The scientific role of imagination. Discussing benefits and limitations of research-by-design and comparative frameworks as part of a prospective approach.

Futurology is back. While it never disappeared, in recent years, growing uncertainties and unexpected events, the need for reassurance and anchoring hope to desirable futures and solutions vis-à-vis disastrous events that are beyond any control encourage to explore the future. In particular, among many ways to look at the future, I will discuss the role of normative scenarios and the benefits and limitations of research-by-design and comparative framework as methods to generate visions. I use normative scenarios to study the feasibility and impact of community welfare infrastructures -as forms of urban commons- in the Brussels Capital Region under different vacancy and demographic conditions or Scenarios. The outputs of research-by-design are drawings and images, picturing desirable conditions that could be misunderstood as the result of unbridled imagination and utopian projections. I will show instead that if the process is rigorous, they are the conclusion of consequential and coherent reasoning that uses design to simulate the socio-spatial impact of given choices. Additionally, research-by-design allows studying the feasibility of different models of community welfare infrastructures. To further substantiate these explorations, a comparative framework with other cities allows referring to existing models and, in the narratives of the normative scenarios, taking into account the conditions that led to their realisation. The strategic and prospective benefits and the limitations of such combined methods will be discussed. Imagination can have a scientific role (Viganò 2016) and the concrete utopias (Bloch 1959) proposed by normative scenarios may guide local actors engaging with reality.