Designing for Transitions: Visioning, Backcasting, Assessing the Present Socio-economic Inequities in Pittsburgh
by Team Strange Attractor: Jean Chu, Yujin Lee, Will Martin, and Nikita Valluri
Introduction
Assignment #4 represents a crucial phase in our exploration of the wicked problem of socio-economic inequity in Pittsburgh. This assignment unfolds in two distinct parts, urging us to blend speculative creativity with analytical rigor as we navigate from an understanding of current challenges toward a visionary future where these issues have been addressed.
In the first part (4A), we are tasked with crafting a comprehensive vision for a future that is not only free from socio-economic disparities but also sustainable and equitable across all levels of everyday life — from individual households to the global community. Drawing on concepts like Cosmopolitan Localism, Commoning, Mutual Aid, Pluriversality, and Manfred Max-Neef’s Theory of Needs, we are encouraged to imagine a society where sustainable and equitable practices are embedded in the fabric of daily existence. This is not just about brainstorming potential solutions, but also about depicting a society in which new ways of living, working, and playing are intrinsic.
Building on this envisioned future, the second part (4B) challenges us to critically assess the present and design a decades-long transition pathway to our desired outcome. This involves evaluating what currently exists to decide what must be dismantled, what should be maintained and evolved, and which innovative practices can disrupt the status quo to facilitate the transition. This “backcasting” process is our strategic approach to identifying actionable steps and system interventions that bridge the gap between today and a radically transformed tomorrow.
More than an academic exercise, Assignment #4 invites us to engage in long-term thinking, to explore both possibilities and probabilities as we aim for a more equitable society. It compels us not only to dream of a future that might seem unattainable by today’s standards but also to chart a realistic, interconnected course toward that future. This assignment highlights the importance of designed transitions that integrate both material and non-material changes — from technologies and infrastructures to shifts in beliefs, behaviors, and societal norms. By delving deep into these dynamics, we cultivate a nuanced approach to resolving complex social issues through design and systemic thinking, setting the stage for meaningful and sustainable change.
Process
A. In-class exercises
In-class exercise #1
Framework for the future: A vision grounded in Max-Neef’s theory
Our introduction to the fourth assignment began with William Gibson’s quote on the uneven distribution of the future. In-class exercises gradually acquainted us with crafting desirable futures through visioning and backcasting, prompting us to question prevailing methods of measuring economic growth.
In-class assignment #1 entailed two components. Firstly, we wove a vision thread across three levels of everyday life: household, neighborhood, and city. By viewing households as integrated organisms, neighborhoods as clusters of such entities, and cities as amalgamations of neighborhoods, we embraced a multi-directional and multi-scalar approach to envisioning the future, emphasizing decentralized power dynamics.
Transitioning from the STEEP lens, our focus shifted to collaboratively crafting holistic visions for the future encompassing households, neighborhoods, cities, regions, and the planet. Although time constraints prevented the completion of the second part of the assignment, discussions commenced on collectively envisioning a world free from socio-economic disparities.
In-class exercise #2
In our second classroom exercise, we explored the potential of commoning and mutual aid to shape sustainable societies, envisioning lifestyle-based visions of more sustainable futures and identifying them as foundations for present-day systems interventions.
Commoning and mutual aid, as highlighted by our professor Gideon Kossoff, are interdependent. The practice of commoning, which involves collectively managing and sharing resources, relies on the cooperative principle of mutual aid.
Our exercise aimed to imagine post-capitalist societies, focusing on the essence of living rather than implementation specifics. We were tasked with crafting future fragments rooted in commoning and mutual aid to address socio-economic inequities. The objective was to envision emergent patterns of living resulting from resolving societal challenges through these future fragments.
Socio-economic inequity profoundly influences educational attainment, impacting access, quality, and outcomes. Economic disparities often restrict access to quality education, creating unequal opportunities for academic achievement. Insufficient funding for schools in low-income areas, limited access to educational resources, and variations in parental involvement further exacerbate educational disparities. These inequities persist across all educational levels, perpetuating cycles of poverty and inequality. Addressing socio-economic inequity in education necessitates comprehensive reforms to ensure equitable access to resources, support systems, and opportunities for all students.
In envisioning a future scenario for this exercise, we imagined a community where education is accessible and supported through shared learning environments within homes and neighboring spaces. At the neighborhood level, individuals from the some-college-no-degree (SCND) population would have the opportunity to freely return to community colleges to complete their education. The neighborhood would be equipped with ample resources, including access to common care facilities, employment opportunities, and training programs, to support them in their educational journey.
