ABSTRACT
A key challenge for the VISIONS project was to combine the European and the regional scenarios into integrated visions for a sustainable Europe. Visions are defined as outlooks emerging from developments at both the regional and European scale, as well as interactions among the regions and between the regions and Europe. As discussed in Chapter 3, prior to this project no methodology to integrate scenarios developed on different scale levels was available. Furthermore, the sheer number of possible visions was daunting. The regional and the European scenario studies yielded 4 scenarios for Venice, 4 scenarios for the Northwest UK (NW-UK), 3 scenarios for the Green Heart and 3 scenarios for Europe. In principle, therefore, 144 (4 x 4 x 3 x 3) combinations were possible. The integration process adopted can best be characterised as a structured creative process. It involved both learning-by-doing and doing-by-learning, which had its share of pitfalls and setbacks, but ultimately yielded three integrated visions built up from different combinations of single European, Venetian, NW-UK and Green Heart scenarios (see Table 5.1).
