Spatial planning is occupation of many people (in Serbia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well), even more when we take account of all who like or must deal with future. Many of those predict, some are forecasting, but all have some kind of a picture of desirable future, within the spatial frame. But only few think about means and tools necessary to accomplish the dream, with just a handful of those which are capable to think about the implementation measures in a scientific way. There is just a couple of people able to act in this way – almost all students immediately after the exam forget the difference between terms – the plan, planning, forecast, projection, foresight. In front of the planners of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other countries of the region lays a huge task – the elaboration of numerous planning documents. Most probably, the choice of the horizon, identification of key variables, drawing hypothesis, and even the even picture will not be the problem. But the creation of the adequate scenarios, step by step, is a totally different story. This paper isan invitation to everyone to shape the future they want rather than suffer the future they ignore. It starts to present the basic concepts and the philosophy underpinning them. It goes on to explain the main steps in the procedure and the methods that can be used for them. Therefore, it is not the place to dwell upon all the methods used in prospective/foresight and so-called qualitative methods, from brainstorming to the scenario method, including methods borrowed from the social sciences, Delphi surveys, etc. It is rather a reflection of our strong believe that after the initial paths of strategy making – defining the problem, choosing the horizon, identifying key variables, gathering data and drafting hypotheses – the scenario method is most suitable to outline strategic choices. It should be stressed that generating the final image –examples are to be presented - of the future welfare state is no more important than the paths leading to it, bearing in mind the current reality.
Keywords: Foresight, Spatial Planning, Methodology, Spatial Development, Strategy, Scenario.