In class exercise #3
By using the concept of Alternative economies, we challenged and dismantled the need to wholly depend on money as the key factor that economic growth hinges upon. By observing the ways in which the dominant for-profit paradigm impedes the ability of societies to transition to more sustainable, place-based lifestyles, we were able to collectively think of a regenerative economy where change doesn’t happen from top to bottom, but from bottom-up.
During a team-based ideation session in our third classroom exercise, we explored how our current economic model perpetuates our wicked problems and contrasted it with envisioning a future where innovative economic paradigms address these challenges.
Working our way through the in-class exercises helped us continuously ideate on our vision for the future and tease fragments of the future that we wanted to incorporate in our final assignment. It also helped us question and rethink our approach towards developing and following an approach for attempting Assignment #3.
B. Developing Consensus
I. Envisioning Equity
Despite touching on compelling images of alternative futures through class exercises, we felt that connecting a future vision with a wholesome imagination of socio-economic equality in everyday life demanded a broader, more systematic conception of “equality” than “socio-economic” implies. At a minimum, we would need to bring depth and dimension to what we imagined not simply as equality but as a diverse tapestry of many different and nuanced ways of flourishing together. In other words, we needed clear values that would qualify the flavors of that equity and flourishing. Therefore we discussed wellbeing as a primary object. We also discussed the importance of equal access and the greater importance of capabilities when equal access is met with equal agency. To define wellbeing, we agreed that it is required to acknowledge a wide range of human experiences, from physical to emotional.
Intuitively most understand needs through a more expansive lens than food and shelter and means of satisfying them encompassing more the consumer goods paid for with wages. Broader conceptions of wellbeing, including an ascendant recognition of non-physical wellbeing including mental health, are not commonplace. Yet frameworks for understanding the full breadth of human needs receive less attention in public discourse. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, arguably the most familiar, dates back to the theories developed by psychologist Abraham Maslow published in 1943 (Maslow, 1943). While intuitive and recognizable, we agreed the hierarchical nature of Maslow’s categories didn’t reflect the evolving heterogeneity of cultural expression we imagined might be empowered to flourish.
Instead, we explored the systemic, non-hierarchical framework for understanding human needs through “human-scaled development” proposed by pioneering Chilean economist Manfredo Max-Neef (Max-Neef et al., 1991). Max-Neef proposes a range of human needs that, according to his theory, have remained remarkably constant through human history. These needs range from the physical/physiological dimensions like subsistence to more socio-emotional dimensions such as identity. For Max-Neef human culture is the system of methods communities use to satisfy this full spectrum of needs. Needs represent the potential for their satisfaction, and the absence of needs satisfiers, given their networked quality, might represent “poverty” of many needs, not strictly the poverty that is often associated with income in discourses of socio-economic inequality. With Max-Neef as a foundation, we could more effectively situate experiences of everyday life outside of the current capitalist model, imaging diverse and synergistic non-material-based need satisfiers to satisfy needs.
II. Building our own
Max-Neef’s concept of “fundamental human needs,” formed the basis for our overall vision for the future. Max-Neef emphasized the importance of meeting these fundamental needs for human well-being and argued that traditional economic indicators like GDP often fail to capture the complexities of human satisfaction and development. To deepen our understanding of what form alternative economies might hold, we also discussed the degrowth framework to better imagine how needs might be satisfied outside financial market transactions for commodities (Kallis, 2023). These models helped us begin the form clustered of need satisfiers that could connect alternative, synergistic satisfiers to everyday life experiences. Inspired, we identified three core pillars — philosophies upon which we wanted our future to be based.
- On Care: Care extends beyond healthcare and emotional support; it’s integral to people’s way of life, woven into society’s fabric. It transcends emotions and resources, contributing to physical health and serving as a measure of economic success. Prioritizing care fosters resilient societies that prioritize both people and the planet’s needs, spanning elder care, child care, physical and mental well-being, and support for those in need.
- On Work: Taking inspiration from Max-Neef’s advocacy for prioritizing human well-being, community development and ecological sustainability over purely financial gain we envision “economy and work” as sources of dignity, purpose, and fulfillment, rather than mere wage earners.
- On Nature: Ecosystems provide vital services like clean air, water, and soil fertility, crucial for human survival and prosperity. Neglecting to include and value these services in economic models leads to their overexploitation and degradation. Max-Neef’s perspective underscores the urgency of prioritizing conservation and sustainable management of ecosystems to ensure continued benefits for present and future generations.
Our vision for the future is based at the intersection of these three core pillars: care, meaningful work, and environmental stewardship.
