Future Here Now: Where Are the People in Our Planning?

This is a selection from Future Here Now — a daily series helping readers anticipate and prepare for a drastically different future.

Each week includes essays, practical exercises, and Signals — overlooked stories that show how the future is unfolding right now.

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👥 The People We Forget

At last week’s National Planning Conference, one question kept coming back to me again and again:

“Where are the people in our planning?”

In many professions — urban planning, design, education, economic development — we say we’re doing this for the people.

But too often, we fail to truly understand their motives, desires, and behaviors.

Instead, we imagine how we think they should respond to our ideas…
And when they don’t, we shrug. We rationalize.
We even accuse them of “not understanding their own needs.”

The hard truth?
We rarely get their motivations right.
And when we don’t, our grand plans often fail to deliver the change we promised — or worse, they create unintended consequences that hurt more than help.

💭 The Real Problem Isn’t the People

It’s not that residents, customers, or communities are irrational.

It’s that we, the planners, creators, and decision-makers, often get caught up in our own visions — in what we think the future should look like — instead of learning how people actually think, feel, and live.

We’re designing systems without the full human experience in mind.

🌊 What We Learned From the Waterfront

🔗 Waterfronts Are Great for Cities — When They’re Done Right

Cities have spent decades trying to turn their waterfronts into attractions — often prioritizing tourists over locals.

But the lesson is clear:
When we reduce people to demographics or consumers, we erase the soul of a place.

Real success happens when we design for daily life, not just for the photo op.
When we honor history, reuse old buildings, and make the water itself part of community life.

That’s when people connect. That’s when the city breathes again. 🌬️

🏙️ Emotional Beings

🔗 Cities Need Emotion in Design

We’re emotional creatures living in an age of rational systems.

Modern urban spaces often feel sterile — all glass, metal, and logic — but lacking warmth, history, or heart.

Even as seven out of ten people will live in cities by 2050, our built environments increasingly feel soulless.

But there’s hope.
Designers and architects are waking up to the truth:
Emotion matters. 💓

When we build with feeling, we build places that lift spirits, spark creativity, and make us want to be together.

👣 Watch What People Do

🔗 Most Public Engagement Is Worthless

People often say one thing and do another — not because they’re inconsistent, but because life is complicated.

Empathetic design means walking with people, observing their real experience, and using that as data.

It’s not glamorous.
It’s not quick.
But it’s how we make solutions that work.

💪 The Humility to Observe

It takes humility to admit we don’t know it all.

It takes courage to observe before we act, to test small ideas instead of chasing big, shiny solutions.

But what if we simply started with what we can do — right now — to reduce struggle in the places we live?

Neighborhood by neighborhood.
Month by month.
Year by year.

That’s how we build human-centered progress.
That’s how we improve real lives. 🌱

🚀 Be Part of Future Here Now

✨ Let’s build futures with people, not just for them.

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