Strategic Design Scenarios

Impacts 2022: Christophe Gouache, Alumni 2012

When design shapes the cities of tomorrow

Co-constructing future scenarios to ensure that the regions are open to all, resilient and sustainable.

When Christophe began his first year of training in 2007, public policy design was still in its infancy. "I had never heard of this profession before and I never imagined that it could become my job as a designer," he admits today.

It was a series of encounters and exchanges that fueled his thinking and led him to this area of design. His interest in social innovation issues led him to Brussels to Strategic Design Scenarios, a laboratory specialized in design applied to public innovation.

For 9 years now, he has been working on various public policy design and innovation issues with local, regional, governmental and European administrations.

With Visions + 21 - Agenda 21, created with the French Ministry of the Environment and local authorities, he has designed an experimental toolbox that allows agents, elected officials and citizens to co-construct sustainable visions of their regions over a 20 to 30 year horizon.

"The Agendas were often a list of actions that consisted of putting beehives on rooftops, installing LEDs in the city or supporting local agriculture, but there was no vision of the region as a whole. What was missing was a real development strategy that incorporated all the issues facing the region."

Visions +21, which is available free of charge on the Internet, aims to fill that gap. Developed in a collaborative manner, this tool allows communities to design a desirable and sustainable future for their city in co-creation with the inhabitants.