Governing the future and the search for spatial justice

Recent years have witnessed somewhat of a ‘turn’ or ‘moment’ with civil society stakeholders and governmental organisations of different kinds making concerted efforts to think proactively about how to govern long-term futures; not just as a means of pre-empting various risks and uncertainties but also as a way of envisioning futures that are more just. While the developments of these longer-term engagements with justice have been subject to a certain amount of scrutiny, there has been very little critical academic research yet, which has considered the way in which this specific kind of governance of the future: 1) is emerging as a common object of government in many states and sub-states; 2) is opening up new kinds of engagement between state organisations and civil society; 3) can be a vehicle for developing more inclusive forms of politics and political engagement. The paper discusses these themes empirically in relation to the Well-being of Future Generations Act in Wales (2015), an Act that seeks to envision the (better) kind of Wales that will exist by the year 2050. The paper concludes by discussing the potential and limitations of this kind of development for the promotion of spatial justice