"Chile Territorio Futuro" holds its first in-person meeting

• More than 50 experts convened by Chile Territorio Futuro gathered at Las Majadas de Pirque for a day of work and reflection on the signs of change that can be observed in Chile today and what the possible future holds.
• The event was led by Pablo Allard, Universidad del Desarrollo's Dean of the Architecture Dept., and attended by Christian Zulberti, deputy director and head of Fundación Enel's global program of academic partnerships.
• The UDD and Fundación Enel initiative seeks to build future scenarios for a changing Chile to design action strategies that allow us to anticipate the future. Today's event is the first of three to be held during the remainder of the year to deliver a final product in December.

Santiago, August 04, 2022. Chile Territorio Futuro is an initiative coordinated by UDD School of Architecture's Center for Innovation in Cities and promoted by Fundación Enel. It brings experts from different fields together to think about one question concerning Chile: what is happening today that is not yet clearly visualized, and can we predict future changes?

We discussed signals of change collected by the Chile Territorio Futuro team during June and July from interviews and virtual exchanges with political, social, economic, legal, technological, and environmental experts aiming at building possible scenarios for 2050. Signs of change are the tip of the iceberg of future scenarios for Chile.

The dialogue led to the identification of emerging processes in new technologies and demands for greater environmental justice, innovative forms of citizen participation and recognition of regional realities, transformations in the energy and food industries, and ways of inhabiting urban and rural territories taking into account people's daily experience, and changes in production models with a regenerative and environmentally friendly perspective, among others.

Discussions identified the impact of environmental inequality and the urgency of extending environmental practices throughout the population. Regarding the regions and governance, various alternatives to take charge at different scales, especially intra-regional or inter-communal problems not addressed locally.

There were many signs of possible environmental and food-related impacts. The experts' concern about the social implications and related food crisis stood out among them—signs of change born of the pandemic that indicate a more community-based, local, and collaborative future.

The expert group in today's meeting allowed for work based on the experience of social actors of different ages, profiles, and fields of work, which is expected to lead to the design of action strategies that will require citizens' open participation.

The horizon of Chile Territorio Futuro, which looks to 2050, is proposed as a space of time necessary to plan actions that can lead to desirable futures for the country and, in this context, it is expected to contribute to the dialogue proactively, taking into account what is happening in Chile today.

The signals identified and prioritized today will be further developed for the next Chile Territorio Futuro workshop in September. The work of Chile Territorio Futuro will continue until the end of the year in its first stage. The plan is that there will be a second phase in which the action strategies designed can be prototyped and scaled up to the level of public policies.