We collectively envision a future society where living is deeply connected, households are multifunctional with rich diversity, heavily dense which increases the potential for diversity and innovation too.
A glimpse into our future world:
Imagine a shared cluster of homes housing multiple families that function as one collective unit. Every house hosts individual families spanning diverse generations, backgrounds, and cultural practices, interwoven to form a unique shared identity. All individual families practice and wield their own belief systems and practices and rituals, which come together to define a shared, yet innately unique culture of the shared unit. Every unit has been designed such that individual families have their own niche spaces for privacy while also having access to communal spaces which foster collaboration, camaraderie and care among them.
Nestled within this cluster lies a vibrant courtyard, cultivated with fruits and vegetables by all for shared sustenance. Seed selection and upkeep are communal endeavors, reflecting collective responsibility and a way to introduce others to one’s indigenous cuisines. Waste finds purpose as fertilizer, nurturing green spaces for all to enjoy. Empowered by waste-to-energy technologies, each household contributes to a sustainable ecosystem. Incinerators hum with purpose, transforming refuse into electricity, while wind turbines dance with the breeze.
Across neighborhoods, a shared commitment emerges. Waste becomes opportunity, powering homes and communities while curbing landfill volumes. Together, they embody a vision of collective stewardship and renewable energy.
Outcome
4A | Developing Long-Term Future Visions
In Part 4A of Assignment #4, we meticulously developed a comprehensive vision for a future where socio-economic inequity in Pittsburgh is not just diminished but eradicated. This vision unfolds across five interconnected scales: the household, neighborhood, city, region, and planet, each informed by pivotal themes — self-sustainability, diversity, autonomy, interdependence, and decentralization.
- Self-Sustainability: At the household level, our vision introduces a model where every home is a nucleus of organic food production, yielding surplus shared with neighbors or local shelters, highlighting a shift towards self-reliance and community support. This concept scales up to neighborhoods bustling with farmers markets and clothing drives, emphasizing a communal approach to basic needs.
- Diversity: We envision households as multicultural sanctuaries celebrating diverse traditions, which cascade into neighborhoods defined by their racial, cultural, and professional diversity. This diversity enriches city policies and regional strategies, ensuring that growth and development are measured by the ability to sustain and enhance this multicultural fabric.
- Autonomy: The journey to equity includes reimagining labor and creativity at home, where careers align with passions, supported by communal spaces for collaboration. Neighborhoods flourish as hubs of shared knowledge and resources, encouraging personal and professional growth. Cities and regions recognize every job’s value, fostering an environment where every individual can thrive.
- Interdependence: Our envisioned future emphasizes the strength of collective support and shared responsibility within households, extending to neighborhood initiatives that bind the community in a network of mutual aid. This spirit of cooperation becomes the foundation of city planning and regional development, highlighting the power of interconnectedness in addressing socio-economic challenges.
- Decentralization: We foresee a transformation powered by decentralized energy and internet access at the household level, promoting autonomy and reducing costs. Neighborhoods thrive on shared resources and digital platforms for exchange, while cities and regions leverage blockchain and local currencies to foster circular economies and equitable growth.
The significance of this part of our work lies in its ability to stretch the imagination and propose a nuanced, interconnected framework for addressing socio-economic inequity. By delving into each theme, we not only painted a picture of a possible future but also illuminated the pathways that can lead us there. This visionary exercise underscores the necessity of systemic change across all levels of society, showcasing the potential for a future where equity is woven into the fabric of daily life. Through this exploration, we’ve highlighted the essential role of community, sustainability, and inclusivity in crafting solutions that are not only effective but also equitable and enduring.
4B | Taking Stock: Dismantling, Maintaining, Innovating, and Future Finding
Based on the vision outlined in 4A, we strategically think backward from a speculative standpoint. Four layers are identified as the next steps, along with the conditions required to make the ideal future a reality.
DISMANTLING: What isn’t working anymore and needs to transition out?
Reflecting on the inequality issues we discussed earlier in Assignment 1 (the problem landscape) and Assignment 3 (mapping the historical trajectory of the problem), we addressed challenges such as private property regimes, single-use zoning, and subsidies favoring private ownership, which collectively contribute to spatial inequities. These issues drive gentrification and widen gaps between different societal segments, and also result in inequitable wealth accumulation, which is widely regarded as a consequence of the current capitalist structure.
MAINTAINING: What should we keep? How can we avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
On the other hand, there are policies and events that are worth retaining and should be continued to maintain their impact. These include sustainable local food systems, practices of providing legal aid to the marginalized, initiating affordable housing programs, and empowering communities through leadership and economic development initiatives. Such approaches would collectively meet basic living needs through a supportive network.
