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Charting Our Future.....

Promoting the Community Future in the Contest with Present Individualism

By Dowell Myers

Chapter four in Lewis Hopkins and Marissa Zapata (Eds.), Engaging the Future: Forecasts, Scenarios, Plans, and Projects. Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, pp. 59-78; 2007
 

A principal focus of the planning profession is preparing for the future.  This requires not only forecasts of likely or possible future conditions, but also design of plans to make desirable forecasts come true (and to avoid undesirable futures).

Dowell Myers and Elizabeth Gearin, "Current Preferences and Future Demand for Denser Residential Environments," Housing Policy Debate, 12 (4, 2002):633-660. View Summary external links

See the new "Longer View" symposium in the APA Journal (Autumn 2001) on "Putting the Future in Planning" PDF file

Has Planning Lost Its Relevance to the Future? You Take the Test…PDF file

Dowell Myers, "Building the Future as a Process in Time," Metropolitan Development Patterns, Annual Roundtable 2000, Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, 2000. PDF file

For a review of the latest thinking about how to plan for the future, see "Constructing the Future...."  
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The  Future of California external links

University of Southern California 
School of Policy, Planning, and Development 
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0626 
Phone: (213) 740-7095  FAX: (213) 740-1801 
email: dowell@rcf.usc.edu