Phil Williams MRTPI, Head of Planning Service, Cardiff City Council, Wales, and Vice President, RTPI discusses one of the ways in which the UK Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) marked its centenary in 2014 by looking to the future of planning. The Institute’s Planning Horizons papers take a long-term and global view of planning and the contribution it can make to challenges in the twenty-first century. Given the economic, environmental and social challenges we face, and the consequences of how policy has often failed to respond adequately to these challenges, we need to develop a new ‘spatial policy’ – a science of policy which incorporates place and space, and produces policy which is much more integrated, strategic and sensitive to place.