Article
Shermon Cruz1, Alija Blackwell2,*
1Ph.D. Candidate, Sustainability Research Centre, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia; UNESCO Chair on Anticipatory Governance and Regenerative Cities, Northwestern University, Loaag City, Philippines
2Principal Foresight & Digital Security Strategist, Oneiric Lab; Founding Member, Global South Futures Community
Abstract
What alternatives can be imagined for the futures of urban waterways? This study explores the use of foresight gaming to examine the evolving relationship between cities and rivers amidst climate change, urban expansion, and ecological degradation. Focusing on Rivers of Tomorrow (RoT), a customized adaptation of the Dreams and Disruptions foresight card game, it documents the game’s development and insights from two workshops. RoT serves as a sensemaking tool to surface diverse perspectives and enhance anticipatory skills, generating speculative insights shaped by participant contributions. The paper introduces a game-based approach that integrates play, systems thinking, and storytelling, while emphasizing Indigenous and decolonial perspectives. It explores contested urban water governance in Global South contexts and operationalizes foresight concepts within an immersive framework. By situating RoT within the fields of urban-river studies, regenerative futures, anticipatory governance, and decolonial foresight, this paper underscores its utility for collaborative imagination and policy-oriented scenario building. Key inquiries include the perspectives on rivers as living systems and how games like RoT can transform water governance. Through an examination of RoT’s design, implementation, and outcomes, this research contributes to futures literacy and ecological justice, assessing the game’s strengths, limitations, and avenues for refinement in gaming futures.
Keywords
Decolonial, Game Design, Regenerative Cities, Rivers, Anticipatory Governance
Introduction
This study explores how foresight gaming can serve as a methodological tool to investigate the evolving relationship between cities and rivers amid climate change, urban expansion, and ecological degradation. Focusing on Rivers of Tomorrow (RoT)—a customized adaptation of the Dreams and Disruptions foresight card game—it documents the game’s development, core mechanics, and insights from two workshops held online and in-person. These sessions generated future scenarios, case studies, and participant feedback.
The paper positions the game as a sensemaking tool to surface perspectives, provoke dialogue, and support anticipatory capacities. Insights are shaped by participant contributions and local dynamics and should be shared with the understanding that they are speculative and provisional and intended to inspire further inquiry rather than definitive planning.
It addresses key gaps in futures studies. First, it introduces a game-based approach integrating play, systems thinking, and storytelling. Second, it embeds Indigenous and decolonial perspectives to offer alternatives to traditional foresight practice. Third, it offers a participatory method to explore contested urban water governance, particularly in Global South contexts.
The game operationalizes foresight concepts—randomness, persona archetypes, crisis disruptions, scenario types—within an immersive framework. By integrating values, empathy, and crisis simulation, it responds to the underrepresentation of emotional and ethical dimensions in foresight.
With this some key questions are explored in this article: What futures emerge when rivers are viewed as living systems with agency? How might games like RoT reimagine water governance, build empathy, and foster resilience in the face of extractive systems and ecological decline? Who decides the fate of rivers and what legacy will we leave? These questions form the game’s foundation, inviting participants to co-create futures through drivers, scenarios, personas, and crisis response. The research situates RoT within urban-river studies, regenerative futures, anticipatory governance, and decolonial foresight, highlighting its utility for collaborative imagination and policy-oriented scenario building.
By examining the game’s design, implementation, and outcomes, this paper contributes to scholarship at the intersection of futures literacy, gaming, participatory methods, and ecological justice. It assesses the game’s strengths and limitations while identifying opportunities for refinement, enriching the growing field of gaming futures.
Why Urban Rivers
Rivers, similar to other natural environments in urban areas, are often overlooked and underestimated. In many cities, grey infrastructure, including skyways, highways, housing, and commercial developments, is prioritized over the sustainable management of rivers (Knoll, Lubken & Schott, 2017). Frequently perceived as extractable resources or channels for water, energy, and trade, rivers are mainly viewed as assets for urban expansion. They are sometimes seen as obstacles to development or convenient sites for waste disposal, instead of being recognized as crucial ecosystems vital for the resilience and sustainability of urban environments (Cruz, 2024).
As cities grow, the cultural and ecological significance of rivers decreases. Weak regulatory systems, lack of public knowledge, and poor enforcement worsen the exploitation of rivers and their surroundings, resulting in pollution, excessive use, habitat destruction, and overall ecological decline (Cook, 2019). For instance, the Pasig River in Manila, with its historical importance, has undergone severe pollution as a result of rapid urbanization. A surge in population and industrial activities caused the river to become a dumping ground for household and industrial waste, leading to its biological demise by the 1990s. Efforts to rehabilitate the river have been ongoing, showing varying levels of success (Deocaris et al, 2019; Gorme, et al, 2010; Casila, 2024).
There is an increasing and revitalized focus on the future of urban rivers, which mirrors a larger trend towards incorporating natural ecosystems into the planning and design of cities. Innovative urban river projects are now at the forefront of conversations surrounding the health of urban environments, the security of water resources, ecological well-being, cultural legacy, and sustainable practices. This revival in the appreciation of rivers as essential ecological pathways is encouraging fresh perspectives on how urban spaces can harmoniously interact with nature (Loretta et al, 2024).
