Mapping the Urban Future | Research

This study presents a selection of hard trends (science-based, long- term trends that are highly probable or effectively certain to have tremendous and lasting impacts). These trends are intensively shaping our lifestyles, our cities and our urban settings. Consequently, it is the understanding of these scientifically-based trends that will create a compact, holistic and possibly objective overview of what’s to come.

A joint project by Josephine Yilan Liu & John L. Casti (X-Event Dynamics).

June, 2018

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Preface

Urban developments have a much greater time scale than most other social and economic activities. In order to create attractive, sustainable and resilient cities, city planners and policy makers need to be able to envision what the future will be like. Most of us are trend followers using heuristics, expecting tomorrow to be just like…

A Bonus: What to Expect

A Bonus: what we anticipate… After surveying the defining trends that will shape our urban future, in certain areas it becomes evident that we expect to see changes happening quickly. In this chapter we outline some of these changes/ scenarios, thereby hoping to provide inspiration for our conference guests and City Changers around the globe. A…

Co-Author: John L. Casti

One of the pioneers of complexity science and systems theory, John L. Casti, Ph.D., is Senior Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, where he heads an initiative on Extreme Events in Human Society. He worked for many years at the Sante Fe Institute and The RAND Corporation, as well as serving on the faculties of Princeton, the University of Arizona, and New York University. A former editor of the journal Complexity, Casti has published nearly 20 volumes of academic and popular science and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Southern California.

AI and Robotics

Artificial intelligence and robotics are among the leading technologies shaping deep changes in cities around the world. Ride hailing companies like Uber and Lyft are perfect examples of the way these technologies have already transformed the nature of mobility and automobile ownership. And these are but the tip of the iceberg in the way AI…

Aging Populations and Urban Systems

One of the biggest social forces that city planners and builders must tackle is the needs of an ever-increasing, aging population. Currently, expected lifespans in Japan are 86 years for women, 80 for men, the longest in the world. But people talk today about today’s 80s being tomorrow’s 100! Since even now aging populations are…

Augmented/Virtual Reality (AVR)

Over the past decade or two, dramatic advances in computing technology have provided a technological basis for studying social systems by simulating them in a computer as opposed to trying to capture their essence in formal mathematical models and equations. So if you want to study the effect of changes in an urban system today,…

Blockchain Technology

What is a blockchain? And why is it so important for the future of business and commerce in the urban environment of the future? Basically, the blockchain is a decentralized ledger that records exchanges of elements of value agreed upon by a buyer and seller. For example, suppose Al and Bob agree on a transaction…

Climate Change and Urban Systems

Urban areas are being forced to respond to climate changes due to two simple facts: Urban areas have large and growing populations that for many reasons are highly vulnerable to variability in climate, and Cities depend on a huge set of interrelated infrastructures and the resources that support them. These resources often come from rural…

Democratization in Urban Systems

Democratization in Urban Systems Rapid urbanization is transforming the developing world. The political consequences of this transformation is not very well understood. For example, a recent (2017) study shows that democratic elections do not stabilize authoritarian regimes; rather, they are strongly correlated with urban mobilization and violence by both organized and unorganized groups. Across a…

Energy Systems

The problem of efficiency versus resilience is the big question mark underlying every human system. We need efficiency to be able to afford a system that will do the job. On the other hand, every affordable system must be able to “roll with the punches” of the outside world and continue to perform its function…

IoT, Big Data and Urban Systems

Environmental sustainability and optimal use of energy are two of the key elements in the program for development of smart cities. Very often overlooked is the role of the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data in improving environmental sustainability in the process of creating smart cities. The integration of smart systems like smart homes…

Localization versus Globalization

Globalization is the process of integrating industries, cultures, economies, policy making and markets around the globe. In the past, globalization usually used to focus on the economic side of the world. This involved trade, international capital flows and foreign direct investment. In recent times, the scope has been broadened to include a variety of activities…

Resource Crises

Crises in resource availability, such as food shortages, fresh water availability, electric power over-consumption and the like are a two-faced problem in regard to urban systems. One face is the resource consumption of the urban area itself, the other face is the resource availability from elsewhere to support a given urban environment. So for a…

Transportation Systems

Transport planning at a megacity of the future will require more than simply widening streets or building more of them. The suburban mess based on individual transport via automobiles that was inherited from the 1950s will have to give way to efficient, eco-friendly mass transit. It’s difficult to see how the car-dominated cities of the…

Trust Crises in Urban Systems

Future urban systems will have to become a lot more efficient in order to generate environments that can comfortably accommodate populations of millions of residents. The implementation of urban efficiency involves several types of direct interaction between city governments and their residents. Among the most important such interactions are (1) the need for community members…

Mapping the Urban Future | Research

Read the study.

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Preface

A Bonus: What to Expect

Co-Author: John L. Casti

AI and Robotics

Aging Populations and Urban Systems

Augmented/Virtual Reality (AVR)

Blockchain Technology

Climate Change and Urban Systems

Democratization in Urban Systems

Energy Systems

IoT, Big Data and Urban Systems

Localization versus Globalization

Resource Crises

Transportation Systems

Trust Crises in Urban Systems

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Mapping the Urban Future | Research

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