City of the Future

We all sometimes ponder on how the future will be for us and how our planet would look like in the next years. Even if it were possible, everybody would want to know everything about their future just to know exactly what to expect and prepare for everything that might happen ahead of time. Like they say, “if wishes were horses, we would all ride one. Unfortunately, we can't know what the future holds for us as we'd like to. But what we can, however, make are predictions based on imaginations, intuition, and analysis.

Many of us must have even asked ourselves many times, “what would the city of the future look or be like?” Well, in this article, we’ll be answering this question; we’ll be looking at how our future cities may look like. Just as mentioned, we might be unable to say what tomorrow’s all about, nevertheless, we can make deductions from events and happenings that occurred in the past and are presently occurring as well to project how tomorrow would look like.

So, What Is the City of the Future?

According to the United Nations population projections of 2015, the world population will possibly continue to grow until about 2100. Also, 30 years from now, the population has been predicted to reach approximately about 10 billion people, almost double the present world population (World Population Prospects 2019: Ten Key Findings, 2019).

Over 50% of this population will be living in urban areas (World Urbanization Prospects, 2018 Revision). And, to accommodate and satisfy this huge population growth, marked improvements in our urban system will begin to take place. So, as the population continues to increase, will sustainable urban development continue to happen in all the different cities all over the world, especially in the continents of North America, Asia and Africa (UNFPA Population Growth and Rapid Urbanization: Food Insecurity on the Rise in Urban Settings, 2007).

What Will the City of the Future Be Like?

1. Future of Technology

Technology is dramatically transforming every aspect of our lives. Today, we can't do anything without making use of one technology or the other. Our phones allow us to connect, no matter how long the spatial distance. Other important activities have now been made less difficult with the introduction of different technological innovations in our lives. Definitely in the future, we are sure to get double this technology we presently have in our lives. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been described as the future and that’s an absolute truth even though many would like to deny this fact (Walsh, 2018).

2. Future of Housing

As mentioned, technology is drastically improving our lives, especially in the housing sector. Architects have been making great innovations in building and home fabrications all over the world. self-sustaining homes are envisaged to be built in the next years; built-in water solar systems, AI, extendable spaces and so on. There’s also the aim to make our home environments eco-friendlier. Government policies are being improved upon now and then to meet the pace at which our technological systems, and in turn, our housing system is improving (Cairns, Isaac-Menard & Potts, 2016).

3. Future of Education

All thanks to the internet, learning has been made virtually easier and free. You can learn anything you want online and earn a certificate without having to sit within the four walls of a classroom. On your mobile phone, you can learn at your own pace and in your personal space too. In the future cities, we'd see a complete integration of technology into our educational system. Our education will be reinvented as well to keep up with the pace at which the labor market is presently improving (Egan, 2008).

4. Future of Transportation

Groundbreaking innovations are already happening in our transportation from one zone in the cities to another. We have electric cars, a better improvement on fuel-powered cars that destroy our eco-system. We also have electrified roads to charge these cars. Although, we might not have a lot of reasons to move around as we do currently in the cities. Improved road constructions to reduce traffic in major cities will also be carried out (Grabar et al, 2019)

5. Future of Money

The future of finance promises a lot more than we can ever imagine. Power decentralization of states and banks will occur (Lietar, 1999). Financial analysts have also predicted the universal acceptance of blockchains and cryptocurrencies which have been projected to solve the crisis and inequalities that we have in the present financial sector.

6. Future of Health Care

One of the problems of the world today is quality access to education. More than half of the world population (especially Africa and Asia) find it difficult to get the health they and deserve. Future projections have predicted an improvement in the quality of medical delivery. Different technological innovations will also be made to improve this sector considerably. In the next 25 years, we’d have the 63.4% integration of AI into the health sector (Lingampally, 2018).

7. Future of Information and Data Management

Discussions about information sharing and data management have been ongoing for years. Despite the ubiquity of the internet, information sharing and data management is still a long way from where it be at the moment. But how do we solve this problem especially when we're entering an era where books and paper documentations are gradually coming to an end. The future of information management holds a lot of answers as specialists have projected. AI is the next big thing is this sector as well (Dennis, 2017).

The city is actually where innovation happens. The world is gradually coming to an era where the rate of urbanization is growing at a rapid pace. Even though a lot of people made bold pessimistic predictions about how the present was going to be like, cities around the world have continued to develop. Everyone now recognizes the impact of the cities of the world in finding solutions to our economic, environmental and social problems. And frankly speaking, things would continue to improve. It’s just inevitable. In every urban sector, marked developments will occur (Ericsson Networked Society City Index, 2016)