Indigenous peoples are at the forefront of utilizing traditional ecological knowledge to implement nature-based solutions in urban environments (Blackwell, 2025). Across countries like Brazil, Bolivia, Australia and New Zealand, Indigenous communities are transforming legal frameworks concerning waterways to align with insights they have upheld and practiced for thousands of years. Through their indigenous and aboriginal cultural traditions and cosmologies, they assert that rivers and more-than-human entities inherently deserve respect and protection. By effectively campaigning for rivers to receive legal personhood, Indigenous leaders have enhanced the safeguarding of waterways (Benohr and Lynch, 2018).
Playable Futures
Gamification in futures studies and strategic foresight has experienced significant growth over the past decade, emerging as a powerful method for developing and simulating future scenarios. Foresight practitioners have increasingly deployed games within futures workshops to enhance foresight skills, deepen scholarship, and facilitate shifts in perspectives and worldviews. This approach transforms the experience into something more intimate, interactive, engaging, and experiential, as noted by Bussey (2014), Sweeney (2017), and Inayatullah (2017). Games have become an essential complement to the practice of foresight, effectively addressing the time and cognitive constraints that often hinder the learning and mastery of foresight concepts, as highlighted by Gaspar et al. (2025). Inayatullah (2017) emphasizes that gaming has deep roots in the history of futures studies, consistently intertwining with the exploration of the future. By providing opportunities to step back, games allow alternative ways of knowing to enter the discourse on the future. Jane McGonigal (2022) articulates that games can make futures exploration more imaginable by enabling participants to simulate hopes, dilemmas, and fears in a safe space, thereby allowing them to feel the future. Furthermore, games make complex systems more accessible, reduce the fear of being wrong, and encourage risk-taking in imagining radical futures. They lower barriers to participation and foster creative dialogue and reflection among diverse participants, creating spaces for negotiation and shared storytelling.
Many foresight games are deliberately structured, featuring clear mechanics designed to explore, generate, and test possible futures. Numerous case studies have demonstrated the replicability of foresight games, such as the Thing from the Future Game, Dreams and Disruptions Game, Polak Game, Futures in Motion, Fashion Futuring, and the CLA Game. These games are purposefully crafted to incorporate several key elements. First, they reflect the intricate nature of global systems, allowing for the creation and assessment of scenarios that yield valuable insights into complex interdependencies. Second, by exposing worldviews and mental models, these games complement methodologies like Causal Layered Analysis, Futures Wheel Analysis, Scenario Methods, and Emerging Issues Analysis, enriching the overall foresight process. Third, they democratize futures exploration by requiring no academic or policy expertise from participants, thus encouraging a wide array of voices and perspectives in future dialogues. Fourth, foresight games find application in various practices, including capacity enhancement, strategic visioning, policy robustness testing, community-focused foresight, crisis simulation, and futures research, making them versatile tools in the foresight toolkit.
Overall, foresight games are emerging as a novel and influential method in futures studies, integrating elements of play, storytelling, systems thinking, and participatory design to model and examine intricate, long-term issues. In contrast to traditional foresight methods—such as Delphi surveys, trend analysis, environmental and horizon scanning, and scenario planning, which typically rely on expert input and linear approaches—foresight games offer a more inclusive, experiential, and participatory framework. These games enable a diverse range of participants to engage with uncertainty, collaboratively develop future narratives, and assess various scenarios. An illustrative example is the ‘Rivers of Tomorrow,’ a regenerative futures game designed to encourage participants to rethink and influence the future dynamics between urban communities and rivers. By engaging in play, utilizing foresight, and embracing emergent thinking, the game inspires players to envision radical futures where cities and rivers thrive in diverse imaginary contexts.
Rivers of Tomorrow
The Rivers of Tomorrow is a novel adaptation of the Dreams and Disruptions Game – a scenario building game that integrates time horizons, forces of change, leadership archetypes and disruptive events to engage players to imagine unthought-of-futures. The game was designed for players to: understand the foresight concepts embedded in the game through action learning, imagine scenarios based on the drawn cards and the effects of certain kinds of leaders or movements, create solutions to disruptors to create stress-tested, anti-fragile futures and appreciate the importance of foresight in dealing with multiple factors. RoT is designed to explore the changing dynamics between rivers and urban environments and was developed to facilitate conversations on reimagining urban-river connections by creating new anticipatory imaginaries that consider ecological health, indigeneity, water security, governance, and socio-economic changes. RoT a world-building game that helps players examine the complex nature of urban-river futures.
The game has four key objectives. First, it encourages players to explore the dynamics between rivers and cities by examining how various forces of change shape their relationship helping participants envision more sustainable and regenerative futures. Second, it fosters the creation of inclusive, persona-driven scenarios that integrate diverse cultural perspectives, community needs, and value systems to build empathy and deepen understanding. Third, the game challenges participants to test the resilience of their scenarios by introducing crises and disruptions, prompting them to identify adaptive strategies and innovative solutions that lead to anti-fragile futures. Finally, it invites reflection on ethical, cultural, and ecological legacies, encouraging players to consider long-term implications and identify actions that support the well-being of both human and non-human communities.
Figure 1 shows a visual depiction that outlines the sequence of the RoT game, leading participants through four main phases of scenario-building. This repeating cycle reflects the intricacy of real-life urban-river interactions, presenting a collaborative and comprehensive method to imagine regenerative river futures.
Fig. 1: Rivers of Tomorrow Game Sequence (Center for Engaged Foresight and Oneiric Lab, 2025).
Image of the Padsan River in Laoag, used with permission from Noli Gabilo.
