Using Backcasting Approach in Developing a Roadmap for Tehran’s Vision

Backcasting is a normative, target-oriented, and problem-solving approach, focusing on the desirable future vision and looking back for how to achieve it. Despite the growing global attention to backcasting and its efficiency in various fields, this approach has not been considered in urban planning and facing the complex issues and evolvements of the city in Iran. Therefore, this article uses the backcasting approach to develop a roadmap for Tehran’s vision. The presumption of this study from the desirable future vision is the same as that compiled in Tehran’s Strategic-Structural (Comprehensive) Plan. Thus, it indicates applying expert-based backcasting by stepping back from Tehran’s desirable future vision on the horizon of 2026 to the origin of the current situation in 2006. The ideals of the development perspective in the seven pillars have been scrutinized as the desirable future vision. Studying the current situation has been done by the qualitative content analysis of the document of Tehran’s Comprehensive Plan. Then, the roadmap was followed by defining key steps and targets, essentially placed in three distinct categories. Accordingly, Tehran’s desirable future vision will be realized through the pathway of three short visions, including “Tehran is aware of its existential nature with comprehensive knowledge about facilities and limitations for consolidation and modification,” “Tehran is the capacity builder for infrastructure and facility services, socially and organizationally capable, and prepared to all-round development,” and “Tehran is a prosperous and sustainable regarding cohesion and resilience, wealthy concerning the quality of life, and influential on a transnational level.”

Backcasting is a normative, target-oriented, and problem-solving approach, focusing on the desirable future vision and looking back for how to achieve it. Despite the growing global attention to backcasting and its efficiency in various fields, this approach has not been considered in urban planning and facing the complex issues and evolvements of the city in Iran. Therefore, this article uses the backcasting approach to develop a roadmap for Tehran’s vision. There is a difference between predictive, explorative, and normative methods that seek to study probable, possible, and preferable futures. In this way, the backcasting is distinguished from other future studies approaches. Forecasting goes from the present to the future, but backcasting starts from the future and connects to the present. Hence, backcasting as a process and not a method involves identifying a preferable future with desired goals aspired by the planning client and creating milestones or decisive steps on the pathway from that desirable future vision back to the present. It is relevant when short-term directional studies and longer-term forecasts indicate that the goals and targets will not be achieved within the designated time.

The backcasting approach can be classified as expert-based backcasting, participative backcasting, and interactive backcasting. Expert-based backcasting focuses on the technical analysis of future policy recommendations in a top-down process. In contrast, participative and interactive backcasting mainly emphasize defining future visioning in a bottom-up manner. After defining the desirable future vision in the first phase, the second phase is to look back to the present, study, and analyze the current situation compared to that vision. Accordingly, in the third phase, a roadmap is developed, including decisive steps and key targets providing short visions to achieve the end vision. The presumption of this study from the desirable future vision is the same as that compiled in Tehran’s Strategic-Structural (Comprehensive) Plan. Thus, it indicates applying expert-based backcasting by stepping back from Tehran’s desirable future vision on the horizon of 2026 to the origin of the current situation in 2006. The ideals of the development perspective in the seven pillars have been scrutinized as the desirable future vision. Studying the current situation under the mentioned pillars has been done by the qualitative content analysis of the document of Tehran’s Comprehensive Plan, including 11 volumes or main study areas. Then, the roadmap was followed by defining key steps and targets, essentially placed in three distinct categories.

The seven pillars of the desirable future vision include “Iranian-Islamic originality and identity,” “intelligence, smartness, and globality,” “greenness, beauty, and vitality,” “security and resistance against crises and risks,” “structural stability and coherence,” “prosperous, well-equipped, and fair,” and “centralized with national and global functions.” According to the pillars mentioned above, studying the current situation is the result of the content analysis of the plan and the inspection of the instances included in it, which generally have a physical-spatial nature and mainly indicate the inappropriateness of the context resulted in the occurrence of widespread functional disorders in Tehran. Accordingly, the roadmap to realize Tehran’s desirable future vision has been developed based on the current situation following the framework of the seven pillars. This roadmap includes normative key steps and targets, and their number varies in the pathway of connecting the current situation to the desirable future vision in the seven pillars. It means that in achieving the desirable future vision from the current situation, the number and priority of the steps and targets could differ depending on the pillars’ nature.

Accordingly, Tehran’s desirable future vision will be realized through the pathway of three short visions, including “Tehran is aware of its existential nature with comprehensive knowledge about facilities and limitations for consolidation and modification,” “Tehran is the capacity builder for infrastructure and facility services, socially and organizationally capable, and prepared to all-round development,” and “Tehran is a prosperous and sustainable regarding cohesion and resilience, wealthy concerning the quality of life, and influential on a transnational level.” By forecasting the current situation, these visions and targets could be considered as a basis for backcasting for a constant and continuous pathway towards the gradual realization of the desirable future vision and, simultaneously, as a topic for further related research. Meanwhile, using participatory and interactive backcasting approaches in differentiating or complementing expert-based ones is a significant field for study in the future.