Trends such as urbanization, accelerated technological development, and climate and biodiversity crises are posing profound challenges and a mounting need to address uncertainty and integrate sustainability in planning. These challenges are pronounced in megaprojects as they have vast and long-lasting effects on the built environment and the surrounding society. Deeper consideration of the futures perspective could help in responding to these demands, and it could increase the strategic and adaptive capacity of megaprojects both during project development and post-completion.

The capacity to consider the future impacts of decisions is greatly affected by the processes and organizational environment of planning. Planning and real estate development organizations could increase such capacity by deeper consideration of the futures perspective. This article investigates how the futures perspective has been addressed in megaproject planning and discusses how the Organizational Future Orientation (OFO) model could be used in megaproject planning, through a case study of the urban development megaproject Tripla in Helsinki, Finland. OFO has been studied in futures and management studies literature, but the application of this knowledge to planning has been scarce. The research methods include literature review, document analysis, and stakeholder interviews.

The findings indicate that the futures perspective is weakly present in megaproject planning and that the OFO model can be used to address this deficiency. In the case project, the focus was found to be on ensuring efficient project delivery. To achieve this, the project preferred simplifying the process, making major decisions inside a core group of stakeholders, and concentrating on effective execution of the process. The OFO analysis revealed major shortcomings in the project’s futures orientation. The findings increase understanding of how the futures perspective is present in urban development megaprojects, and how the Organizational Future Orientation model can be utilized as an analytical and normative framework in the planning context.