Futures Digest
A call to action from the 15th Ljubljana Forum applying the Three Horizons framework to shape cities of well-being.
For a long time, conversations about future cities have been pulled in two directions. On one side, powerful images of progress: taller buildings, faster systems, smarter technologies. On the other, a growing unease that these same trajectories are stretching cities socially, environmentally, and emotionally, often faster than our capacity to govern them. Reflections on future cities point to a deeper issue: cities are not only struggling with what kind of futures they are heading toward, but also with how to consciously move away from paths that no longer serve them and collectively define their future, with well-being emerging as a meaningful—yet hard to operationalize—compass for urban development.
It is precisely within this space of tension that the Ljubljana Forum on the Future of Cities was born. For fifteen years, the Forum has operated as a meeting ground between foresight, urban practice, and technology, intentionally connecting long-term thinking with policy, planning, finance, and implementation. Rather than treating the future as an abstract horizon, it has framed anticipation as a working discipline that helps cities make sense of uncertainty while staying anchored in real decisions and investments.
The 2025 edition, marking the Forum’s fifteenth anniversary, builds on this trajectory. It reflects a maturation from asking what future cities might look like to exploring how cities can develop the capacity to shape their futures, with well-being as a guiding orientation rather than a decorative outcome. Through thematic sessions and the application of a Three Horizons exercise, participants explored current urban pressures, long-term aspirations, and the transition pathways needed to move toward cities of well-being, providing the foundation for the Ljubljana Forum Manifesto 2025 launched at the end of the event.
