Using Visioning and Backcasting Process in the Cardiff and Manchester City-Regions Carla de Laurentis and Miriam Hunt

Using Visioning and Backcasting Process in the
Cardiff and Manchester City-Regions
Carla de Laurentis and Miriam Hunt

Introduction
Exploring the practices, drivers, innovations and transitions dynamics that will underpin retrofitting in the UK city
regions between 2020 and 2050, the Retrofit 2050 project identified a set of three contrasting long-term (2050) vi-
sions for retrofit city-regional futures. This brief note provides further indication of the Phase two of the Retrofit
2050 scenario process which aimed at locating these visions in our case study regions. Working with a group of re-
gional stakeholders from the public, private and third sectors, the project team explored how context shaped the three
visions, rendering them distinctive to one particular city-region and, importantly, whether they were helpful in back-
casting the process of retrofitting a city-region in 2050.

Process
The starting point of the visioning process at the regional level intended to reflect the observations that retrofitting,
by its very nature, does not occur on a blank state and will rather occur in existing social, governance and physical
structures. It follows that grounding the visions in the Cardiff city-region consisted of a series of separate steps iden-
tified in the table below.

Figure 1: Visioning process and back-casting at the regional level: Overview of the regional scenario con-
struction process

While the regional case studies of urban retrofit governance, the desktop research and a series of interviews helped
unfolding the regional context, the Retrofit City-Regional Futures scenario workshops held both in Cardiff and Man-
chester brought together a group of stakeholders from the private, public and voluntary sectors to discuss how the
three Retrofit 2050 visions could ‘touch-down’ in context; participants were asked, in particular, to:

                Provide a rich picture of what a retrofit future would look in 2050 under different
                articulations of urban sustainability;

                Make transparent the assumptions and choices made in grounding and adapting the
                Retrofit 2050 visions to the regional context;

                Assess how successfully the visions encompass the future ‘possibility space’ for the
                city-region, identifying any gaps and allowing for hybridisation of the visions;

                Explore and illuminate indicative context specific transition pathways

While both workshops were successful in providing and testing key stakeholders engagement to consider and popu-
late imagined futures and the key challenges that emerge in promoting purposive retrofit processes at city-regional
level, what follows refers to the grounding and visualisation of the sole Cardiff City Region case study. During the
Cardiff Workshop, conducted on the 17th of May 2013, the participants to the Cardiff workshop were asked to tease
out the future trends in population growth in the city region, to produce a pitch to describe what a retrofit future for
Cardiff/SE Wales would look in 2050 under different articulations of urban sustainability and to explore how the
future visions for a Retrofit Cardiff City Region might be achieved indicating a roadmap of short (2013-2020), medi-
um (2020-2030) and longer-term (2030-2050) actions and milestones for each future regional scenario.

Novel findings
The regional scenarios produce each describe distinctive long term visions of what a sustainable future might look
like in the Cardiff City Region and analyse the conditions, processes and pathways necessary for their realisation.
Each represents a distinctive articulation of urban sustainability and shows how the complex set of pressures, politi-
cal priorities and economic drivers ranging from climate change, energy security, green growth, social equity, fuel
poverty and long term sustainability play out across the variegated (rural, post-industrial and urban) geographies of
the Cardiff/SE Wales city region.

The Cardiff City-Region Scenarios for urban sustainability are:

Smart Valleys Cardiff
A city-region with a vibrant economy focused on green technological
solutions. Investment in the 2010s and 2020s created stronger
collaboration between the knowledge sector and commerce to create
business clusters that are internationally competitive. Efficiency is a
key policy goal, with all utilities overseen by a single body to
consider resource management issues in the face of scarcity.
Economic growth has underpinned investment in high quality
housing, environments and social care services.
Wilderness Valleys Cardiff
A high density city-region made up of medium rise buildings based
around boulevards and parks, with previously underused spaces now
more densely populated. Distinctive ‘villages’ within the city ensure
a culturally rich region, connected by electrified rail and shared
electric cars, while the rural hinterland is returned to wilderness and
used for food and biomass crops. Extensive investment in the 2020s,
30s and 40s included rebuilding of urban centres to mixed use
development and energy, water and waste networks fit for a compact
city.
Green Orchard Cardiff
Sustainability is at the heart of every policy decision made in the city-
region with far greater dialogue between decision-makers and
communities. Planning decisions are much more connected to the
needs of communities; academic research is focussed on useful,
practical knowledge. Half of all food eaten is produced with the city-
region, with arable land in public spaces offering high employment,
and hydroponics tower visible across the city. Priority is given to
local energy production produced by community schemes, delivered
through efficient networks.