Gameplay Mechanics
RoT unfolds in a sequence of stages: 1) world creation; 2) personas influencing the development of scenarios; 3) examining the scenarios resilience by managing crises, and 4) reflection. This step-by-step journey immerses players to unpack the evolving relationships between rivers and cities:
Step 1. Flows of Change- Establishing the Baseline
Participants start by establishing the groundwork for their future river cities. Each player picks a scenario archetype, a time frame, and cards representing change forces such as “Riverbank Growth”, “Water Consumptions Patterns”, “Intergenerational Responsibility” and “Sacred Rivers”. Using these prompts, either individually or as a group, participants envision the appearance, sound, and ambiance of the future river-city environment. The prompts offer context for exploring how these factors influence daily life and the development of the city by the river.
While many of the change forces depicted by the cards might initially seem positive or neutral, participants are urged to critically examine how these elements could result in unforeseen or dystopian outcomes, especially when considered in worst-case or weird scenarios. This approach facilitates the investigation of unintended consequences, ethical misalignments, and systemic risks, thereby reinforcing the game’s objective to reveal concealed vulnerabilities in trends that may initially appear promising.
This highlights a key principle in anti-fragility, risk management, and business continuity that systemic failures can emerge even from well-intentioned innovations or futures through maladaptation. In other words, positive forces of change can produce adverse outcomes when misapplied, co-opted, or implemented within unjust systems. For example, “green riverfront development” may promote sustainability, but when driven by profit-focused real estate interests, it can displace long-standing communities and restrict public access. Similarly, “AI-enhanced water allocation” might improve efficiency, but in a privatized context, it can deepen inequality by privileging affluent districts while marginalizing vulnerable populations potentially sparking unrest.
The game integrates this logic within its persona framework, which invites players to explore roles defined by diverse values, power relations, and personal experiences. By assuming the roles of mayors, real estate developers, indigenous leaders, or water activists, players encounter how identical forces of change such as river restoration, AI advancements, or green infrastructure can be perceived and acted upon in significantly varied ways depending on the persona’s priorities and positionality. This design emphasizes that futures are not solely dictated by trends, but by how different system actors react to them, often enhancing or skewing outcomes. The persona mechanic illustrates the crucial insight that maladaptation and unexpected outcomes often result from the dynamics of intention, authority, and context, even when these stem from developments perceived as positive or neutral.
Step 2. Guiding Voices – Persona Development
Subsequently, players choose a persona card (such as a mayor, indigenous leader, or city planner) which will guide their scenario. They examine how the persona’s values, background, and goals affect their scenarios, including their decisions and methods of engaging with river-city interactions. Acting as a guiding voice, the persona enriches the narrative by discussing possible policies, cultural viewpoints, and challenges, thereby amplifying the story with social and cultural effects.
As mentioned in Step 1, the persona framework highlights that even beneficial forces of change can result in negative outcomes. This occurs because various actors, influenced by their power, values, and context, might interpret and implement the same trends divergently, leading to varying or detrimental futures. On the flip side, negative forces of change can spark innovation, unity, or transformation, especially when approached from resilient or justice-centric viewpoints.
Step 3. Crisis Management – Building Futures Beyond Crisis
During this stage, players pick a crisis card, like “Dam Collapse” or “River Acidification.” They imagine how this situation interrupts the river-city interaction and consider the immediate responses including the long-term implications of the crisis.
Participants then deliberate on how their selected characters would navigate the crisis, pinpointing changes, novel policies, and innovative approaches that enhance the robustness of their scenario.
Step 4. Reflective Dialogue – Shaping the River-City Story
To conclude, players reflect on their journey, sharing insights on how the exercise challenged or shifted their perspective on river-city interactions. They explore the long-term impacts and legacy of their imagined scenarios. Prompt questions to facilitate this could be: How can cities better integrate rivers into their planning without harming ecosystems? How can we design river-city interactions that give back more than they take? What long-term investments should cities make to ensure rivers remain vibrant and thriving? What disruptive technologies might redefine how we interact with rivers? What weak signals or emerging trends suggest future changes in river-city dynamics?
Every group develops a distinct title and metaphor to represent their vision for the river-city, finishing with practical measures for preserving river health while addressing urban needs. Table 1 presents the Rivers of Tomorrow gameplay process, sample prompt questions and scenarios.
| Steps | Description | Sample Prompt Questions | Scenario Examples |
| Step 1: Flows of Change | Establish the groundwork by selecting scenario archetypes, timeframes, and forces of change. | What does the river landscape look like in this future? How do these forces influence urbanity? | Turning riverbanks into commercial areas results in excessive urban development, affecting the sustainability of rivers and the safety of their water. |
| Step 2: Guiding Voices | Choose a persona to drive the scenario, shaping policies, cultural perspectives, and interactions. | What policies or innovations would this persona advocate for? How do their values shape the future? | The mayor imagines a green pathway by the river, focusing on environmentally friendly urban development. |
| Step 3: Crisis Management | Introduce a crisis, explore its impact on river-city dynamics, and develop resilience strategies. | What immediate responses are needed? How does this crisis transform the river-city relationship? | A massive flood causes upheaval in the city, leading to emergency policies and technological measures. |
| Step 4: Reflective Dialogue | Reflect on insights, long-term impacts, and craft a vision for sustainable river-city futures. | What insights did you gain? How can cities balance river health with urban development? | Communities work together on strategies that guarantee the river’s renewal while addressing the needs of the city. |
Table 1: Gameplay and Description of Rivers of Tomorrow, including Example Prompt Questions and Scenarios.
