The French departement Côtes D'Armor in Bretagne led a large scale territorial foresight experience. This initiative has involved around 10.000 citizens from elected bodies, economical actors, administrations or residents, through conferences, workshops or surveys between 2007 and 2009.

The results are to be seen on a well documented website, including reports, videos, graphics.

Côtes d'Armor 2mille20 (French).

German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) launched on July 2009 a new funding activity to help regions imagining new ways to adapt to climate change and its consequences on everyday life and economy.



KLIMZUG is presented as an initiative for "the implementation of climate adaptation to be achieved through regional networks between science, companies, administration and public agencies. KLIMZUG wants to pool the strengths of the stakeholders by these cooperative networks and to integrate anticipated changes in processes of regional planning and development. This is to contribute to a timely climate adaptation of long-term sustainability and to strengthening the German economy."

KLIMZUG is already getting developped in 7 regional projects in Germany.

Learn more on the KLIMZUG website

What is a City of the Future?

This article by Bill Becker, published in Worldchanging, explores some innovative initiatives that help shaping the forms and outlines of what could be our future sustainable communities.

According to Bill becker, "there’s no lack of vision or help for cities that want to build for the future. With the stimulus package, there’s also some money. And with the imperative that we reduce our reliance on foreign oil and our greenhouse gas emissions, there is no shortage of critical milestones. The cities that help America create its new energy economy will be tomorrow’s prosperity places, where people will want to live and businesses will want to build."

Read more on Worldchanging

A citizen led initiative for a cleaner energy eventually ended up as a proper green energy company.

Read more

Eiffage, a French construction group, has started a long term Research & Development experience based on a future vision of their activities. Called Phosphore, the project is structured as a group intern think tank reaching to all the different group's branches.

What is specially interesting from the Imagine perspective is that Phosphore is framed within a vision of a future and fits into a territorial as well as a sustainable approach.

Phosphore's work focus on energy efficiency, future materials, social, environmental and economical issues surrounding construction activities, and sustainable mobility. In 2008, two more themes were introduced: Ecoquartiers and Energitecture® (concept considering as well architectural as energy issues).

More informations can be found at: http://www.eiffage.fr/cms/developpement-durable/phosphore.html (French)

Who is familiar with the IMAGINE foresight initiative and Energie-CItés, is familiar with the "One planet living" concept. Indeed, the London Borough of Sutton, membre of Energie-Cités and active participants to our annual IMAGINE seminars is currently engaged in the "One planet Sutton" project, which is for the borough a way to create, share and reach the vision of a sustainable and attractive future for its community.

In her post in World changing, Holly Pearson, a practising urban planner, tells us how she met Jennie Moore, a fellow alumna from the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning presently investigating the concept of a “One planet city” for her doctoral research.

A brief abstract of the questions Jennie's works adress is given here:

What can be done to restructure the physical form of cities? What strategies are available to reduce the footprint of a city, and how close can a city get to ecological sustainability or “one planet living”? The obvious solutions are to promote compact and mixed use urban development, district energy, local food production, and the like. But the potential for change through strategies like these is limited, given the fixed and usually unsustainable form of existing urban areas.

The second question relates to the social and cultural aspects of cities’ ecological impact – how do we, as city dwellers, become fair and equitable stewards of the planet in our patterns of consumption and production? When we’ve pushed physical city restructuring as far as it can go, what opportunities exist for changes in social behavior?

To read more:
World Changing: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008537.html
Towards One planet living in sutton: http://www.oneplanetsutton.org/
The "One planet living" concet: http://www.oneplanetliving.org/