L. How do you envision the city of the future?

1. How do you envision
the city of the future?
By: Alejandro Menendez

2. City populations continue to grow
• As we keep moving away from an agriculture-based economy, the
world is undergoing the largest wave of urban growth in history

4. What will this cause?
• Current city infrastructures won’t be able to handle the influx of
people unless changes are made
• In China alone, more than 300 million people will move into cities
in the next 15 years (that’s more than the entire US population!)
• Most of the growth will occur in smaller towns and cities, which
have fewer resources to respond with
• We must design solutions for basic city-life needs such as:
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Housing
Transportation
Food
Leisure

5. Our world is changing…
• Global warming is increasing at exponential levels
• Earth’s global surfaces are enduring rising temperatures, with
the last few years showing record-breaking temperatures
• Carbon Dioxide is at unprecedented levels not seen in the last
800,000 years

6. Movement towards “green”
• Awareness about renewable energy sources continues to increase
• By 2050, costs of alternative energy sources will be economically
feasible for all and enforced as standards in all homes and
buildings
• Solar energy will replace coal & oil
• Wind power is forecast to become as big as nuclear energy today
• Over 70% of all our energy will come from clean carbon sources

7. Where will we live?
• “Smart homes” will be built to maximize space and resources
• Each house will be able to produce its own energy supply from
recycled and renewable sources
• Home Appliances will be connected and able to be managed from
remote locations via smart phones
• Appliances will also communicate with owners – ex: Your fridge
will send you a message when you are close to a supermarket to
remind you to get more milk since you are running low
• Smart lighting, air conditioners
and heaters will adapt based on
outside light and temperature
and motion sensors to reduce
energy consumption

8. Where will we live?
• “Dynamic Buildings” will be the standard
for construction, allowing each floor of a
tower to rotate independently around the
core
• Wind turbines between each floor and
solar roof panels will generate the buildings
energy necessities, making them selfsustainable
• Allowing each floor to rotate independently
allows you to maximize sunlight, reduce
AC/Heater use or simply turn towards the
best view when you have guests over

9. Where will we live?
Sunlight, shade, heat
and breeze maximization
Harvesting green energy
so that our homes and
buildings can be self
sustainable

10. Transportation
• Cities will be redesigned to be more compact and efficient, reducing
travel time and encouraging walking, biking and shared public
transport
• Cars will not only become costly, but also ineffective means of
transportation for most daily short-distance situations

11. Transportation
• The cars that still remain will all be 100% electric, eliminating the need for
oil-based fuel
• Cars will be permanently connected and will be constantly monitoring traffic
to re-route drivers in the best direction
• Accidents will be virtually non-existent as cars will communicate speed,
distance and directions to other cars nearby
• This will also eliminate the need for stoplights (to be replaced by
roundabouts)

12. Inter-city Transportation
• Travel between cities like SF to LA or New York to Boston will
be done in less than 30 minutes with Elon Musk’s hyperloop
• Passengers will travel at around 600mph in pressurized
capsules through the reduced-pressure tubes
• Planes will be still used for longer or trans-ocean voyages

13. Food
• By 2015 about 26 cities in the world are expected to have a
population of 10 million or more. To feed a city of this size at least
6,600 tons of food must be imported each day
• This will lead to an increase in urban farming within cities
• With the reduced use of cars, many large areas like parking spaces
and garages will be used for urban farming
• Examples of urban farming:
• Unused spaces like rooftops will be used to
build greenhouses like the one shown above
• Farming will be integrated into new buildings to
make them practical and aesthetically pleasing

14. Food
• Urban farming will be enhanced by practicing Precision Agriculture – a farming
method that uses technology such as GPS and soil-analyzing sensors to provide
specific levels of water & nutrients to individual crops in order to maximize returns

15. Food
• The trend of space maximization will also be reflected in agriculture as
processes such as aquaponics will grow popular
• Tower-farming, or multi-level agriculture will allow to double or triple the
output capacity of an acre of land
•Aquaponics combines conventional
aquaculture (raising animals such as
fish or prawns in tanks), with
hydroponics (cultivating plants in
water) in a symbiotic environment
•Models such as aquaponics can
be recreated in spaces as large
as football fields or small
enough to fit in your home or
work space
•With an ever-increasing population and a
fixed amount of space on earth, scientists
have turned to vertical farming to
maximize space and resources. Controlled
environments will allow farming in nontropical areas as well as the benefit of
year-round production which is estimated
to multiply the productivity of the farmed
surface by a factor of 4 to 6 depending on
the crop.

16. Globalization with Technology
• Since the introduction of the internet, our
technology is evolving at exponential
levels never witnessed before
• We are witnessing an era that will have a
greater impact on world history than the
industrial revolution or the renaissance
• Communication – perhaps the most
important part of progress– has evolved
to a point were we can have a videoconference from our hand held phones
with someone across the world
• Globalization is blurring the lines that had
previously divided so many nations,
economies, races and religions

17. Daily Technology
Internet users per 100 inhabitants
Currently, more than half of the world’s
population does not use the internet.
According to Moore’s law, technological
capacity will continue to double every
year while prices will continue to fall
making technology cheaper, smaller,
and accessible to all.
1980 – First hard drive to have more than 1GB
capacity. It was the size of a refrigerator, weighed
550 pounds and cost between $81,000 to $141,00
2013 – 64 GB micro SD card. It is the size of a
fingernail, weighs .03 ounces and costs less than
$50

18. Augmented Reality
Our daily life will be modified in unimaginable
ways due to technology. Augmented reality,
which is already starting to happen with
technologies such as Google Glass, will change
our everyday life. For example:
•Hungry? Just look around and AR technology will be
able to get all the restaurants around you as well as
their menu, hours & availability, and reviews from
friends in your social network
•Want to go shopping? Get a virtual runway of
products only available in your size and that match
your style according to your preferences or previous
purchases
•Want info on a building or a painting that caught
your eye at museum? Simply stare at it and let AR
tell you the artist, year it was made, size, and where
you can purchase some prints
•The possibilities are truly endless

19. Medicine
• Advances in communication will allow medicine to progress
to unprecedented levels
• Medical checkups as we know them today will no longer be
needed, as we will be able to monitor our health through
our smart pones whenever the need arises
• Most disease known today will be curable and disabilities
such as blindness and deafness will cease to exist
• Average human life spans will increase significantly
• Stems cells will be able to regenerate human tissue and
organs
• Prosthetic limbs will be replaced by real, regenerated
muscle
• Organs such as hearts, livers and kidneys will labgenerated and therefore eliminate the need for donors
• Operations will be done mostly by machines to eliminate
human error

20. Medicine
• The medical arena will be the one field where the majority
of advances will face serious challenges regarding ethics and
morality
• Debates will arise when dealing with genetically enhanced
humans
• For example: Most people would agree it is OK to cure
an unborn baby if it is detected to carry down syndrome,
but what if the parent wants to raise its IQ level? How
much “enhancement” is permitted? Will the super-rich
be able to create smarter, stronger and healthier babies
than the rest of the world and therefore make the
socioeconomic classes even more distant than today?
• Since organ regeneration is feasible, It will be accepted
for a child who lost his arm to get a new one. Where do
we draw the line when it comes to regenerating an
entire human being? Would that be considered cloning?
• Insurance companies will base their pricing policies based
on individual genomes
• Why should I pay the same amount of Insurance as
someone who has a family history of high cholesterol
and heart attacks?

21. What’s next?
At the speed that technology is evolving, I believe it is harder than ever to predict
what the future has in store for us. Who knows, maybe at the end of the century
this will be our view of the moon?