Flash points

28 Jan 2010, 14:46 Add Comment

While I wait for the next (and last) season of Lost to come back on my TV and for Kiefer Sutherland to scale back on his hedonistic lifestyle long enough to film another season of 24, my attention has been diverted to another fantastic (in most senses of the word) series - Fast Forward. For those who, in fact, have a life and don't watch too much TV like me, the central conceit of the show is that all of the world's population have a nice nap for 137 seconds, at the exact same time, during which time they 'flash forward' six months and see what they will be doing at that time. Naturally, some of the people who are having the nap are flying planes or driving cars at the time, with the result that the first episode of the series looks like a series of scenes out of Apocalypse Now, or King Street in Wigan on any Friday or Saturday night.

Some of the cast are doing interesting things and some see nothing, which means either that they will be dead in six months or they will have become planners and have fallen asleep during a reading of the latest LDF sustainability appraisal.

Actually not everybody has the 137 second nap - two Brits - the not very convincing rock star off Lost who's now dead (or is he?) and the (real life) husband of the bonkers Scottish woman in the late lamented Green Wing - turn out to be behind the happening (in episode 7 or 8, I think). This leads me to two questions - (i) why are the baddies now always Brits and (ii) what on earth has this got to do with planning?

Leaving the bigger question for another day, I can see great merit in being able to flash forward in the planning world, possibly to see if that appeal you are just about to submit has been allowed, or maybe to see if that policy planner has returned your call yet (they are busy people, after all). Of course, if you know that you have won the appeal, then there is no need to try quite so hard with the statement, which may mean that you lose the appeal, which means that the flash forward didn't show the real future, which means...(short rest for paracetamol).

Ignoring these potential paradoxes for a moment, there are a huge number of potential benefits which the flash forward concept could help with in the wonderful world of planning. Just a few may be:

Arrange a public meeting for six months in the future and then flash forward to see what is well received and what isn't in your LDF document/development proposal

Employ a new staff member and then flash forward six months to see if he/she has ruined the business

Before starting that piece of work for a new client, flash forward to see if he pays you

See if that piece of land is going to come out of the Green Belt and make your client a fortune - actually this may need a 6 or 60 year flash forward, rather than 6 months, but let's not spoil the moment.

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