Why the future of Planning is Opera, Only Fans, God, and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods

a good futurist spends a lot of time trying to decipher the present and to try to see it through the mask of present-day biases.

I sometimes think of “seeing the present” as trying on alien eyes; looking at the world as if I were an alien from another planet.

Trying to see beyond the immediate cycles of news is a challenge, because rather than being... See more

If we’re to resist the gravity well of banality, extract ourselves from of the containers of the past, escape the stifling grip of pre-packaged thinking, refuse to be complicit in the astro-turfing of culture, and create better, desired futures rather than merely slipstream into default ones, then what we really need is imagination. And the recogni... See more

Modern consumerism is the best-funded social science experiment in the world, the Galapagos Islands of human weirdness. More important still, an ad agency is one of the few remaining safe spaces for weird or eccentric people in the worlds of business and government. In ad agencies, mercifully, maverick opinion is still broadly encouraged or at leas

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Who thinks about the future today?

Brands after their own self-interests. Agencies after their own self-interests (or, if we’re lucky, after their clients’ interests). Employees in trendy offices surrounded by like-minded co-workers and like-minded networks, courting cookie-cutter clients with cookie-cutter visions of tomorrow.

At least, that’s who... See more