Spatial planning is a dangerously underestimated aspect of sustainability

There are many possible futures within the FSSD boundary conditions of sustainability. Many of them are already growing in importance of today’s societal discourse, for instance the need to electrify traffic and getting rid of fossil and nuclear power. But one that remains poorly considered, or not considered at all, is about spatial planning. A planning area that, directly or indirectly, concerns all leaders. Once society has stopped cheating with linear flows of fossil and nuclear fuels from finite deposits in the future, we have to rely on the eternal flows sun, winds, hydro, waves, geo-thermal, ocean streams. They are free of charge. Which are the good news. But this imperative mercilessly implies a struggle for areas/space on Earth to capture those flows. Or, in other words, it’s about understanding the full challenge of spatial planning.

If we are to survive as a civilization, it is not enough to understand that our current societal design is un-sustainable, nor how the myriad damages from this un-sustainable design evolve and increase in severity. It happens as myriad worsening impacts along a funnel-wall of declining potential to sustain civilization (e.g. climate change, shrinking biodiversity, increasing toxicity in ecosystems and our own bodies, increasing gaps between haves and have-nots, terrorism, wars over resources, geo-political tensions caused by it all).

Leaders at different occupations and scales also need to know how a sustainable and attractive civilization can be modelled within robust boundary conditions for sustainability. Including how the individual organization can systematically, and with increased ROI from upfront, get there step-by-step as part of the solution. Spatial planning comes to the fore as the most dangerously neglected aspect of such modelling.

Here follows the line of thinking to make the above understandable, and possible to consider for strategic thinking anywhere at any scale:

Both fossil and nuclear power rely on linear flows of fuels, that are used up at the same rate as we use them (with necessity causing increasing resource costs both upstream the line, at the level of resource extraction, and downstream when waste-streams and other consequences after the use cost more and more money, ecological impacts, social unrest, time, and other resources.). See previous reflections on this.

As was pointed out then, according to the laws of nature (mainly laws of thermodynamics and matter-conservation) nuclear power and fossil fuels either phase themselves out, during increasing civilizational plagues and costs that will follow mercilessly and through quantum leaps, or also because we ourselves, with our heads held high and in an orderly manner, do the job in time. A funnel wall of declining resource potential to sustain civilisation is relentless in this respect, and the relentlessness has nothing to do with values, political debates, beliefs in God or anything else.

Even before we will smash into the funnel wall from poor societal designs, the consequences of this realization is a fast growing struggle for space. From an energy point of view, it’s about areas/surfaces that will be used to bind primary energy from eternal flows as we are gradually forced to stop cheating with linear flows of fuels. Sun, wind, sea-weaves, sea-currents, hydro, geothermal…provide huge energy-flows to civilization, several magnitudes above what we will ever need.

So, the costs of energy sources relying on linear flows of fuels will increase at the same time as technologies capturing eternal flows, though advantages of scale, will be cheaper. Because they must, regardless of the technologies we develop to improve on previous obsolete fuel-based technologies. They are bound to helplessly loose the competition with the sourcing of eternal flows that are free of charge.

So how should surfaces on Earth now be prioritized (at D of the ABCD in Funnel logic, see references below)?

* First comes the priority of surfaces for the bio-geo-chemical cycles, Nature’s own cycles. They are run between plants and animals, with their demand for biodiversity to remain resilient and productive. Which is very area demanding. If we fail to spatially plan for those cycles, we can forget about all other sustainability considerations.

* Then comes the areas for food production to feed a world-population, say at around 4 billion people more on Earth (we need to reach that goal in a sustainable way, to avoid mass-starvation and chaos). Which is also very area-demanding

* Then we must consider areas needed for the harvesting of energy flows over and above nature’s own needs and the needs for food production.

* Then there are the areas for material production (timber, fibre, medicines, etc.)

* Then comes the areas for infrastructure (houses, industry, roads, etc.).

Therefore, for starters, there is no room for biofuels either, other than exceptionally and as steps on the way. The world has already hit the ceiling when it comes to the use and degradation of areas for the first two priorities (nature and food-production). So, biofuels are only OK as transitional solutions in as short time perspectives as possible. For all the starving refugee streams around the world, the above is not a distant theory, “we are already there”.

To put the equation together, some particularly important areas of knowledge need to be modelled together to understand how futures can exist under “A” in ABCD planning, and then draw the right conclusions for the respective global sectors energy, traffic, forestry, agriculture, infrastructure/housing…All to feed relevant information into ABCD processes of individual organisations.

• Resource theory, i.e. the different natural resources for the needs of civilization and the scalability of different ones.

• Spatial planning, i.e. how surfaces can be prioritized and coordinated in resource-theoretically elegant ways.

• Engineers who innovatively respond to the calculations of resource theorists and spatial planners. It is for instance about metal reserves in the light of smarter engineering, business models and governance, and the same for various types of energy-savings.

• Political scientists, economists and leaders who know something about how resources for the above can be mobilized in democratic processes.

See a tandem article about this[1].

Examples of such planning, that is already happening amongst FSSD informed leaders:

Phase out also of bio-fuels (that are VERY area demanding), new methods of gentle and integrated agriculture/forestry, area-saving methods of transport for instance train- and boat traffic, combined uses of areas for instance windpower on crop land, ending urban sprawl, decentralized concentration of city-planning.

The FSSD platform makes sure this essential aspect of leadership towards scalable future is not forgotten.

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[1] *A strategic approach to sustainable transport system development,

Part 1: Karl-Henrik Robèrt, Sven Boren, Henrik Ny, Göran Broman. Attempting a generic community planning process model; Journal of Cleaner Production 140 (2017) 53-61.

* Part 2: Sven Boren, Lisiana Nurhadi, Henrik Ny, Karl-Henrik Robert, Goran Broman, Louise Trygg. The case of a vision for electric vehicle systems in southeast Sweden. Journal of Cleaner Production 140 (2017) 62-71