One of my favourite questions in place-based futures work is simple, but deceptive. I ask, “Whose futures are visible in this space, and whose are missing?”
This is a question that I usually ask in the present, often on a participatory walk, and sometimes in a room, using images of a familiar location.
What becomes obvious for people when they answer this is how many people (and more-than-human creatures) are excluded from the narrative. By looking at the world around us, it’s easy to see the futures that architects, city planners, communities, and others imagined, even if their imagining wasn’t intentional. The future imagined in different spaces often assume certain bodies, incomes, mobilities, languages, abilities, and lifespans. Other lives appear only as footnotes, risks, or afterthoughts, if at all.
It’s observing the space (which may also be a “place” – I’ll talk about this when I next write) that makes these futures legible.
A glossy innovation hub suggests one kind of future. A neglected bus stop suggests another. A river with flood markers tells a story about time, risk, and memory that no scenario slide can.
Asking this question in the present shifts futures work from abstraction to accountability. It invites participants to notice how futures are already being rehearsed unevenly in the present, and to decide whether that’s a future they want to extend or interrupt.
Sometimes the most important futures work is not inventing something new, but noticing what is already being normalised around us.