VISIONS for Venice in 2050: Aleph, story telling and unsolved paradoxes

This paper tells the story of the implementation in the early 2000s of a European Project called VISIONS. The project organised conversations about sustainability ideas for some cities in Europe, including Venice, and for Europe as a whole. For the city of Venice four different scenarios were built, illustrated and debated through a social research process. The project is emblematic of many discussions about anticipation, foresight and “futuring” activities taking place today in many places. In this paper we discuss how conversations about the future are indeed enquiries in the present; we also use Borges Aleph invention and post-normal science to argue that “futuring” conversations need to pull in often neglected types of knowledge; we also argue that the ways in which plausibility of “future” scenarios is argued needs to be deliberated by all concerned and not relinquished to a specific elite. Eventually, we argue that a post-normal framework and its associated concept of fitness for purpose contains the necessary elements for making “futuring” activities a fundamental step on humans’ desirable constant self-reflection.

► This project has explored ways in which different audiences can engage in conversations highly framed by scientific arguments, experimenting with different ways of communicating scenarios.
► This paper argues that futuring activities, should happen in a post-normal context, i.e. involving all relevant social actors in safe and legitimate debate spaces.
► This paper examines plausibility of scenario work and the importance of the narrator voice.
► This paper suggests that different spaces for studying complexity have to be created, including experiential forms of sensing the knowledge action paradoxes.