The technological revolution is bringing sweeping change to every area of our lives. As new methods of doing things usher away the old ways, life is getting easier, the world is increasingly connected, and we are presented with a greater range of opportunities than ever before. The advent of increasingly complex technology will only speed up the pace of transformation. The world of the future might be a very unfamiliar place, indeed.
That is true, too, of our cities. Sprawling metropolises and their features are a site familiar to most of us – either from personal experience or through media exposure. Conventional taxis, conventional buildings, and conventional problems, such as parking, will all be missing from a very unfamiliar sort of city. New chances to do new things will render today’s cities obsolete, replaced with something, hopefully, better.
Not all change is good, but the digital renaissance brings new chances for cities to better work for their citizens, to present them with something better, to make their lives easier. So how are cities planning to make use of the evolution in tech to benefit us? Here are some of the ways the cities of tomorrow will differ to what we’re used to today.
By 2030
As the pace of development picks up, the next 12 years will see an extraordinary degree of change extraordinarily quickly. Smart thermostats – thermostats able to be used remotely – will be a much more common site, with approximately 43% of homes and office buildings having these devices by the end of 2019.
A very exciting development is Uber’s plans to trial the use of flying taxis within the next three years. If those are successful, we could see the development becomes more widespread, and may see the technology become more widespread in other areas of life.
City services will also be improved by smarter street lights, that will stream vast amounts of data in real time, providing more information about parking, traffic, light, public safety, and air quality, allowing for long-term, and quicker, changes to issues that matter to people.
By 2040
In the next 20 years, Artificial Intelligence technology will be so advanced and so prolific, that vast numbers of buildings will have AI installed in them, allowing residents and users to talk to control light, heat remotely, and other settings and conditions. This will provide people with a greater variety of choices, options, and ways to make their lives easier and more comfortable. The technology won’t be at its most optimum yet it will continue to develop over the course of the 2040s.
By 2050
With 600 cities due to go smart in the next five years, and the trend of increasing urbanisation, it’s no surprise that by 2050 70% of the world’s population will be living in smart cities.
The most significant development by 2050 will be the further evolution in AI, already advanced at the start of the previous decade, but with even more capabilities by the 2050s. Buildings will be intelligent, with systems able to adjust to the needs of inhabitants, respond automatically to variations in weather, are reconfigured by robots and produce more resources than they consume.
Another exciting, and surely notable change, will be the use of drones for the delivery of fast food and takeaways. This will lead to the redundancy of food delivery drivers, but will speed up delivery and will have a much smaller carbon footprint.
By 2060
In the next 40 years, vast technological advancement will be so great that the use of hyperloop – super fast transport pods, still in development today – will be commonplace for goods, with cargo crates being programmed with their contents and destination, allowing for quicker processing, sorting, and transport.
The future of cities is exciting, right?