Blogs - Arup Foresight

link to Romer's talk

http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html How can a struggling country break out of poverty if it's trapped in a system of bad rules? Economist Paul Romer unveils a bold idea: "charter cities," city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations. (Could Guantánamo Bay become the next Hong Kong?) Continue

Added by Korinna Thielen on November 20, 2009 at 5:30pm — No Comments

The Romer Charta - thoughts on Paul Romer's TED talk

Our cities are complex, unequal and gridlocked in competing interests and despite our very best intentions they altogether don’t seem very close to the great ideas urban professionals have drawn up for them so far. That is what Paul Romer wants to change and at TED Oxford this year in July he explained his idea: Let us do away with all these damaging rules that prevent good things from happening and start afresh: Let us plan new cities where no harm has been done yet, such as on uninhabited lan… Continue

Added by Korinna Thielen on November 20, 2009 at 5:19pm — No Comments

The Future of UK Aviation

On 3rd November 2009, the Institution of Civil Engineers launched a report entitled Aviation 2040, presenting four scenarios for the future of UK aviation and airport infrastructure, produced in collaboration with Arup and other industry experts. Arup's Foresight & Innovation team facilitated two day-long workshops which the produced four futures for the aviation industry to the year 2040. The four scenarios are based on the key social, technical, economic, environmental and political (STEEP… Continue

Added by Marcus Morrell on November 5, 2009 at 5:04pm — No Comments

Managing Consequences - Trends & Attitudes

Hi, I have just attended an interesting debrief from the Futures Companie in London and I thought it could feed your Drivers of Change project • UK consumers are emerging from the economic crisis with new values and attitudes • A new era of consumption is here – the Era of Consequences (after the Era of indulgence & the recession mindset) • Key social drivers: Living with Uncertainty, Looking for Control, Considering Consequences • 6 new sources of value represent footholds for marketing… Continue

Added by Stéphanie Griffiths on November 5, 2009 at 4:40pm — No Comments

Global Hospitality Workshop Series: How Green Can We Go?

In the last three weeks Arup Global Hotels and Leisure hosted two Hotels of the Future workshops in Amsterdam and Montenegro. The Amsterdam workshop was a collaboration between Global Hotels and Leisure Director Greg Chikaher, Arup Amsterdam Director Rogier Van der Heide, and facilitated by Arup Director for Global Foresight & Innovation Chris Lu… Continue

Added by Francesca Birks on October 30, 2009 at 1:30pm — 1 Comment

-Interlinked Challenges- image and text search related to global challenges

http://colli239.fts.educ.msu.edu/ ' Interlinked Challenges is a non-profit, university-based research project that addresses global challenges and sustainability in an interconnected, complex world. Global challenges addressed in this site include: biodiversity, climate change, eco-migrations, economy, energy, food, health, hunger, population growth, poverty, security, sustainability, transportation, urbanization, and water stress. Images and bits of text are drawn from articles, po… Continue

Added by Mieke Haase on October 22, 2009 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Drivers of Change at TED

As a TEDGlobal sponsor we were invited to hold a workshop for forty TEDsters on the inaugural day of TEDGlobal 2009 at Keble College, Oxford. The interactive session was called “Drivers of Change” and was designed to help TEDsters collectively identify the most important trends and drivers shaping the world over the next 20 years. We were pleased to see how oversubscribed the event was. In the end some fifty participants took part from diverse backgrounds in academia and from the private and pub… Continue

Added by Marcus Morrell on October 19, 2009 at 4:00pm — No Comments

Sustainability is here to stay - whether the science is right or wrong.

Emma Synnott and I ran a successful discussion this week in conjunction with the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia (AmCham). BIG thanks go to Charmaine Terry, Duff Watkins and Katie Keshan of AmCham for organising a very enjoyable session with great Eggs Florentine and hot, strong coffee!! We talked about what business owners need to be thinking about in planning for a carbon constrained future. Ahead of the global… Continue

Added by Steve Lennon on October 15, 2009 at 5:30am — 1 Comment

World Today review of DoC cards

Great review by Tom Patterson for The World Today on the Drivers of Change cards. Agree completely that a natural evolution will be to take the cards into a web based format. Should this be a curated collection or take a more socialised format?

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Added by Duncan Wilson on October 12, 2009 at 10:33pm — No Comments

How to link sustainability and profitability?

