Envisioning Beijing 2020 through sketches of urban scenarios

To provide the decision-makers in Beijing, China, with an assessment of alternative development futures, we introduce scenario planning to process of drafting Beijing's 2020 Plan. The sketches of scenarios for Beijing are fruitful in several ways. First, the development of scenarios can meet the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning (BMCUP)'s needs to explore different urban development options. Second, scenario planning can accommodate uncertainty in economic and population growth caused in part by China's rapid social and economic transformation. Third, in the course of creating evaluation framework to assess scenarios, scenario planning informs decision-makers about choices regarding predicted outcomes. We demonstrate that in a city that is experiencing unforeseen growth in the era of transformations, the decision-making process can be informed by evaluating the performance of alternative development scenarios.