Each of these Cardiff City futures is located within the ‘possibility space’ described by two key dimensions of
change for systemic urban retrofitting as shown in figure 2. Figure 2 also shows how the context specific visions dif-
fer from the Retrofit 2050 visions.

Implications
The Cardiff City-Region Scenarios developed highlight the importance of the city natural and built environment, the
particular economic, social, political and demographic structures and the diversity of values and interests that are
important in shaping different expectations of the future of real cities. In developing the regional scenarios, it was
evident that different drivers and pressures characterised each vision.

Figure. 2: Locating the Cardiff Visions

Within the Smart Valleys city-region scenario, the threats of climate change are seen as opportunities in which the
economy and ecology can be favourably combined and adapted to the increasing pressure to act more sustainably.
The compelling pressures of resource constraints and the emphasis on retrofitting the built environment are framed in
terms of economic growth coupled with a culture of competition between city-regions at national and international
levels. This demands concentration of investment in upgrading current infrastructure provisions, requiring effortsin
implementing specific measures that stimulate innovative processes, but also entailing changes and evolution in the
current governance structure.

The Wilderness Valleys city-region identifies the current economic crises and processes of decline in post-industrial
regions as critical factors for determining the direction towards urban sustainability to 2050. The pressures around
resource constraints and the need to re-engineer the built environment are framed in terms of opportunities to trans-
form the city-region and those places and economic activities that have resulted in lock-in. Private and public invest-
ments are channelled towards upgrading current infrastructure provisions, increasing transport mobility and driving
economic activities through a process of renewal around the main high-densely populated urban centres.

The development of the Wilderness Valleys scenario identifies major challenges in land use, requiring combined
efforts in implementing specific planning measures and spatial development plans and highlights the importance of
coordination across existing administrative structures.

The Green Orchard Cardiff city region emerges as a response to the pressures exerted by the current ecological and
economic crises. It goes beyond simply reducing emissions and increasing renewable energy production, requiring
major changes in the way society functions. This scenario demands a value shift towards community and social equi-
ty. Re-engineering the city region is interpreted through the principles of urban metabolism, in a way that best opti-
mises the relationship between the city-region economy and the environment. Such relationship builds upon a para-
digm shift in which sustainability replaces growth as a key driver for the city-region. Such a vision requires particu-
lar types of spatial planning measures and land use regulation that foresee an important role for the regional govern-
ment. A sustainable spatial plan at regional level provides the basis for interventions and specific actions and is key
in managing different zones for energy production.

Conclusion
This report shows how the Retrofit 2050 City Futures can be used to explore the systemic urban retrofit of specific
city-regions. specific city-regions. Existing visions of sustainable cities have relatively little to tell us about processes
of systemic urban retrofit because they frequently overlook these important characteristics of real cities.

The visioning and back-casting exercises conducted allow investigating and capturing the diversity of possibilities
for the Cardiff city-region transition to sustainability, stressing the importance of the city natural and built environ-
ment, the economic, social, political and demographic structures and the values and interests that shape expectations
of urban sustainability. The research highlighted the different drivers and pressures that characterise each vision and
provided the opportunity to identify what could and needs to be done, as well as the main obstacles to achieving
these possible futures.

The Cardiff City-Region Scenarios for urban sustainability shows how the use of Retrofit City Futures and the sce-
nario process can be grounded and enriched by understanding the (economic, political, social and ecological) trans-
formation processes shaping the development of particular city-region contexts. Although there are differences be-
tween what is wanted for a sustainable Cardiff city-region future and what can be achieved, visions are a helpful tool
in supporting the elaboration and analysis of a sustainable future for the city-region.

References

De Laurentis, C., Hunt, M., Eames, M., (2013), Report of the Retrofit City-Regional Futures, Cardiff/ SE Wales Sce-
narios Workshop, 17th of May 2013.

De Laurentis, C., Hunt, M., Eames, M., Lannon, S., (2014), Retrofit Cardiff City-Region Scenarios for Urban Sus-
tainability, Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, Cardiff.

De Laurentis, C., Hunt, M., (2012), Urban Retrofit in South East Wales City-Region: Reframing Sustainability and
Economic Development, May 2012, Cardiff, Welsh School of Architecture, available on http://
www.retrofit2050.org.uk.

Hunt, M., (2011) Cardiff and South East Wales: Social, Economic and Sustainability Context, August 2011, Retrofit
2050 Working Paper Series, Cardiff, Welsh School of Architecture, available on http://www.retrofit2050.org.uk/
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