I have recently attended a great conference at the V&A part of the design festival where this question was debated. Apart from obvious things such as Use low carbon intensive material. Avoid shipping / air transport. Use flat pack / products stackable on palette .. Some great points were raised by the sustainability manager from Ikea: “Sustainability is all about ownership” “We don’t want to have a sustainability strategy” I.E a pamphlet made in isolation by the sustainability team. Ikea… Continue

Added by Stéphanie Griffiths on September 29, 2009 at 11:58am — No Comments

The City Is A Battlesuit For Surviving The Future

The City Is A Battlesuit For Surviving The Future is a great post on Io9 by Matt Jones at Berg on comics, Archigram, urban informatics and the city. His intro starts: "In February of this year I gave a talk at webstock in New Zealand, entitled "The Demon-Haunted World" - which investigated past… Continue

Added by Duncan Wilson on September 28, 2009 at 12:29pm — No Comments

tomorrows thoughts today

Via Malte Scholl an interesting site from a London based duo writing about the future of Urbanism. They say: "TTT BELIEVES that our urban environments are best understood as spatial settings for social and political economies and it is within this frame of reference that the most powerful propositions lie." More at http://www.tomorrowsthoughtstod… Continue

Added by Duncan Wilson on September 28, 2009 at 11:40am — No Comments

Design Mind and Drivers of Change at TED

The current issue of Design Mind is dedicated to coverage of TED Global in Oxford earlier this year. The Foresight team contributed an article summarising the output of the workshop we ran. The full article by Marcus is copied below.

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Added by Duncan Wilson on September 24, 2009 at 10:51pm — No Comments

Creating New Markets: Equitable Wealth Distribution

I was at a Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership event last night, chaired by Will Day, Chair of the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission. One of the keynotes was given by Jim Cust, an economist and academic based at Oxford University. He founded an NGO called Bottom Billion which helps entrepreneurs in LDCs to connect with businesses in the developed world. He was talking about new models of business in less economically dev… Continue

Added by Marcus Morrell on August 14, 2009 at 9:42am — No Comments

Watch the video "The story of..."

A research project in the Foresight group on something called the "ECCO" model has been running for a number of years now. This model is a radically new look at what makes our economies tick. Its purpose is to provide a framework for checking the physical consistency of future scenarios. As an introduction to this subject, I've recently completed a 25-minute video called "The story of energy, stuff and the environment" at http://www.driversofchange.com/projects/. Do please take a look at it. I'… Continue

Added by Simon Roberts on July 31, 2009 at 6:25pm — No Comments

Design 2050 - Take the challenge!

The future is fiction. In fact, the future is a story that each of us participates in writing every day. While we cannot predict the future, it is absolutely vital that each of us consider the years to come, so that we are more prepared to prevent, anticipate and cope with that which… Continue

Added by Flora Tonking on July 30, 2009 at 5:40pm — No Comments

Climate Friendly Food Labels

Sweden is going to become the first country to label "climate-friendly" food products. Their hope is that the labels will prompt consumers to buy greener products, but there are already worries that some companies may use the scheme to "greenwash" and bias their food products. The scheme is voluntary and firms must prove they have reduced greenhouse gas emissions in… Continue

Added by Francesca Birks on July 16, 2009 at 9:37pm — No Comments

Australasian Futures and Foresight Association

A new site has launched under the Shaping Tomorrow site by the AFFA - worth a look at for those in Australasia.

Continue

Added by Duncan Wilson on July 7, 2009 at 3:00pm — 1 Comment

Foresight In Dubai

On July 1st Foresight hosted a workshop in Dubai to help the development team better articulate their vision for their mixed use development. The aim of the workshop was to introduce the participants to the future drivers which are likely to impact their project and affect their aspirations to be an exclusive, high-end location destination. The project site is located at the base of the Palm of Jumeirah and includes four major towers for hospitality, retail, work and live space. Continue

Added by Francesca Birks on July 6, 2009 at 10:57pm — No Comments

Matthew Ritchie/Daniel Bosia: The Last Scattering, Phase 2, 8 Fitzroy St, London

The exhibition has been extended until 15th July so that people have a chance to view it before it tours to New York. The installation will change in response to the new venue. That is what is so exciting about this work. It is different in each location. We hope to install the twitter-kiosk in London this week,as an addition to the visitors' book. The 5-minute film has proved a useful tool to raise awareness not only about the exhibition but also about our exhibition space. http://www.youtube.… Continue

Added by Jennifer Greitschus on June 22, 2009 at 12:53pm — No Comments

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