“The Art of the Long View, Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World” by Peter Schwartz

 Peter Schwartz has written a book that benefits every futurist. The subtitle, “Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World” describes the value added by his description of scenario planning. As he describes it, his colleagues predicted the 1971 oil crisis; and he predicted the fall of the Soviet Union; both using scenario planning. 

The methods discussed relate directly to city planning and the forecasting necessary to make useful plans. Mr. Schwartz not only takes “the long view”, he takes the holistic view. His writing is a series of stories, he believes strongly in the power of storytelling that discusses some of the technical aspects of scenario planning, but they go on to viscerally illustrate the mindset that is necessary for scenario planning through his thoughtful mining of ideas from anthropology, fiction writing, history, geo-politics, music and other diverse fields available to an intellectually active mind.