The big cities of the 2020s are a fascinating market for innovations across all walks of life. Let’s look at 22 trends that will likely make impacts on the future of cities. There are seven themes that cover these trends. In this study, we use a comprehensive foresight tool to set up a process of anticipating changes. Businesses are able to have a clear vision of the future and come up with innovative solutions that set an example in a new world of smart cities thanks to this method of using foresight.
HOW WE DEFINED THE 7 THEMES OF THE FUTURE CITIES
The team of futures researchers (led by Ph.D. Tuomo Kuosa, author of The Evolution of Strategic Foresight) studied a large variety of future trends and phenomena. Then, the most relevant trends affecting the future cities were categorized into major themes and closely examined.
The seven themes in this article are key themes displayed on the foresight radar Future Cities powered by Futures Platform. Futures Platform is a digital tool that allows users to construct a future radar easily around a selected topic (such as future cities, future of work, or any other topic). Any person, or team, can build their own radar. It’s up to the user(s) to decide what future themes to focus on and what trends to display and evaluate on the radar.
In this article we look at probable future cities with the following seven key themes in mind:
Demographic Changes: What will future urban populations look like?
Construction and Urbanization: What kind of city structures will be?
Work and Income: How do people work and earn their living?
Services: What kind of public services and private service providers will they utilize?
Leisure and Social Interaction: How do they spend time and what do they value?
Transportation: How do people move around in the urban environment?
Security and Safety: What’s different regarding safety and security compared to the urban environments of today?
Future of city radar
Future Cities Radar – Powered by FuturesPlatform TM
After studying these 7 themes, we highlighted 22 critical trends that will be among the key forces shaping our cities in the future. Let’s take a look.
PEOPLE WILL LIVE LONGER IN THE FUTURE
The population of the world will continue to grow for a few decades. But this growth is no longer based solely on an increasing birth rate; it will be the result of higher living standards and lowering death rates.
According to the WHO article “10 Facts on ageing and health“, there will be more people over the age of 60+ than there are children under 5 in 2020. Currently, the 60 age cohort forms roughly 12% of the world population. That share is estimated to double by 2050. The rapid ageing of the population brings about a number of social challenges, some of which are already topical in many countries. These countries have been forced to extend careers and raise the retirement age in order to maintain an adequate dependency ratio.
Africa holds the key to megacities’ future. At the same time, humankind is also urbanizing at an accelerating pace. With only 3% of people in the world living in urban areas in 1800, the share has already reached approximately 55%. Every day, the number of urban residents increases by roughly 200,000.
In 1990, there were only ten megacities in the world, with a population of more than 10 million people. Today, there are more than thirty megacities.
According to GlobalData, around 8.2% of the world’s population (that’s roughly 600 million people) live in one of the 35 megacities located around the world. Together, they contribute to a staggering 14% of the world’s total GDP. But 10 million is a number that perhaps does little justice to the real scale of change. An estimate by the Global Cities Institute of the University of Toronto puts some cities like Lagos, Nigeria, at over 80 million inhabitants by 2075. According to the same study, the top 20 cities with the largest populations will be in the African continent, not Asia, Europe, or the Americas.
World population growth
Credit: United Nations Population Fund (www.unfpa.org). A look at world population change across the globe shows the contrast between Africa and the rest of the world.
WESTERN SOCIETIES WILL FACE DEEPER POLARIZATION
More and more representatives of the millennial generation are beginning to take on leading roles in business, politics and market-defining companies. In emerging countries, absolute poverty and wars are declining, and the middle class is on the rise. On the other hand, in the Western world, the middle class is shrinking, and the overall polarization of society is accelerating.
Demographic changes altogether represent one of the biggest forces shaping the city, or cities, of the future.
