Back from the Future: The Backcasting Wheel for Mapping a Pathway to a Preferred Future

Backcasting is a Futures method that starts with a preferred future and works back to the present, identifying actions over time needed to achieve the preferred future. But there are few specifics in the Backcasting literature on how to develop the pathway that connects a preferred future to the present. This article describes a participatory process for Backcasting that uses a structure similar to the Futures Wheel to develop the pathway from the preferred future back to the present. A case study of U.S. Forest Service organizational planning is used to illustrate the method.