The game’s design is rooted in foundational futures thinking concepts and methodologies and emphasizes governance models that consider local knowledge, participatory futures, and sustainable urban planning. Decolonial, indigenous, and ethical elements are embedded into the game to challenge dominant and modern ways of knowing, amplify marginalized voices, and honor ancestral river stewardship practices:
1. Scenario Archetypes – Players explore different river futures based on generic scenario-building models in Table 2:
| Scenario Archetype | Description |
| Worst | A dystopian river future marked by ecological collapse, governance failure, or socio-political instability. |
| Preferred | An ideal future where the river thrives through regenerative and community-led solutions. |
| Weird | A speculative or unexpected future shaped by unconventional trends, emergent technologies, or cultural shifts. |
Table 2. Scenario archetypes.
2. Time Horizons – The game employs multiple foresight timelines to encourage long-term thinking in Table 2-1:
| 10 years | 30 years | 60 years | 100 years |
| Immediate interventions and policy shifts. | Intergenerational impacts and mid-range planning. | Deep structural changes in governance, society, and ecosystems. | Radical transformations in human-river relationships and planetary-scale shifts. |
Table 2-1: Time Horizons.
3. Forces of Change – The game considers diverse drivers that shape river-city futures in Table 2-2:
| Forces of Change | Description |
| Nature | Climate change, biodiversity, hydrology. |
| Society | Demographics, migration, urbanization. |
| Politics | Water governance, regulation, conflicts. |
| Economics | Resource extraction, industry, trade. |
| Culture | Traditions, art, storytelling. |
| Ethics | Water justice, rights of rivers, equity. |
| Spiritual | Indigenous wisdom, sacred waters, rituals. |
| Technology | AI, data analytics, smart water systems. |
Table 2-2: Forces of Change.
4. City Personas – Players embody different urban stakeholders, each with unique motivations and constraints, such as in Table 2-3:
| City Personas | Descriptions |
| Environmental Activist | Advocates for ecological restoration and community action. |
| Religious Leader | Frames River conservation through spiritual and moral values. |
| Urban Migrant | Faces socio-economic struggles in adapting to city life near the river. |
| Housing Advocate | Fights for equitable riverfront development and anti-gentrification policies. |
| Researcher | Studies environmental patterns and offers scientific insights. |
| Mayor/Councilor | Makes political decisions balancing growth, economy, and sustainability. |
Table 2-3: City Personas.
5. City Personas – Disruptions – Sudden events introduce complexity and require adaptive responses, such as in Table 2-4:
| Disruptions | Descriptions |
| Industrial Accident | Toxic spill or factory explosion contaminates the river. |
| Runaway Climate Change | Uncontrollable environmental shifts alter hydrological patterns. |
| Water Data Corruption | Misinformation or cyberattacks on river monitoring systems. |
| River Acidification | Escalating pollution alters water chemistry and biodiversity. |
Table 2-4: Disruptions.
Card Design
Figure 2 displays the cards players used for the Rivers of Tomorrow game such as the Future Archetype, Time Horizon, Forces of Change, and Disruptions.
Fig. 2: The Set of Cards in the Rivers of Tomorrow Game (Center for Engaged Foresight and Oneiric Lab, 2025).
Together, these game prompts offer a structured yet adaptable framework that allows players to delve into the complexities of urban-river futures. By integrating scenario archetypes, layered time spans, multifaceted forces of change, diverse stakeholder personas, and disruptive events, RoT encourages players to think creatively and respond in a systemic manner, and reflect ethically.
The game’s design pushes participants not only to foresee risks but also to discover transformative opportunities, showing how futures are jointly shaped by both structure and agency, context and choice.
This multidimensional gameplay lays the groundwork for combining foresight, governance, and decoloniality not as separate perspectives but as interconnected practices that challenge dominant paradigms, highlight relationality, and reclaim rivers as pivotal to cultural memory, ecological justice, and collective imagination.
Integrating Foresight, Governance, and Decoloniality
Urban rivers are deeply political and contested spaces, requiring multilateral governance approaches that balance competing interests (Novalia, 2023). RoT integrates governance as a key game element because: 1) water is a common good but often governed as a commodity (Vinciguerra, 2024); 2) stakeholder conflicts are central to urban water governance (Magdal, et al 2017); 3) policy decisions have long-term consequences (Pot, 2020). The game explores how policies, privatization, and power structures influence river access, usage rights, and ecological health.
RoT challenges players to navigate water diplomacy, city planning, and community engagement, making governance not just a technical process but an interactive, ethical, and contested arena where river futures are actively shaped. Western approaches to river management often prioritize technocratic control, economic exploitation, and bureaucratic decision-making, sidelining Indigenous knowledge systems and community-led governance models (Bellato, 2024).
RoT integrates decolonial and Indigenous worldviews to 1) challenge dominant water governance paradigms; 2) amplify Indigenous river wisdom; 3) disrupt colonial narratives of water control. RoT highlights alternative approaches such as river personhood, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), and biocultural stewardship. RoT reclaims these histories and opens space for pluriversal futures, where multiple ways of knowing and relating to water coexist (Cruz, 2024).
By integrating foresight, governance, and decolonial elements, RoT moves beyond being a speculative exercise but a tool for critical thinking and ethical decision-making in transformative river-city futures.
