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Megacities On the Move Executive Summary

Project Overview

For the first time in history more than half the world’s population is living in towns and cities. We passed this milestone in 2008 and by 2040 two in three people are expected to live in urban environments.

Urbanisation presents us with a wealth of new opportunities and huge challenges. It has the potential to further economic development and innovation, but also threatens to exacerbate key global problems, including resource depletion, climate change, and inequality.

Megacities on the move sets out to find solutions to one of the biggest challenges – how billions of city-dwellers can access what they need without putting intolerable strains on the planet. It focuses on how to achieve sustainable urban mobility, looking at all the ways in which people will access goods, services and information and make contact with each other. It goes beyond transport to consider ICT solutions, innovative urban design and much more.

Forum for the Future, working in partnership with Vodafone and the FIA Foundation, who funded the project, and with EMBARQ, has produced a practical toolkit to help public bodies, companies and civil society organisations understand and plan for the mobility challenges of the future. It is designed to encourage action now and stimulate innovative products and services.

We have created four scenarios exploring urban mobility in the year 2040, taking into account resource shortages, climate change, demographic trends and other major factors which will shape our future, and drawing on interviews with more than 40 experts from around the world.

We chose this year because urban infrastructure is generally planned, built and used over decades. Looking at the challenges we may face in 30 years provides enough time to plan for and deliver a whole new generation of more sustainable solutions.

You can download the toolkit as one document or in its separate sections by going to the How to Use the Toolkit menu to the left.

Watch the Megacities on the Move Webinar by Ivana Gazibara on the left hand side or watch our audio slideshow on mobility solutions of the future.

Forum for the Future’s scenarios are not predictions or depictions of desirable futures which we wish to promote, and they do not represent our vision of a sustainable future. They are pictures of different possible futures, designed to help people understand the major trends that are shaping our world. They aim to challenge, inspire and excite, so that people feel motivated to plan for a better, more sustainable future.

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