Scenarios and planning for alternative London futures - or making a drama out of a strategy

This chapter responds to the decision to base the latest version of The London Plan, like its predecessors, on a single deterministic view of the future. It argues for adoption of a different approach, giving explicit attention to a number of credible alternative futures which the city may face, in the context of substantial economic and demographic uncertainties. As a modest illustration it is shown how substantially quantitative forecasts could be affected if the government were to succeed in reducing international migration to the level proposed by its Conservative members. More generally, it is suggested that resistance to exploring scenarios is likely to reflect both over-reliance on status quo assumptions, and political obstacles to explicitly addressing some of the sources of real uncertainty.