Towards Planning In the New Age; Comparative study of Urban and Regional Planning with Futures Studies

Today’s world faced with dramatic and unique changes. The tsunami of change challenges all ancient doctrines and rational philosophical theories. Appearance of surprising discontinuity in information era and sharp increase of uncertainties in different grounds, make planning for urban complex systems much harder. According to the Changes, in the last half century, in spite of making and implementing thousands of urban development plans, from the viewpoints of process and consequences, our interventions in the Iranian cities and regions, didn’t have any clear end. So by using the new methods, changing the insight in the process and tools of planning is necessary. In this regard, the present research, has compared and contrasted prevalent urban planning paradigms and futures studies and also stated how the transition from "exploring" paradigms to "normative" forms and from "definite" futures to “multiplicity” and "alternative” futures. By getting the results of such comparative studies, the urban development plans should pass the forecasting and discovering future and get to the futures studies and foresight that aim at mapping and making future.