ABSTRACT
The new macro-forecasting strives to integrate different areas and analyses using sophisticated methodologies in place of intuition: once again the ideas of progress and decline loom large. ‘Coping’ forecasting is a strategy that would be necessitated by a lack of control over one’s operative environment. Anticipating changes may aid the rational development of policies appropriate to environmental change. ‘Changing’ forecasting is possible where some degree of control over the environment may be exercised. H. Perkin has argued that there have been three main eras in social forecasting, if forecasting is considered to be a logical construction of the future from past events. Urban forecasting developed as a rapid growth area in planning research, stimulated by developments in computing and financial incentives from central government, which latter policies reflected an attempt to cope with the environmental and social problems of industrialization and the motor car.
