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.