Introduction

Estonian living environment in 2050

Kristi Grišakov

EE

Key messages

  • Future changes will affect the physical space – both the natural and built environment – and redistribute it based on new uses.

Changes in the living environment are related to changes in the world and our ability to adapt to them. Factors influencing the development of our living environment include climate change, international corporations and politics, new technologies and services, as well as the ageing population and urbanisation. In reshaping our living environment, we must bear in mind that we cannot reverse what is already done as this would take decades, be costly and complicated. Therefore, choices affecting the living environment must rest on an understanding of the long-term impact on the quality of the living environment.

  • Estonia faces a spatial choice: either to continue developing a liberal living environment with amenities only for those who are financially unburdened or to develop a more inclusive living environment that focuses on improving well-being for all.

To aid in this choice, four scenarios are presented in this chapter that illustrate the changes taking place in the world and in Estonia, along with their consequences. The scenarios are narratives that help us envision the future and provide a common basis for discussing it. With the help of these scenarios, we invite the reader to think about the kind of living environment we wish to inhabit in the future, and the kinds of futures we want to avoid.

The previous chapters of this report have described changes that have occurred over the past 30 years in the ways we communicate, travel and live, in our location preferences and our relationship to the natural environment. What will our living environment look like over the next 30 years? This chapter aims to outline the potential futures of the Estonian living environment based on global, regional and local trends and policy choices, and to use these factors to draft four future scenarios. The scenarios themselves are tools for thinking that illustrate the changes taking place in Estonia and the world, along with their consequences.

A thought exercise: current topics 30 years ago (1987–1988)

  • Phosphorite rises on the agenda, specifically the plan to open a large-scale phosphorite mine in the Rakvere district, which would pollute the environment.
  • The Estonian Green Movement is founded in the course of two green forums in Tallinn on 28 April and 23 May 1988.
  • The Estonian Heritage Society is founded in Tallinn on 12 December 1987, with Trivimi Velliste as chairman.
  • On 6 December 1987, the 500,000th citizen of Tallinn is born.
  • The first computer virus appears and there is initial discussion of the concept of the World Wide Web.

With the help of these scenarios, we invite the reader to think about the kind of world we wish to inhabit in the future, and the kinds of future we want to avoid. How are we able to adapt to global developments as well as future challenges inside Estonia? The chapter consists of three parts. First, we provide an overview of the method and main principles of scenario planning. Then, we describe the main trends affecting the Estonian living environment. At the end of the chapter, we outline four future scenarios for the Estonian living environment.

What is scenario planning?

Scenario planning is a planning method that aims to understand the impact of current changes and decisions on shaping the future. A scenario is a tool for strategic thinking that is used in situations where preparing for the future and making decisions is necessary despite uncertainty. The scenarios outlined here are based on the method of intuitive logics, which uses existing predictions and data to create narratives about the future that illustrate the consequences of various developments (Wright et al. 2013).

The living environment is a distinctive field in scenario planning, because unlike technologies and services, it is slow to change. Rapid changes in the living environment involve large investments, which require money and political agreements. The living environment may be carefully planned, but the time it takes to implement these plans is generally long and real changes are slow to appear.

Factors influencing the development of the 21st-century living environment are climate change, international corporations and politics, new technologies and services, as well as the ageing population and urbanisation.

It is difficult to predict the role and impact that factors influencing the living environment have in shaping the future. Quantitative methods are used for measuring changes in various sectors, which do not provide an overview of how the living environment is changing as a whole. Changes in the living environment are related to changes in the world and our ability to adapt. Factors influencing the development of the 21st-century living environment are climate change, international corporations and politics, new technologies and services, as well as the ageing population and urbanisation. It is often difficult to grasp which of these carry the most weight or lead to unexpected and surprising consequences. For this reason, factors shaping the future are described on two levels – as forecasts and as weak signals. Various sectoral forecasts (e.g. population forecasts) are prepared by extending past and present trends into the future. Such predictions give us an idea of the potential future if the current situation continues, but ignore factors that may shift trends and the unexpected combined impact of sectoral trends in shaping the future (Thomas 1994).

For this reason, the concept of weak signals has been adopted in future studies, which means that in addition to forecasts, smaller changes that have the potential to shift future trajectories are also considered. Weak signals can be seen, for example, in the values of the younger generation: young people, with their current preferences in consumption and mobility, set the patterns of behaviour for the future. Although their wider impact cannot yet be demonstrated, weak signals are important indicators to examine, as they help discuss future changes, the actual impact of which may only become apparent decades later. In this chapter, we use both types of factor – forecasts, which are more likely to prove true, and weak signals, which may have a significant impact on the living environment, but cannot currently be backed with existing evidence.

The scenarios were prepared in three stages: aggregating sectoral changes, identifying the most likely or influential changes, and using future scenarios to illustrate the consequences of these changes. Sectoral changes were determined using forecasts, reports and scenarios from Estonia and elsewhere. Some global scenarios and forecasts were included, but most of the developments described in the chapter are based on the European context and values. As a second starting point, we used the changes discussed in the chapters of this report concerning the functioning and use of the deliberative space, the living environment and the natural environment over the past 30 years, along with potential future perspectives for these fields proposed by the authors of the articles. In order to identify the most likely and significant factors, workshops with chapter editors and sectoral experts were held. In these workshops, we selected two key directions for the future narratives and produced initial content for each scenario, focusing on the daily life of residents and their relations with one another. Following the workshops, we refined the descriptions of the changes with the greatest impact and wrote up future narratives to illustrate the scenarios. Two spatial levels were considered in the selection of the described future changes: first, a larger spatial scale on which changes affect the location of living environments and their interconnections throughout Estonia, and second, a smaller spatial scale that covers changes within the living environments. In identifying significant changes, we excluded extreme shifts such as the collapse of the European Union or natural disasters. We also expected Estonia to have retained its independence in 2050. Based on these inputs, we compiled the main trends that will have significant impact on (re)shaping the spatial living environment over the next 30 years.