Case Study and Process
The online session was attended by 20 participants from diverse international locations, while the in-person event attracted around 15 attendees, primarily foresight practitioners based in Australia and New Zealand. Participants represented a wide range of expertise, including professionals from government agencies, not-for-profit organizations, international NGOs, corporate consultancy, and academia. This diversity enriched the dialogue and scenario-building process, bringing together multiple worldviews and sectoral insights.
Each workshop session spanned approximately 90 minutes, providing an engaging yet focused timeframe for participants to explore the complete game structure, collaboratively build scenarios, and reflect on the evolving dynamics of river-city systems.
The facilitation method employed guided participatory scenario-building through immersive role-play. This included the use of card-based prompts and a playmat to steer narrative development, predefined persona roles to structure role-playing, small-group collaboration for scenario co-creation, and collective meaning-making through RoT’s sequential stages. Facilitators applied Socratic methods to encourage critical thinking and intergenerational reflection, using guiding questions to deepen both personal and shared insights.
These facilitation techniques combined elements of transformative learning, foresight education, and experiential engagement, grounded in principles of anticipatory governance and decolonial futures practice.
This paper presents two case studies drawn from these RoT workshops. Case Study 1 focuses on the scenarios constructed during gameplay and the group-level feedback, illustrating how participants collectively imagined future river-city dynamics through structured storytelling. Case Study 2 centers on individual reflections, exploring participants’ emotional responses, personal relationships with rivers, and their views on the changing interactions between cities and river systems. Together, these case studies provide complementary perspectives on both the narrative outputs and the lived, affective impact of the game experience.
The construction of scenarios in Case Study 1 followed a structured, multi-step process that blended participant creativity with facilitated guidance and post-session synthesis. Participants recorded their ideas and storylines directly onto the RoT playmats, which served as visual canvases capturing emerging narratives, metaphors, dilemmas, and solutions in real time. A designated note-taker documented detailed observations, direct quotes, group interactions, and emergent themes throughout the gameplay. These qualitative records, together with the annotated playmats, formed a rich dataset for post-workshop analysis and narrative integration. The final scenario presented in this paper was crafted by weaving together participant conversations while preserving the authenticity of their contributions. This process ensured that the scenarios were participant-driven yet coherently structured for analysis and communication, blending emergent insights with rigorous post-session interpretation.
Case Study 2 focuses specifically on participant reflections regarding river-city relationships. Following the main gameplay sequence, participants engaged in a structured reflection phase facilitated through open-ended prompts. These prompts encouraged them to consider not only the content of the scenarios they had created but also their emotional, ethical, and cultural responses to the process. Facilitators posed reflective questions such as: What did this game make you feel or realize about your relationship with rivers? What surprised you during the game? What do you think needs to change in how cities interact with rivers? This reflective dialogue provided space for participants to articulate personal insights and critical observations in a shared setting, deepening the experiential dimension of the game.
Case Study 1: From Rivers as Shared Commons to Luxury Commodities
Fig. 3: Exploring the Worst-Case Future of Urban Rivers: A Decade from Now (Center for Engaged Foresight and Oneiric Lab, 2025).
Figure 3 presents a set of scenario cards drawn from the online workshop of Rivers of Tomorrow game, depicting a worst-case future for urban rivers over the next decade. Each card representing a key driver shaping river-city interactions challenged participants to think critically about the economic, ethical, and spiritual forces shaping the future of urban water systems. The task presents a speculative exploration of a worst-case scenario for urban rivers over the next decade using the key thematic drivers in Table 3.
| Worst-Case Scenario Thematic Drivers | Description |
| Worst Possible Future | A convoluted and disorderly depiction of a future lacking sustainability, where city rivers suffer severe deterioration, poor management, and disputes over resources. |
| A Decade from Now | A speculative near future timeframe used to explore potential future scenarios within the next ten years. You can this as a cue depicting how urban rivers evolve leading to some irreversible consequences. |
| Economic Driver | Real Estate Values – Emphasizes the variations in real estate prices near rivers, affected by elements like pollution, flooding, and efforts for urban renewal. |
| Ethical Driver | Fair Water Allocation – Explores the ethical dilemmas surrounding access to river resources, emphasizing the tension between economic, ecological, and human needs. |
| Spiritual Driver | Rituals of Renewal – Illustrates how people can rely on spiritual and cultural customs to rejuvenate contaminated city rivers, encouraging community involvement and environmental awareness. |
Table 3: Thematic Drivers
Fig. 4: Participants Dream Scenario Gameboard: Worse Futures Output from the Online Rivers of Tomorrow Workshop (Center for Engaged Foresight and Oneiric Lab, 2025).
The participants collaboratively created the worst-case scenario gameboard in Figure 4 for urban-river landscapes of the future shown above.
Phase 1. Flows of Change Scenario
The Divided Flow: Privatized Rivers and Water Justice in 2035
By 2035, urban rivers are no longer public commons but luxury zones controlled by real estate developers, AI algorithms, and privatization. Access to clean water has shifted from a right to a privilege, auctioned to the highest bidder.
Private developers dominate riverfronts, creating exclusive “Luxury River Communities” where only the wealthy enjoy pristine waterfront views. These gated developments restrict access through digital identities and credit scores. Public beaches and recreational spaces are fenced off, reserved for the elite. The concept of “Personal Rivers” emerges, as affluent families claim stretches of riverbank, complete with private filtration systems. Meanwhile, downstream communities suffer from untreated water, leading to disease outbreaks. In response, water filtration becomes an essential survival skill for the poor.
