Dutch new worlds : scenarios in physical planning and design in the Netherlands 1970 2000 Our decisions shape our future but we know little about how. To find out planners and designers construct vivid images of what could be. These scenarios serve as path breakers between imagination and reason. In the late 1980s the elite of Dutch planning and design took scenarios to unprecedented scales to convince the public of their ideas. But the quest to reshape the Netherlands as a whole failed dismally. Their attempt however unleashed a wave of new thinking about the future and created an enormous number of spectacular images of things to come. Dutch new worlds tells for the first time the story of how scenario thinking changed urbanism and physical planning from its beginning in the late 1960s to its height in the 1990s. It shows how most grand scenario projectscame to nothing because of over ambition and misuse