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Pathways to the Future

Long Range Planning, by design, looks out far enough to capture substantive regional change in land use, economics, and other regional dynamics. This allows regional leaders to anticipate threshold-level changes that must be planned for as well as to consider how to avoid undesirable outcomes with enough time to manage the ripple effects of near-term decisions.

Long Range Planning benefits from examining a range of plausible futures through scenario planning. The futures vary based on key regional drivers of change including community factors (land use, housing), economics, and other factors such as climate resiliency and technology.

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Scenario Planning Documents

Related Documents

Scenario Planning

Scenario planning is a practice through which communities plan for an uncertain future by exploring multiple possibilities of what might happen. Scenario planning helps to guide policy makers, planners, and community members through consideration of various future conditions and how to effectively respond to and plan for them. For this analysis, scenarios are defined as a set of reasonably possible, but structurally different futures.

The outcome of this scenario planning process will communicate the risk and opportunities of each scenario to different program areas of PlanRVA which includes housing, environment, community development, emergency management and transportation. In general, depending on the program area, the scenario planning process can result in three levels of applicability - education and awareness, strategic direction (vision setting or exploration), and action identification (in the form of policy recommendations and project identification & selection).

What if Trends are Uncertain?

When trends become unpredictable or ‘disruptors’ threaten to alter future trends, long range planning benefits from considering alternative futures through Exploratory Scenario Planning.

When trends become unpredictable or ‘disruptors’ threaten to alter future trends, long range planning benefits from considering alternative futures through Exploratory Scenario Planning.

Exploratory Scenario Planning

The primary purpose of exploratory scenario planning is to be prepared. The future is uncertain – like an opponent’s offense, we can think ahead to what may happen, and envision our actions in each scenario. Those insights will inform policy directions and investment strategies. We can also identify positive outcomes that we can aim for by design.

The primary purpose of exploratory scenario planning is to be prepared.

The future is uncertain – like an opponent’s offense, we can think ahead to what may happen, and envision our actions in each scenario. Those insights will inform policy directions and investment strategies. We can also identify positive outcomes that we can aim for by design.

Focusing on What Could Happen

Exploratory Scenario Planning looks at a range of possible futures to understand what could happen rather than focusing on one future vision.

Exploratory Scenario Planning looks at a range of possible futures to understand what could happen rather than focusing on one future vision.

Forces of Change

To create a range of plausible scenarios, we apply different assumptions about the driving forces of change and organize them into scenario narratives.

The scenario narratives will have an overall organizing principle. The goal is to be internally consistent while presenting a broad range of plausible futures.

The Land Use Model is the key to providing data to all the other models.

Each model will use the Land Use data from the Scenarios along with additional model-specific inputs. For example:

  • Land Use Model might project a greater concentration of population in urban areas
  • Transportation Model might project greater use of transit in urban areas
  • Results from both of these inputs might result in a lowering of vehicle miles traveled in the region.
land use allocation model

Why Scenario Planning?

Scenario planning helps to guide policy makers, planners, and community members through consideration of various future conditions and how to effectively respond to and plan for them. Pathways to the Future’s scenarios are a set of reasonably possible, but structurally different futures.

The outcome of this scenario planning process will communicate the risk and opportunities of each scenario to different program areas of PlanRVA which includes housing, environment, community development, emergency management and transportation. In general, depending on the program area, the scenario planning process can result in three levels of applicability - education and awareness, strategic direction (vision setting or exploration), and action identification (in the form of policy recommendations and project identification & selection).

Scenario Drivers

Scenario planning is not just a set of “what if” questions. Rather, the “what ifs” are supported with data analysis. When we try to predict what might happen in the future based on changes to individual elements, it is called “modeling.” For Pathways to the Future, these individual elements are called “drivers.” Examples of the drivers used for Pathways to the Future include things like population dynamics (changes in population growth, household size, immigration, etc.) and resiliency dynamics (changes in preference and availability of renewable energy, variations in sea level rise). Changing the drivers – like predicting major increases in population growth or a shift to renewable energy – will change the output of the models via performance measures. Pathways to Planning’s five scenarios represent changes to the drivers. In modelling those changes, our performance measures show us what those futures might look like.

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Exploring the Scenarios

Incorporating a Baseline Scenario helps establish a point of comparison for the four alternative future scenarios. The Baseline Scenario represents the assumptions PlanRVA has made for its Long-Range Transportation Plan (LRTP). Comparing the alternative future scenarios could give the region insights into potential uncertainties.

The Baseline Scenario helps us see into the future that we are attempting to reach today. However, the future is uncertain and the requirements for achieving the Baseline may not pan out as expected. So what if we don’t head in this direction?

Baseline

The Baseline Scenario is built on the idea that currently projected growth patterns will continue into the future. This means that there will be significant regional growth in suburban areas, more dense development in urban cores, and growth in rural areas as well. In the Baseline Scenario, Health care dominates employment sectors, and the share of professional service jobs grows. Clean energy and technology would be adopted based on national trends. Settlement patterns would be guided by the currently adopted Comprehensive Plans of our jurisdictions.

Back to the Future

The Back to the Future Scenario sees a return to lower density development patterns. In this scenario, growth mainly occurs in the suburbs and rural areas. Professional and service industry jobs take a larger share of employment. Single-income families become more common, and most households are car-centric. The region does not attempt to mitigate the impacts of climate change and instead reacts to climate events and disasters after they occur.

RVA Sinks

This scenario represents the doomsday alternative – a sort of worst-case scenario. For RVA Sinks to become reality, both man-made and natural disasters would result in a slow recovery. These disasters are worsened by a lack of affordable housing and jobs. The result of the RVA Sinks scenario is low population and economic growth, with businesses and residents leaving the region in favor of better working and living conditions elsewhere.

Ecotopia

This scenario depicts a region that is actively mitigating the impacts of climate change. Under the Ecotopia Scenario, the region would experience considerable growth – attracting climate refugees and digital nomads seeking high quality communities. Ecotopia’s future is multimodal, meaning people can travel throughout the region without needing to rely solely on automobiles. Lifestyle shifts in this scenario lead to no/low carbon footprints. The economy shifts to one based in technology and entrepreneurialism.

Meh and Safe

The Meh and Safe Scenario depicts a future that matches the growth levels of the Baseline Scenario but with widely varied development patterns based on the preference of each locality. Meh and Safe would adopt some proactive strategies for climate resilience but also react to climate events and disasters after they occur. The Meh and Safe Scenario incorporates more varied technology adoption and a shift towards a more transit-oriented culture.

To review the in-depth scenario results, visit this story map.