AI-controlled water distribution creates a caste system, where the privileged receive abundant water credits, while poorer communities face rationing or denial. “Water Robbery” emerges as both theft and systemic disempowerment of the disenfranchised.
Traditional river rituals and Indigenous practices are marginalized, replaced by development, surveillance, and pollution. Amid this crisis, Water Justice Warriors rise—activists, defenders, and spiritual leaders demanding rivers be recognized as legal entities and advocating for community-run water grids. Resistance is met with criminalization, private security, and cyberattacks on activists blamed for disrupting the system.
As the gap between the rich and poor widens, water governance becomes a key battleground for social justice, ecological survival, and cultural reclamation. In this future, the question remains: can rivers be reclaimed as commons before they are lost to profit, platforms, and property?
Fig. 5: Persona cards: Key players in Urban River Futures (Center for Engaged Foresight and Oneiric Lab, 2025).
Phase 2. Guiding Voices
The River at a Crossroads: Rewilding vs. Privitization, 2035
By 2035, the urban river is no longer just a waterway—it’s a contested zone of surveillance, resistance, and transformation. Two forces define its future: The Rewilding Activist, grounded in ecological justice and Indigenous imaginaries, and the Mayor, navigating between corporate lobbying, policy reform, and public accountability.
The Rewilders—an alliance of Indigenous leaders, youth organizers, citizen scientists, and environmental activists—rise in response to privatized riverfronts and eroding public trust. Operating through encrypted mutual-aid networks, they blend rewilding and resistance: removing invasive species, leading citizen-led tours, documenting river ecologies, and organizing protests under the banner “Occupy River.” Their vision: water as a communal right, not a commodity.
The Mayor faces immense pressure. Developers push “green” projects that often exclude poor communities. Rewilders accuse the administration of data manipulation and ecological negligence. In response, the Mayor proposes The Great Water Compromise: a Public Water Sovereignty Fund to protect riverfront access, Sustainable Development Incentives tied to ecological restoration, and a Water Council that includes citizen and more-than-human representation—plants, animals, watersheds.
But deeper dilemmas emerge. Activists demand non-human voices be heard in governance. Citizen assemblies question whether ecological restoration can be democratic if guided by AI and market logic. Surveillance systems track behavior in the name of “smart” governance, raising concerns over biopolitical control.
The river becomes a battleground—not just over access, but over meaning. Will it serve as a backdrop for elite eco-tourism and privatized aesthetics, or be reclaimed as a living commons through justice-based, inclusive stewardship?
In this future, the river does not flow quietly. It pulses with competing visions of survival, sovereignty, and the right to shape the world around water.
Fig. 6: Persona dynamics from the River Futures of Tomorrow game (Center for Engaged Foresight and Oneiric Lab, 2025).
Fig. 7: Disruption card: Water Commodification, Man-made Mayhem
(Center for Engaged Foresight and Oneiric Lab, 2025).
Figure 7 illustrates a disruption card from the game, highlighting the risks of turning water into a commodity in urban environments. The imagined crisis envisions a future where corporations take control of urban water sources, leading to: 1) the privatization and restricted access to clean water; 2) increased water prices, making it less affordable for disadvantaged communities; 3) environmental damage resulting from excessive extraction and inequitable allocation.
The disruption card acts as a prompt for in-depth dialogue and strategic choices, facilitating participants to foresee and manage the socio-political and ethical impacts of water privatization on the future of urban rivers.
Phase 3. Beyond Crisis
Liquid Inequality: Underground Waters and the Rise of Water Piracy, 2035
By 2035, urban freshwater systems such as rivers, reservoirs, aquifers have been fully consolidated under private and corporate control. Skyrocketing prices and exclusionary distribution algorithms have rendered clean water inaccessible to the majority of the population. Communities at the margins are forced to improvise or resist.
In the wake of this systemic breakdown, a sprawling underground water economy surges to life. Known colloquially as “the pirate bay,” this decentralized black-market network trades in siphoned, untreated, and often dangerous water. Armed militias and neighborhood coalitions control informal storage hubs, while whistleblowing engineers and former utility workers rig pipelines from abandoned infrastructure. Some citizens go further digging their own rivers, carving out new urban channels to redirect rainwater and underground flows to their neighborhoods.
Fig. 8: Disruptive Futures and Grassroots Responses (Center for Engaged Foresight and Oneiric Lab, 2025)
This movement gives rise to “water piracy as activism.” What began as a survival response evolves into a form of resistance. Community-led projects create camouflaged rain tanks, alternative water grids, and mini urban rivers that bypass official supply chains. Illegally harvested water is filtered in makeshift home labs and sold at inflated prices by underground vendors. New artificial rivers flow through informal settlements.
As corporations roll out subscription-based artificial rainfall services—with scheduled showers reserved for the rich—working-class districts turn to greywater systems and even human waste recycling to survive. A boom in non-water-based hygiene products, like chewable toothpaste, sweeps through low-income zones. Meanwhile, corporations profit from these inequities by branding water access as elite services.
Public outrage swells. Activists occupy water infrastructure sites and demand systemic reform. Smart city infrastructure is weaponized to monitor activist activity, while protestors hack AI water allocation systems to redistribute flow to underserved zones.
