Thomas Hobbes famously warned that the worst instincts of “mankind” need strict management, control, and regulation. But what about the harm that results when we try to manage spontaneous systems too closely? I have been thinking with Robert Chia and Robin Holt lately; their book Strategy without...
Tag: planning
Ethnography inside the Walls: Studying the Contested Space of the Cemetery
This paper discusses the merits and challenges of user-centered urban development projects, and what it means to apply an ethnographic approach to the study of urban spaces and the way people use them. We draw primarily on an ethnographic project carried out in two cemeteries in Copenhagen. The...
Anticipating Credible Futures
Overview Strategic planning is becoming less and less viable in a volatile world prone to black swan events. Prediction is a low-percentage approach to an unknowable future. But we still need to navigate change...
Best Laid Plans…An Ethnographic Approach to Foresight
What is Foresight? Foresight is an umbrella term used to describe a wide variety of methodologies and approaches for considering and preparing for possible and probable futures in order to help inform present and future courses of action. Today, it is an important and widely deployed practice that...