From Planning to Spatial Foresight in Québec: What Future-Telling Means in a Context of Sub-regional Governance. The Case of Vision 2031

Abstract

Since the adoption of the sustainable development policy in 2006, a strategic vision is now required for planning proceedings in Quebec, especially for Regional County Municipalities (RCMs) in charge of a supra-municipal Schéma d’aménagement et de développement (SAD). Focusing on the renewal proceedings of the SAD of Rivière-du-Loup’s RCM between 2009 and 2013, this research analyzes the process of shaping such a strategic vision, and the place of this vision in the management of a sub-regional governance. During that four-year period, this RCM led a sub-regional coalition of both public and private actors in a cross-cutting and joined-up process called Vision 2031. This process involved more than experts and decision-makers; it opened its future-oriented process to the wider civil society. This was significant for three reasons. First, it expressed a shift from the retrospective to more forward-looking knowledge building. Second, it translated a switch from sectoral planning to cross-cutting planning. Third, it represented an on-going process towards more collaborative ways of proceeding. Territorialization and horizontalization of spatial planning policies constitute a same process; it implies that responsibility for development stems not only from decision-makers but from the entire sub-regional community. In other words, in a context of challenging public institutions’ political capacity and crisis of top-down model of management, such new spatial foresight proceedings highlight the emergence of a new type of sub-regional public regulation – a governance by the future.