In the face of collapse, fragile compromise emerges. The government, under pressure from both protest and political fracture, authorizes a patchwork of community-led water projects. Public micro water networks gain traction—localized grids of rain tanks, greywater recycling, and collectively managed filtration points. A growing alliance of activists, scientists, and even sympathetic municipal officials begin crafting Water Commons Charters, demanding legal recognition of water as a public good.
These reforms, however, are uneven. While some urban districts gain partial relief, others remain locked out of both state and corporate systems. Water is not only life—it is story, memory, relation. As commodification, privatization, and environmental degradation escalate globally, water is increasingly at the center of socio-ecological conflict.
Phase 4. Reflections from Participants about the Futures of Urban-River Systems
In this participatory foresight process, we invited participants to explore possible futures of water governance through an embodied, role-playing game designed to surface tensions, deepen empathy, and stimulate collective imagination. What came to light was an emphatic appeal: the future of water extends beyond mere sustainability; it involves justice, governance, and the ethics of intergenerational equity.
The game structured inquiry around present-day water politics while immersing participants in divergent scenarios that stretched their thinking across temporal and moral scales. Participants examined their own relationships to water, confronted power asymmetries in decision-making, and envisioned alternative trajectories for rivers and communities. One participant shared, “Water is something many of us take for granted. This exercise made me realize how privileged we are to have easy access to it.” This reflection encapsulates how anticipatory methods can unsettle assumptions and foreground the relational and uneven dimensions of the present.
Throughout the exercise, participants questioned the dominant framing of water as a resource or commodity. “We need to shift our mindset—water and rivers are not commodities; they are fundamental human rights,” one participant emphasized. “Protecting them should not be a debate but a global priority.” These insights aligned with decolonial critiques of extractive governance models and pointed toward alternative imaginaries rooted in care, reciprocity, and shared stewardship.
As players adopted roles across civil society, government, and corporate sectors, they surfaced the tensions inherent in today’s governance landscape. One noted, “The boundaries between public and private ownership of water are blurring. The fact that rivers and water systems can be bought, sold, and controlled like real estate is deeply concerning.” These narratives reflected the entanglement of water politics with urban development, economic speculation, and ecological risk.
Rather than seeking singular solutions, participants identified layered, intersectional responses. They underscored the need for decentralized, community-led infrastructure, such as rainwater harvesting and local conservation initiatives. “Small solutions can make a big difference,” one said. “We need models that resist corporate monopolies and reinforce local agency.”
Crucially, the game prompted participants to think through the lens of intergenerational responsibility. Many invoked the seven-generations principle to guide their ethical reflections: “This scenario forces us to think long-term—what are we leaving behind for future generations? If we don’t act now, water may become a luxury rather than a right.” Another added, “Nature is not just for us. Our decisions about water will determine whether ecosystems survive or collapse.”
As a foresight methodology, this exercise cultivated what we might call decolonial anticipatory consciousness—a way of seeing and feeling the future that resists linear, technocratic, and market-centric visions. It reminded us that futures thinking must emerge from many places: ancestral knowledge systems, embodied experience, community practice, and critical reflection.
Ultimately, participants left with not just strategies but a deeper orientation toward possibility. “We need to return to traditional wisdom,” one participant said. “Modern technology should integrate—not erase—Indigenous and local knowledge.” In this space between ancestral memory and emergent practice, the future of water can be reimagined—not as a resource to be governed, but as a relationship to be honored.
| Scenario Phase | Description | Key Events | Possible Outcomes |
| Phase 1: Flows of Change | Urban rivers become privatized economic assets, leading to water inequality, displacement, and ecological degradation. | AI-driven water pricing Luxury riverfront developments Displacement of communities Decline of cultural water rituals |
1. Full corporate control of rivers 2. Government reforms to regulate water access 3. Community-led restoration efforts |
| Phase 2: Guiding Voices | Tensions rise between rewilding activists and corporate interests, with the mayor mediating between public and private water governance. | Activists reclaim public access
Corporate lobbying for privatization |
1. Government enforces strict privatization laws 2. Collaborative governance models emerge 3. Mass protests lead to policy shifts |
| Phase 3: Beyond Crisis | A full-scale water commodification crisis unfolds, causing social unrest, underground water markets, and extreme wealth disparity in access to water. | Water becomes currency Rise of underground water markets Armed conflicts over water resources Corporate-controlled artificial rainfall systems |
1. Collapse of public access to water 2. Grassroots water-sharing movements grow 3. Violent conflicts force international intervention |
| Phase 4: Reflections and Action | Participants reflect on the urgency of water justice, the need for policy interventions, and the importance of balancing technological and traditional approaches to river governance. | Calls for decentralization of water governance Policy reforms and legal challenges Integration of indigenous water knowledge Push for intergenerational responsibility in water policy |
1. Strengthened policies to prevent water commodification 2. Expansion of community-run water cooperatives 3. Acknowledgment of rivers as legal entities with rights |
Table 4: Urban River Futures: Phases of change, key events, and possible outcomes
(Center for Engaged Foresight and Oneiric Lab, 2025).
Case Study 2: Reflecting with the River – Participant Insights on River-City Relationships
Case Study 2 examines participant reflections on river-city relationships during the debrief phase of the Rivers of Tomorrow game. After the main gameplay involving scenarios with cards, crises, and personas, participants engaged in guided reflection. Facilitators asked open-ended questions such as: What did you feel or realize about your river relationship? What surprised you during the game? What changes are needed in city-river interactions? These questions encouraged participants to share stories, emotions, and insights, enhancing the game’s experiential aspect.
