The `RUIMPAD' project ended in the year 1997 with the final report `Choosing room to move'. This project was a specific kind of future study on people, space, and transportation in the next century. This paper deals only with the methodology of the project. The authors considered this to be a learning process of playing with speculative hypotheses on activity patterns and transportation needs of people, simulating and assessing these demands in a great number of spatial designs of areas, using various concepts of spatial arrangements and network structures, and finally converging these ideas to form an agenda for policy innovation. Insight was more precious than predictive value. Choices and dilemmas were made explicit, contributing to a more adequate political decision-making process. (A)
Abstract