Future visioning for San Diego: some local examples -- know of any others?

We got to re-introducing ourselves on the sdishmael list, and Chet Fagin shared the following.

"future" (photo: carf)

[. . .] I live in San Diego with my wife and 2 year old daughter.
I joined the list mainly because I am concerned about where humanity is headed and about its long term survival. I wrote a piece earlier this year (inspired by Ishmael of course) called "Four Generations" which theorizes where we'll be 4 generations from now. I've referred to it as a "thinly veiled manifesto wrapped in a science fiction story". I consider it a work in progress so I'll be starting a blog soon to continue the conversation.
Meanwhile, if you're interested to read, you can download it here. I certainly welcome your feedback.

- Chet

My response (which began a short email and led to this post!):

Chet,
Thank you for sharing this!

"The more you do, the more your mind will shift, and the more you’ll discover."

That is a beautiful view. I've been following a general feeling of beauty / aesthetic sense / sense of what is right (sort of summed up by "carfreeness") where it leads me for many years now, and my mind shift continues to take me more interesting places.

I don't want to get wrapped up in commenting on your presentation--

I think it is more important to encourage everyone who can take it on to practice the kind of long visioning you model here (following the lead of The Long Now Foundation & Stephen Covey's 8th habit).

"Some things don't change at all" was my last attempt at the theme.

The breadth of your manifesto reminded me of Arth's The Labors of Hercules: Modern Solutions to 12 Herculean Problems.

It is also nice for us to celebrate ourselves as local authors, enlivening and visioning our local future, instead of, say, always looking to the Bay Area, Cascadia, etc.

A local example of a well-published author practicing future visioning is Vernor Vinge's SD County-set Rainbows End, the entire text of which is online. (What a sentence! but I don't want to spend all night revising). I found his vision both life-changing--in how it affected my view of personal use of technology--and, regarding future transit and industry, conservative.

Hmm. And my two cents on your presentation (only since you wrote, "I certainly welcome your feedback."):

1. You give us an odd, unexplainable scenario right off the bat (a good device for encouraging us to read on), but, as far as I can tell in my quick read, it is never resolved or elaborated on!
   
2. Maybe differentiate the voices more--perhaps with more description interspersed with the dialog, since, for me, sometimes the voices ran together.

So, do any of you have more local future visioning projects to share? Literary, visual, or otherwise?

And, Larry, I love that you're helping keep this blog alive, and that you're finding pictures for your posts! So I scrounged up a photo for this post too.
Peace,