Participants experienced a significant change in perspective, viewing rivers not as passive infrastructure but as living systems with memory, agency, and rights. They felt emotionally connected when using persona cards depicting Indigenous knowledge keepers, displaced fisherfolk, or water stewards, which revealed overlooked ethical and spiritual aspects of river relationships often missing in traditional planning.
The theme of relational repair emerged, with participants expressing grief over polluted rivers, lost daily contact with nature, and erasure of ancestral practices. Despite this, imagination and hope arose as they envisioned futures where rivers were seen as legal or ancestral figures, central to city life.
Participants reflected on governance and access, questioning for whom water policies are made. They criticized models that favor real estate and industry over ecological and community interests. The notion of urban river swimming as radical led to discussions: Why is nature immersion seen as dangerous? How can rivers become swimmable again, and what would that signify about reconnecting with place?
Participants viewed crises as wake-up calls. Game scenarios of AI water failures, infrastructure cyberattacks, or invasive development highlighted river system vulnerabilities. These disruptions revealed resilience strategies like community-led water networks, citizen science, and collective storytelling for adaptation and governance.
Finally, the role of technology and culture was examined. Rather than rejecting innovation, participants explored how technologies rooted in relational values—like open-source water sensors, local knowledge platforms, or Indigenous-designed planning tools—could strengthen ties between people and ecosystems. In this sense, technology was not framed as neutral or harmful, but as something to be culturally and ethically coded.
This reflective process revealed not just what players imagined, but what they felt, questioned, and reconsidered. For many, the game created space to explore long-silenced relationships—with land, with water, and with each other. It invited new inquiries that stretched far beyond the game.
What Now, What’s Next?
Participants from both RoT workshops have provided several compelling comments and feedback. Unstructured interviews with attendees surfaced recommendations to enhance the game. Below are possible strategies to improve the game experience:
Game Mechanics and Materials
- Develop a Quick Reference Guide or a glossary of sample cards with real-world analogies would make it easier for participants to understand, imagine, and engage more meaningfully during gameplay.
- Refine and simplify the persona archetypes to clarify overlapping personal roles occasionally caused confusion. The inclusion of invisible personas was also suggested like the river itself, future generations, and AI agents.
- Include a River Reflection Wheel with rotating spokes to guide the facilitation of deeper reflection. Consider providing pre-generated starter scenarios with partially filled canvases to reduce cognitive strain. Offer paired reflection or quiet journaling before group sharing.
- Offer optional pre-readings to explain the game and basics of foresight.
Structure and Facilitation
- The game can be too compressed in 90 minutes, limiting depth and creative tension development. Two modes are offered: Express (90 min) and Immersive (2.5–3 hrs.), with extra time for richer scenario evolution and policy reflection.
- Offer beginner and advanced gameplay modes. Beginners receive structured guidance with simple prompts for novices in student groups or mixed-expertise workshops. Advanced mode encourages complex thinking with minimal support for experienced foresight practitioners, policymakers, and educators.
- Add prompt questions to support creative problem-solving and enhance the emotional engagement from the disruption phase by structuring adaptive strategy development.
Post-Game Engagement
- The game generates valuable ideas, prompting participants to ask: What next? A Post-Game Futures Action Sheet can help groups apply insights to urban planning, activism, or pedagogy. Additionally, post-game debriefs circles or digital salons allow for reflection after a few days.
To summarize, suggestions for refinement focused on game mechanics and materials, structure, facilitation, and engagement after the game.
Conclusion
The Rivers of Tomorrow (RoT) game is a forward-thinking approach aimed at changing our perception and management of urban rivers. Amid water crises, environmental degradation, and rapid urbanization, RoT serves as a foresight tool for exploring and testing future scenarios for our waterways.
Rivers of Tomorrow uses foresight, governance, and futures thinking to go beyond theory, immersing participants in a setting where alternative and hybrid futures are simulated. Players act as mayors, activists, executives, Indigenous custodians, and planners, each with unique motivations and challenges. Through storytelling, the game fosters empathy, encourages systems thinking, and enhances problem-solving abilities, demonstrating its worth in education, policymaking, and community involvement.
Rivers of Tomorrow guides participants through phases of world-building, scenario development, crisis management, and reflection. This simulates the complexities of urban-river governance, offering a dynamic space to explore bold ideas, challenge narratives, and evaluate policy impacts.
An essential understanding from Rivers of Tomorrow is that rivers transcend mere resources, they serve as dynamic, collective systems supporting life for humans and other species alike. The game emphasizes the pressing necessity to recapture our rivers as communal areas, oppose corporate dominance, and champion policies safeguarding them as critical ecological and cultural assets.
As we stand at a crossroads, the question is no longer whether our rivers will define our future—they already do. The real question is: Who gets to shape that future? And what role will we play in ensuring that the rivers of tomorrow remain thriving, accessible, and just for generations to come?
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge Marcus Bussey Judelyn Cruz, Shiva Cruz, Elissa Farrow, Jeanne Hoffman, , Jezreel Caunca, Sohail Inayatullah, Ferdinand Nicolas, the Center for Engaged Foresight, Oneiric Lab, the University of the Sunshine Coast, Northwestern University, and the partner agencies whose insights and collaboration were instrumental in the testing and refinement of this game.
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