Future City 2050: Rationale

The year is 2050 and the North and South Pole icebergs have melted, more than 40 percent of the Earth’s surface is underwater.

Climate change is set to be the most significant influence in the communities of tomorrow. Mass flooding due to rising sea levels is predated to affect a predicted 27 million people in Japan, 17% of Bangladesh, low lying Asia - Pacific communities and major cities from London to New York.

It is clear that the world’s cities, suburbs and villages will have to adopt more adjustable and even transient design and planning approaches, if they are to survive the next 100 years of change.

People are moving to more urban environments. This huge mass movement of people to cities is going to be one of the most exciting and challenging events of human history. By the end of the century 1 billion people will move from rural to urban and that provides a challenge to our infrastructure (Viewpoint 25).

If survival is about anything, it is about adapting and changing, about dreaming the kind of solutions few of us ever believed possible or practical (Martin Raymond, Editor in Chief, Viewpoint).

Welcome to Future City 2050.

A shade of green.

You’ve probably noticed that green is everywhere these days; you can hardly escape it. With a million messages and ideas coming at us from all angles, it is easy to become confused and frustrated with the media. I find the most annoying thing about being green is having to battle with the theory that all things green are an expensive inconvenience.

I have to admit that I find myself being slightly bewildered; how can the efforts of a single individual living in a pollution guzzling city centre make a difference?

It is very empowering to discover that as a single individual, living in a one bedroom flat in the Lancashire suburbs; every single thing that I do everyday has an impact on the planet. The decisions that I make will cause a ripple effect of consequences for generations to come.

Ok let’s be honest, that does sound a tad dramatic but if the facts are true it is a scary reality that we have to face. The good news is that as an individual I have the power to control most of my choices.

I am interested to discover a sustainable life far from the hippy stereotype; a world that I can adapt/ relate to; a world which we can grow into. 

Over the next 12 months I have embarked on a personal mission to discover my own shade of green.