Beauvais is a city in the North of France, with a population of 56,000. After creating a "Council for the Future" in 2022, the City of Beauvais initiated an process that lasted over two years, whose intention was to build upon the memory of the 2020 Covid pandemic in order to imagine the city's futures. Among the questions asked: What makes a city hold together in the face of a major crisis? How, after such a crisis, do we imagine the city of tomorrow?
How it was done
The Council for the Future and its partner inSiglo decided not to do a classic foresight exercise, and in particular not to do "scenarios", but rather to work with young and older citizens on their images of the future: the changes they see coming, their hopes, desires and worries.
The process started with individual interviews and collective discussions on the lived experience of the pandemic. This was followed by 10 "projection" workshops with a variety of publics: students and teachers, health and care professionals, merchants and consumers on the local market, city council employees, teenagers, and kids. The groups worked on different themes they could easily relate to: food, housing, everyday life, care...
Kids were taken on a special journey where they were invited to draw images of the future. According to Delphine Bondran, who was part of the inSiglo team and designed this process, "if you ask them to talk about the city in 2040, it doesn't work. If you ask them to project themselves into the future in a fictional way, they have plenty to say."
The groups of kids worked on their own, before being joined by some (adult) members of the Council for the Future. The time travel they had been on before helped them speak to grown-ups on a more equal footing. "To allow youngsters to express themselves about the future, also provides them with tools that help them perceive themselves as actors of this unsettling world", says Delphine Bondran.
What they imagined
The book that came out of the process does not make a distinction between insights coming from young participants and others.
It represented the images of the futures produced by the participants along five "thematic lines" inspired from subway maps.
- The "Nature" line imagined a city more connected to natural ecosystems: more vegetation, local and urban food production, less meat consumption...
- The "Technology" line, very inspired by the Covid experience, imagined a very digital future, with 24/7 real-time services, but mitigated by "digital humanities".
- The "Densification" line imagined Beauvais as an attractive city able to double its population while maintaining social bonds and its quality of life: higher (and deeper underground) buildings, less space used by cars, multi-usage spaces and buildings, 24/7 sports and entertainment...
- The "Openness and inclusion" line was about welcoming newcomers and being inclusive to all: lifelong education, community care, a lively artistic scene...
- The "Implication" line was about involving all citizens in the city's workings: DIY, reuse and reparation, participation in local agriculture, peer-to-peer care...
The children groups started with somewhat stereotypical images of the future: lots of flying cars, greened cities with houses built on the top of trees, love and fear of animals. They also tended to imagine multiuse devices: trams which are also restaurants, a cinema which is also a health center. They, as well as the teenager group, expressed a mix of fascination and fear (bullying, solitude, and being automated out of jobs) towards technology.