Futures Design

Onward to a Space-Time Report

Martijn Arts, design thinker and board member of Total Design, is known for his expertise in design methods for complex projects such as futures design and co-creative design. At the invitation of MooiNL, he reflects on the relationship between time and space in the “Space-in-the-Making Plan” and the role of design in this process. With a critical eye, he discusses the need to revise the policy cycle to better respond to the dynamic spirit of the times and today’s societal challenges, such as the housing crisis, which requires fast and concrete solutions.

The preliminary draft of the Space Plan is a fact. Now that work is being done on the “further development” towards the Space Plan, it may be interesting to review the associated policy cycle. With the experience gained since the development of the National Environmental Vision, it is conceivable – or even desirable – that the policy cycle takes greater account of the rapidly changing spirit of the times, with its societal concerns and political norms. Take our current era, where citizens are increasingly demanding immediate actions and solutions from politicians and leaders. There is a housing crisis now, and we must solve it now.

In the preliminary draft of the Space Plan, attention is given to the present, near future, and distant future: concrete plans towards 2030, broad strokes towards 2050, and abstract goals towards 2100. All of these periods extend beyond the current government term that has just begun. Even the present phase spans six more years. This tests the patience of political leaders and demanding citizens. Meanwhile, the new Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning must focus on long-term developments to ensure a beautiful and liveable Netherlands in the future. Managing time seems just as important as managing space to be successful.

Time: contextual factor

That’s why I advocate for an addition to the Space Plan. It should be the Space-Time Plan. Time is an important contextual factor. Without coordination on time, spatial planning is theoretically and practically meaningless. After all, you want to organize space within a certain time frame. The longer the time span, the less predictable it becomes. The shorter the time frame, the more direct the impact of interventions in space. Spatial planning cannot be seen as the continuous organization of the “now,” nor as a continuous effort to shape the “later.” Current policy measures offer no guarantee for the future.

Policy measures do provide some certainty for the present, but less for the near future and very little for the long term. The measures we take now also influence what happens in the near and distant future. An intervention today may have a negative short-term impact but could be beneficial for organizing space in the long run. However, if the short-term impact is too negative, it can lead to resistance and push that future further out of reach, like a tantalizing torment. Spatial policy makers and designers are always working on multiple time scales simultaneously, whether consciously or not.

Future: not controllable, but imaginable

In addition to space, time is an indispensable element in policy. This is why the Preliminary Draft of the Space Plan is focused on creating short-term impact (now), initiating certain changes in the mid-term (soon), and setting up promising opportunities and potentials for space in the long-term (later). However, the future is not controllable. The future changes under the influence of various developments, many of which are unpredictable. An example is the global outbreak of COVID-19, which had a significant impact on remote work and, consequently, on spatial planning.

Spatial planning requires a vision of how we envision the world in 2100, but it must be a vision that can later be adapted to a new reality. A vision that, for now, is politically sustainable and explainable to set frameworks and make decisions, but one that will also work in a different political context in the future. It calls for policies that are flexible enough without wavering, but also stable enough over time to provide direction that transcends policy terms. But what is long enough? What is expected in the short term? And what adjustments will or won’t be possible or acceptable in the future? Without clear answers to these questions, it becomes difficult to properly assess the plan.

Timing of space claims

In a recent opinion piece in Volkskrant, urban planners Ward Rauws and Peter Pelzer rightly pointed out that space claims have a time horizon. A persistent habit in spatial planning, they argue, is the timeless planning approach, where present-day problems and desires always take priority. The fact that the desired use of space can shift over time is ignored, both in terms of land ownership and its designation. These planners, therefore, advocate for the “timing” of space claims. The Council for the Environment and Infrastructure, in turn, suggests that temporality can be a key to addressing climate change. For instance, by assigning a location a designation with a time horizon, something that is already possible but rarely done. The planners offer a tangible example of anticipating future space needs: “by giving locations along rivers only temporary designations, so that we can accommodate water there in forty years. Moreover, making space claims temporary also encourages various design solutions, such as modular or floating construction.”

