Futures, scenarios and housing strategies

All policy and strategy must be formulated in the face of varying degrees of ignorance, ambiguity and uncertainty. This chapter discusses two groups of policy tools that seek to assist decision-making by mitigating or mapping this uncertainty: forecasting and foresight. Forecasting and foresight techniques have much to contribute to housing strategy-making processes. Foresight, in particular, can encourage a greater sensitivity to continuities and contingencies. While forecasting techniques are integral to the toolbox of applied economists, foresight techniques are less familiar. The chapter concludes that foresight techniques can benefit from the application of the economic sensibility, while economists can benefit from the way in which futures thinking highlights the subtle question of the way in which past, present and future are intertwined.