Shaping the future of northeast Michigan: Utilizing the Delphi method to inform planning scenario constructio

Spatial planning should be a source of inspiration that empowers communities to confront conflicting worldviews and generate shared visions of an intentional future. Yet contemporary planning has become entrenched in minimalist mindsets that induce overly technocratic actions of limited spatial scales. In an era of economic regionalization, such "anti-planning" comes at great detriment to a community's ability to regionally align plans and leverage investments.;This thesis advocates for an embrace of communicative collaboration in regional planning. It presents the results of a scenario planning project---four participant informed visionary scenarios---and further demonstrates how scenario planning is a process of communicative collaboration that is capable of generating and disseminating new perceptions of relational space.;A process for explicitly utilizing scenarios, communicatively and collaboratively, within regional planning organizations and stakeholder networks is presented. A framework for a regional governance mechanism that collaboratively generates a consensus derived set of prioritized regional strategies is articulated. Further, a technique for developing regionally collaborative plans involving numerous stakeholders is proposed.