In the SPREAD – Sustainable Lifestyles 2050 project Demos Helsinki together with eight European research institutes outlined the most important drivers for change in sustainable lifestyles up until 2050. European Commission –funded project develops an understanding of the diversity of sustainable lifestyles and the central drivers of change. In SPREAD…
In the SPREAD – Sustainable Lifestyles 2050 project Demos Helsinki together with eight European research institutes outlined the most important drivers for change in sustainable lifestyles up until 2050.
European Commission –funded project develops an understanding of the diversity of sustainable lifestyles and the central drivers of change. In SPREAD Demos Helsinki created future scenarios of sustainable lifestyles that open up four distinct future paths for the realisation of sustainable lifestyles from today till 2050. The scenarios illustrate how sustainable lifestyles increase in scale from promising local experiments into motors of societal change.
The nudge in mapping out these scenarios was provided by a specialist group of 50 people, including designers, futures researchers, startup entrepreneurs, and sustainable business professionals from around Europe. 60 people from all over Europe enriched and used their perspective and values to evaluate the scenario material in the iFuture workshops designed by Demos Helsinki.
Our partners in the SPREAD – Sustainable Lifestyles 2050 project were CSCP (Germany), ECN (Netherlands), Ahsoka (France), Anped (Belgium), Ecoinstitut (Spain), Lund University (Sweden), Politecnico di Milano (Italy), Regional Environmental Center (Hungary) and EuroHealthNetwork. SPREAD ran during 2011 and 2012.
Read more about the project at www.sustainable-lifestyles.eu
Four scenarios for future lifestyles
In the SPREAD project we used a scenario methodology to explore the diverse ways for potential lifestyle patterns to evolve, and how this evolution can overcome current harmful environmental and social lifestyle impacts. The sustainable lifestyle scenarios are stories of possible futures where societies support more sustainable ways of living.
SPREAD Future Scenario timelines are easy and intuitive to read. Click open a scenario from below or from the upper corner. Explore the scenario events by using your arrow keys, clicking the events in the bottom timeline or following the large arrows in the sides of the white view.
The four scenarios present differing pathways to reach future societies where sustainable ways of living are supported. It is crucial to understand that the scenarios are not mutually exclusive. They are not an attempt to guess whether the future might look like one of the four pathways. Instead, the future will most probably materialise as a complex reality that combines elements from each of the scenarios.
In order to establish four scenarios that would differ from each other, we defined at the outset four future landscapes through which the scenarios would be constructed. This was done by combining the two critical variables, which we call uncertainties. The two uncertainties and assumptions about them underlining our work were
- Technology is either pandemic or endemic
- Society’s governing principle is either human-centric or meritocratic
Scenarios:
Publications: