New Tools for a New Era of Scenario Planning

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy recently announced the creation of the Consortium for Scenario Planning, "an initiative to bring together urban planners, software developers, researchers, and others from the public, private, academic, and nonprofit sectors to build capacity for better land use and transportation planning."

Scenario planning has been a tool used for planning and other policy fields for decades, but the rapid pace of data and software innovation in recent years has redefined the practice. According to the Lincoln Institute, the new Consortium for Scenario Planning is intended to build on that technological progress.

To supplement and inform the future work of the Consortium, the Lincoln Institute recently published a white paper written by Robert Goodspeed titled "An Evaluation Framework for the Use of Scenarios in Urban Planning."

Armando Carbonell, senior fellow and chair of the Department of Planning and Urban Form at the Lincoln Institute, recently gave a TED talk at TEDxbeacon Street on the subject of scenario planning in 2016.