Our goal is to formulate a vision of a sustainable society that incorporates the perspectives of its future populations and to develop methods that apply this vision. Since future populations do not exist presently, it is impossible in principle to incorporate their perspectives. Therefore, we are trying to capture these future perspectives into scientific language.

Vision formation is an important research topic in sustainability science. This is because vision formation and strategy formulation based on the vision are considered essential for the transformation to a sustainable society. However, sustainability science faces trade-offs that are difficult to resolve. The more motivating the vision, the more likely it is that it will be shared by only a small segment of society with certain values and will not contribute to social change. In a situation where there is a lack of methodology to solve this problem, the transformation to a sustainable society will not proceed successfully. Therefore, the ultimate goal of this project is to build a future design methodology for the multilayered and multidimensional implementation of a sustainable vision. In other words, when people, from the national level to the micro level such as a municipality or a company, freely and creatively imagine their visions of the future from the standpoint of a virtual future person using the Future Design approach, and from there consider what they should do next, even if these visions do not necessarily coincide with each other, they will be able to think about what they should do next. Even if these visions do not necessarily coincide with each other, a consensus can be formed on what should be done, and society as a whole can move toward the realization of sustainability through this process.

What we know so far

When a vision conceived with the involvement of some people in a community is shared by others in the same community, the vision itself may be shared, and there may be situations where the “way of thinking” or “way of seeing things” behind the vision should be shared. Guidelines are becoming clearer on how researchers should be involved in the community, depending on the situation and the occasion.