Socio-Economic Trends

This report highlights selected inputs the researchers made to the government team to summarize the essential mechanics and roles for bringing a strategic perspective to the consideration of policy. In doing so, it provides the example of problems associated with an aging population as an illustration of how one can use a strategic perspective in an analysis of policy choices.

Israel will benefit from bringing a systemic strategic perspective into its policy process. The concept is integral to formal strategic planning but distinct; although the latter places emphasis on an output (a strategic plan), a strategic perspective is a process for bringing an analytical element into policy decisionmaking. A strategic perspective helps to bridge not only the gap between a short-term focus and longer-term outcomes but also that across ministerial portfolios and responsibilities.

A strategic perspective typically begins with a vision of what a desirable future state of the world might be. Translating a vision into policy requires an understanding of the challenges to achieving the vision and employing processes for setting specific goals to meet those challenges, identifying indicators to measure both status and progress toward goals, and designing and implementing policy measures that will contribute to achievement of goals.

The quality of territorial foresight and, in particular, of urban foresight, is nowadays measured not so much in terms of the ability to anticipate possible futures, always challenged by the increasing uncertainty and the exponential rate of change, as in terms of the ability to construct collective visions of the future that are ambitious, proactive and engaging for stakeholders and citizens.
What foresight has to offer is its capacity to approach both long-term challenges, perceived in the present, as well as shared aims and values in a distant horizon. This publication attempts to address these challenges by ‘imagineering’ the future of cities though the application of methods and techniques drawn from the strategic foresight and prediction fields in a systematic, rigorous and holistic way.