INNOVATING: What existing innovations and practices can disrupt business as usual and ignite the transition?
There are newly introduced practices that could significantly impact the long-standing ecosystem of social disparities, akin to how wolves change the food chain and the rivers in the Yellowstone National Park. These innovations include revising building and zoning codes to diversify land use, which enhances housing variety and increases access to amenities and green spaces, thereby fostering local business opportunities. Upgrading transportation with technologies like EV charging stations and smart roads is set to improve public transit’s efficiency and connectivity. Adopting innovative frameworks such as the Circular Economy encourages sustainable consumption and material reuse, while a shared ethic of Cosmopolitan Localism and an emphasis on local autonomy offer solutions tailored to the unique challenges of specific communities.
FUTURE FINDING: What pieces of our future vision are already here in the present?
At the same time, we explored niche-level ideas or changes that are currently in their infancy but have the potential to integrate with the solutions mentioned above. Among these is the concept of unionization. Although it has been a part of our history for a long time, we anticipate the emergence of unions among gig and non-traditional workers, which would offer better access to benefits. There are other aspects: such as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) democratize decision-making, ensuring that underrepresented communities have an equal voice; Community Land Trusts (CLTs) are committed to community land stewardship, while buyer and producer cooperatives aim to make essentials more affordable and ensure fair compensation for those disadvantaged in the market. These changes are noteworthy as we promote and design systems for equitable economic practices.
Based on the ideas we have on the left, we then develop four paths to achieve the future vision, stretching over short-term within 5–10 years, mid-term within 25–35 years, and the long-term 50–60 years from now. One thing worth noting is that when we choose specific examples for each to further develop the pathways, systematic thinking is required to come up with a more holistic approach. When solutions are interconnected, changes caused by the actions are affecting the ecology as a whole, rather than a simple, linear solution.
Short-Casting: Within 5–10 years
Our first path involves gradually eliminating the phenomenon of inequitable wealth accumulation, which we believe will be a slow and ongoing process to visualize change specifically for our problem. To address the issue, the government is implementing reforms in taxation, specifically in estate and inheritance taxes, and adjusting the minimum wage to align with living costs.
The second path emphasizes the importance of strengthening community foundations. Local governments and nonprofits are supporting local businesses in underserved areas through grants, mentorship, and training to foster community-led socio-economic equity.
The latter two paths focus on integrating and scaling up inclusive policies and cooperatives. Regional governments are integrating inclusivity into policies across various sectors, providing subsidies and funding to enhance local characteristics and community foundations. Meanwhile, the rise of both buyer and producer cooperatives, supported by policy and cultural recognition, is fostering community-driven solutions in energy, networking, and food production.
Mid-Casting: Within the upcoming 25–35 years
Following the rise in income equality, improvements in educational quality, and the emergence of the sharing economy concept driven by emerging community and cooperative trends, efforts are being made to distribute technological resources to underprivileged schools and explore new wage distribution models like Universal Basic Income (UBI), alongside enhancing online learning, to promote economic stability and equal access to education.
As empowerment programs mature, they become essential to community life, expanding to include technology access and digital literacy, while fostering a culture that values diversity through local autonomy and celebrates cultural expressions. Concurrently, cooperative networks and for-benefit corporations are increasingly dominating the economy, indicating a significant shift towards community-led growth and a focus on social over financial obligations.
Back-Casting: 50–60 years out
In this envisioned future, we anticipate the gradual elimination of inequitable wealth accumulation within the city. Communities would gain autonomy and thrive through local innovations and economies, with education emphasizing leadership and economic development to cultivate community-minded individuals. These self-sufficient communities, interconnected globally, would ensure socio-economic equity and universal access to essential resources, transcending traditional capitalism. The focus of innovation would shift towards meeting communal needs, rendering the traditional profit-driven corporate model obsolete. Cooperative networks, supported by regional and global collaborations, would play a central role in providing goods and services, fostering a resilient, equitable society.
That is to say, the main goal of our systematic solution is to gradually establish a future where needs-satisfiers achieve a balance of self-sufficiency, government support, and interdependence among neighborhoods and communities.
Reflection
Reflecting on our process, we encountered two significant challenges while developing the result. First, we found it difficult to decide on the method of future visioning. Initially, we lacked consensus, leading to debates over which worldview to adopt and the direction to begin. The question arose: should we start with a bottom-up approach for ideation, categorizing and structuring everything afterward? Or should we adopt a top-down approach, formulating solutions based on a specific worldview?
