Participative Urban Foresight: Findings from an Event Ethnography in Isfahan

The irreplaceable role of cities in economic, cultural and political development of countries, their challenges and problems and the difficulty of their management has resulted in an increasing significance of theories, experiences and strategies concerning city transformation. In the relevant literature, numerous concepts and approaches try to offer images of future of cities. One of these concepts is smart cities. Also, participative foresight can play a role in creating future images of cities. This study seeks to offer recommendations on how to create local and brand-new images of futures of cities in Iran and improve the quality of urban foresight practices. A thick report of an event ethnography has been given from a foresight workshop conducted in Isfahan municipality about futures of Isfahan, 1420, based on observations, field notes by ethnographers and the theoretical interpretation of them. Utilization of participative deliberation and foresight techniques and event ethnography to create images of future is the innovative dimension of this paper. Adding materiality to future, deconstruction of technological utopianism discourse, conceptualization of foresight as a social capacity deriving from civic epistemologies and agonism, moving beyond used futures, and creation of neologisms can improve urban foresight practices.