What's in store for city-dwellers in 2040?

Imagine a world where each morning, you and your family hop in your self-driving hydrogen vehicle. You program your destination into the digital journey planner, and settle into an onboard breakfast around the table, as your h-pod gets you to where you need to go. After dropping the kids off at school, you leave the h-pod to refuel at the local energy hub while you work in the neighbourhood smartoffice, using avatars to connect with colleagues in a virtual conference room.

Sounds futuristic? Welcome to Sustainable Urban Mobility: 2040.

In partnership with Vodafone, FIA Foundation and EMBARQ, the Sustainable Urban Mobility: 2040 (SUM2040) project aims to help key constituencies in global cities – including government planners, urban designers, businesses and civil society groups - find long-term, sustainable urban mobility solutions. It does this by exploring coherent, plausible scenarios of the world 30 years from now. By mobility, we mean transport but also the other means of access to goods and services people need in daily lives that may act as a substitute for physical movement – from ICT, to different ways of urban design.

We’re now halfway through the project and at a point where we’ve done extensive research and consulted a wide range of experts and the insights that have come out have been fascinating. Before the scenarios for mobility in 2040 are written and published, I wanted to share some top-line thoughts about how your city might look in the future.

People-friendly cities: The concept of cities designed for people, not cars, will grow. What does this mean in practice? Urban design focused on developing local neighbourhoods as opposed to more urban sprawl, for a start. People will increasingly choose to live, work and play in the same area. The local street will undergo a renaissance, with small shops popping up again, more footpaths, more green space, and efficient, 24-hour use of community infrastructure, such as the local school doubling as a community centre after hours.

Mobility-on-demand: When people do venture out of their neighbourhood, they will probably be able to connect much more smoothly and quickly between different modes of transport. They’ll check air quality or traffic conditions on their mobile, laptop or using public access touch screens before setting out. Far fewer people will need to own vehicles – they’ll be able to rent cars, electric scooters, bicycles and other modes at mobile rental hubs that can easily be shifted around the city in response to changes in demand.

The changing shape of the office: In the 20th century, we got stuck in traffic jams every morning while commuting to head office. Experts expect this to change. We are already seeing more home working and video conferencing. This trend will grow and fundamentally change the way office spaces look and feel. Companies will likely build smaller, decentralised working centres. They may even use existing neighbourhood infrastructure – from the local coffee shop to the community centre – for flexible working arrangements.

The wired automobile: The car itself will be transformed. Manufacturers are already thinking about how to incorporate ICT into vehicles, and odds are that over the next 30 years we will see this trend become much more mainstream. Expect, more information and entertainment; automated navigation that supersedes bad driving for optimized safety; and cars that are able to communicate with other vehicles on the road.

Inclusive mobility: Thirty years on, we will still have significant low-income populations, for which tailored mobility solutions will be designed, enabling a greater degree of access to goods and services and more employment opportunities. The mobile phone penetration in the developing world has already shown us the potential of ICT to enhance mobility for the poor, by providing an affordable, quick way to connect to the market by phone rather than on foot, and by allowing delivery of previously inaccessible services such as banking.

Partnerships redefined: As the sustainability challenges facing cities grow, and traditional ways of operating become more and more difficult, we will increasingly form hybrid value chains - business models where commercial partnerships are established between businesses and citizen sector organizations (e.g. NGOs) in order to transform markets and meet critical human needs. Government, business and civil society will likely be working together in much more creative, collaborative ways than ever before. This could include handing over areas of governance to local NGOs and outsourcing operations to local businesses. Nothing we haven’t seen before – but odds are we’ll be seeing more of it in the future.

Needless to say, this will not play out across the board. We are exploring different pathways for these trends and the corresponding societal responses through our scenarios. These will be shared shortly our workshops in Mumbai and Istanbul this June, and published in the autumn. We will be sharing updates as we go along, so stay tuned for more!

http://www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/sustainable-urban-mobility