During the in-class exercise, we indeed started with the bottom-up approach. We randomly jotted down ideas based on sectors such as education, health, and infrastructure. The main issue with this approach is that most of the visions are interconnected, making it difficult to converge into a concise story. For example, quick access to the healthcare system is related to the penetration of technology and the renewal of the infrastructure system. Therefore, we pivoted to a top-down approach: to reach a consensus on Max-Neef’s structure, and then begin to depict the ideal future where most fundamental human needs are satisfied through diverse, non-material satisfiers. On the other hand, although this is an efficient way to get team members on the same page, it’s also challenging initially to persuade everyone in the room to agree on a particular scheme and structure: we spent most of our time clarifying and debating the structure. Not to mention engaging real-world stakeholders, each with their own expertise and viewpoints.
Our second challenge pertains to the extent to which we should delve upstream in Assignment 4B. Given the scope of our wicked problem, there is ample room to address additional issues for dismantling, maintaining, or innovating, which could influence our future vision. For instance, considering the innovation and future findings row, we explored ongoing developments in finance, education, mortgages and property, food distribution, agricultural technology, and much more. The rapidly evolving world is continuously shaping and altering the landscape. Selecting from a plethora of ideas while considering the different characteristics (those to dismantle, maintain, or innovate) as a cohesive whole and drawing connections between them was challenging.
Our investigation leveraging a systemic framework for need satisfaction continued to return to the idea of the local as a primary mechanism for ensuring easy access to holistic wellbeing. From our initial investigations into the determinants of socio-economic inequality in Pittsburgh, geography played an important role. Social determinants of negative health outcomes, for example, are concentrated in certain neighborhoods and not others. In our future vision, it became clear that equity would need to be equally distributed spatially. Indeed, the pillars of our future vision: self-sustainability, diversity, autonomy, interdependence, and decentralization imply a formal structure that is networked and relational, composed of emergent, dense, connected nodes where needs can be satisfied holistically and in place.
Therefore, specifying this vision’s site demands an expression of qualities with non-discrete yet quantifiable spatial dimensions. In our in-person discussions, we considered and debated a range of such qualities–intensity, density, diversity, relationality (integration), etc–among the potentially regenerative aspects of place. We sought qualities that intentionally diverged from the mechanistic boundaries/border and rules/regulations of private properties, aggregated to neighborhoods, and cities, for a more dynamic and probabilistic expression of synergies and experience that might define place more meaningfully within our future vision. The system’s structure molds over time to accommodate need satisfaction and localized flourishing equitably.
This temporal dimension, inherent in the exercise of future emplotment through backcasting and forward casting, also took on a situated quality. We discussed that in a given place, any individual would be along a temporal transition of life which comes within its own nuanced cultures. For example, the needs satisfiers for a toddler are different from those of an older adult. Understanding that the equity we were hoping to build in the future would be durable through time, the copresence, temporal durability and regenerative capacity of place took on new meaning and importance. Therefore, the place-sourced satisfaction of needs must be equitable within space and through time for each individual. In other words, a baby should have the right to maintain a prosperous life in place, without the imposition to “move for a job” or “retire to Florida,” etc.
In initial rumination on the opportunity to deepen wellbeing in both spatial and temporal dimensions, we found the network structure of the Max-Neef needs-framework to be accommodating of this expanded dimensionality. Specifically, mapping needs to satisfiers in a network graph visualization, allows for the assignment of specific attributes to the “edges” that connect the nodes (the needs and needs satisfiers). This edge dimension could take on a spatial dimension (i.e. the distance required to attain the satisfaction of that need) represented by length and a temporal/life-stage attribute. With this additional dimensionality, the qualities discussed before in more abstract terms(intensity, density, diversity, relationality) could be quantified and analyzed with network theory properties. Such an exploration would potentially empower a greater capacity for managing the transition pathway to optimize for identifiable network structures that could be measured, maintained, and evolved.
These latter reflections suggest possible directions for future research but remain outside of the scope of the current assignment. They are notable, however, as examples of how an alternative future might contain wholly alternative means for understanding and measuring success. We believe that aligning those capabilities with the pillars we developed and a rooted and holistic conception of equitable flourishing might be vital as we look to establish an ecology of interventions in the present for designing a transition pathway towards this preferred future.
Reference
Kallis, Giorgos. (2018).The Utopia of Degrowth. In Degrowth. Agenda Publishing, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. pp. 112–136
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation: Psychological Review. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396.
Max-Neef, M. A., Elizalde, A., & Hopenhayn, M. (1991). Human scale development: Conception, application and further reflections. The Apex Press.
