Cultivating collaborative futures: Advancing participatory scenario building in transportation

This book suggests new ways to develop participatory scenario building methods
for transport planning, which can be a complement to traditional forecast-based
planning approaches. Scenarios, by developing several alternative possible futures
instead of a most likely or desired future, aim to increase the resilience of mobility
systems to unforeseen events. In the first part of this research, the impact of one
such unforeseen event (the COVID-19 pandemic) on public transport in Belgium
is investigated. The results show that there was little preparedness among the
operators for a pandemic, and the use of foresight and scenario planning within
the sector could help build the resilience of public transport systems.
In the second part of this dissertation, a review of practical applications of
transport scenario planning in six Western European countries shows that the
method is still underused in decision-making. It also emerges that there was little
participation in the construction of the scenarios, although participation can help
bridge the implementation gap between research and policy making by enabling
dialogue. One possible reason for this is that participation in scenario planning can
be challenging: quantitative methods for scenario development are often a black
box and mathematically demanding, whereas qualitative methods can be
perceived as lacking a structural underpinning. Alternatively, mixed-methods
approaches can then be used in a participatory setting. To this end, this
dissertation develops a new mixed-methods approach based on cross-impact
balance analysis and scenario workshops. Cross-impact balance analysis provides
the structure of the scenario storylines, ensuring that they are not internally
contradictory. These ‘raw’ scenarios are then creatively elaborated in scenario
writing workshops. This new method is tested to develop scenarios for urban
mobility in 2030 in five different cities (Padova, Tel Aviv, Budapest, Valencia, and
Kalisz). The method is then further elaborated to increase the level of participation
and used to develop future mobility scenarios in Brussels in 2050. Participation is
facilitated by adding a Delphi survey for the selection of the factors of uncertainty,
by using personas to provide a disaggregated perspective the impacts possible
futures could have on different stakeholder groups. Third, the method is enhanced
by structurally incorporating visualizations in the scenario building process.
Lastly, this dissertation shows a scenario building exercise in a different
geographical context, namely a rural village in Flanders, Belgium, since scenario
building often focuses on urban areas. However, rural areas are more car-
dependent and could benefit from the use of alternative transport planning
methods. In the village of Oetingen, wild cards are used to disrupt the visions of
the inhabitants. This is done because, according to literature, linear thinking, i.e.
thinking that does not consider low-probability events, often still dominates in
scenario development. This decreases the usefulness of the resulting scenarios for
policy making, by not taking into account unforeseen events. In the research done
in the village, all children of the primary school, in addition to adult citizens, are
involved in the visioning process, to understand how their visions for mobility in
the future compare. Through this exercise, it appeared that the wild cards
developed by non-expert citizens were not more outside-the-box than the ones
developed by experts. As a result, the fact that the inclusion of non-expert
stakeholders leads to more outside-the-box and creative scenarios could not be
confirmed. However, it appeared that the visions developed by the participating
children were very outside-the-box, and that their inclusion in the scenario
development process is feasible. Participation by children, as the future
generation, in scenario exercises could therefore be further explored to develop
more diverse transport scenarios.
Through the empirical research presented in the different chapters of this
dissertation, this study contributes to the body of knowledge on mixed-methods
and qualitative transport scenarios, and provides ways in which to develop
mobility scenarios in a participatory manner. In doing so, it aims to facilitate the
uptake of scenarios in transport planning, to allow for more flexibility and
resilience to unforeseen events.