Logically, (spatial) designers also engage with the interplay between imagination and time horizons. Design is often described as “forethought,” the process of thinking up and articulating or visualizing new solutions, processes, worlds, etc., with the aim of making them discussable, experienceable, and testable before they become reality. Design is both the creation of detailed plans to enable purposeful development and the creation of sketches to discuss that future in a goal-seeking way. Design research and research by design. In doing so, designers constantly move through time, from the present to the future—what future do we want to create—and also from the future back to the present—what interventions must we make now to make that future achievable. Designers also move back and forth through causality: what problem are we actually solving with which solution, and how do we prevent the solution from becoming the problem itself?

Purpose-driven and goal-seeking

For the preliminary draft of the Spatial Planning Report, design research was largely used. In a co-creative manner—using imagination—designers, policymakers, and other spatial planners have sketched future scenarios. These scenarios incorporate solutions for current and future problems, while simultaneously illustrating and highlighting those issues. The scenarios serve both purpose-driven and goal-seeking functions.

By incorporating time into the new Spatial Planning Report, you can use the appropriate design discipline in the right way, allowing you to travel through time and causality, just like designers do. Design Thinking pioneer Richard Buchanan identified four levels of design in 1992. If solutions are needed now, for example in a stakeholder dialogue, we can design a visual aid or infographic (1). If we have a bit more time, we can design a technology to reconfigure space (2). If we don’t want to do this ourselves, we can design a process within which others can develop that technology (3). If we want to manage the complexity of organizing the future, we can engage in organizational design (4).

“How” versus “to what end”

Recently, more voices have called for adding two more levels to this: the design of nature & resources (5), for example through circular design, and the design of the biosphere & environment (6), through environmental design. While level 4 focuses on creating or changing artificial systems, in levels 5 and 6, you work within (and with) natural systems. Up to level 4, concepts like feasibility, predictability, and often scalability are central. Artificial outcomes are pursued in a purpose-driven way. In levels 5 and 6, sustainability, diversity, and resilience take center stage, with a strong focus on working with uncertainty and unpredictability. With a broad and inclusive perspective, interventions are tried in a goal-seeking way to achieve a better future for everyone. From level 1 to 6, complexity increases while predictability decreases.

A vision of the future becomes reality simply by imagining it. A desired future becomes achievable through articulation and visualization. In a constantly changing context, a narrative can connect and provide direction, even if the goal is unclear. It’s not the “to what end” that matters, but the “how.” And in the process, you chart the course, achieve results, push boundaries, and often change seemingly immovable systems. In this way of thinking, the present is just as important as the future: visions of the future influence the present, and vice versa. There is no roadmap for achieving a desired future.

But what does this mean for policy? According to Wikipedia, policy is: “… the systematic way in which an organization […] handles a particular issue to achieve a certain goal.” A very purpose-driven process that assumes organization and feasibility. A policy cycle operates on this assumption as well (see below).

Continuous monitoring and evaluation

In this cycle, time is explicitly mentioned. Monitoring takes place every two years, and evaluations are conducted every four years. Apparently, policy is developed in two-year increments. If the evaluation after four years is negative, the policy is renewed or adjusted. Like a machine, work is done in a fixed rhythm, purposefully aiming toward a set point in the future.

The current reality is so different. Not only does nature work differently, but so does society. The more directly you pursue a goal, the quicker you seem to encounter obstacles. Things are less controllable than we would like to think in our old mindset. A different approach seems more logical—one that is based on the practice of design and the theory of foresight.

We create a world as we imagine it. This is increasingly done together with stakeholders, such as implementation organizations and even citizens. By testing and collaborating, we adjust the course along the way. We don’t focus on the goal but on the journey toward it, achieving results through the process itself. Monitoring is continuous, as are evaluations. Just like designers do—whether they are monitoring or testing a mental model by presenting a sketch or story, or testing a product or process while it’s being used in practice.

Like a Droste effect, you see the same thing at every level, only on a different (time) scale. At design level 6, you find climate change and thus cycles of 30 years. Strategic design is needed here. At design level 5, you find the crises we are currently facing, such as the energy crisis and housing crisis, with cycles of 10-15 years. Life-centered design is needed here.

At level 4, you find the classic policy cycles, with periods of 4-10 years. This is the level of system design. Level 3 is characterized by shorter policy periods of 2-4 years. Process design is needed here. On an even smaller scale, technology design (level 2) and information design (level 1) are required.

In this way, a classic policy cycle is combined with the practice of design at multiple levels, transforming it into a space-time cycle. Onward to the Space-Time Report!