1. Global Challenges
and
the Role of Metropolis
Jerome C. Glenn
The Millennium Project

2. Investment Areas to
Improve Our Urban Future
• Urban/City Collective Intelligence Systems
• TransInstitutions to assist urban management
• University Courses in Urban Systems Ecology
• Retrofit for energy producing buildings
• Dynamic adaptive buildings with sensors: diagnosis and repair
infrastructure
• Ubiquitous computing, robotics, Nano Sensors (better management and
counter terrorism - monitoring molecules in public spaces)
• “Greening” everything possible
• Smart traffic control
• To save urban water: Pure Meat without growing animals and saltwater
agriculture

3. Rio+20: Two Stories:
• Nation-State Failure
• New Synergies among business, universities,
NGOs, and municipalities or city officials

4. Next Mega Trend:
Conscious-Technology
When the distinction between these two trends
becomes blurred, we will have reached the
Post-Information Age
HUMANS BECOMING
CYBORGS
BUILT ENVIRONMENT
BECOMING INTELLIGENT
1985
2000
2015
2030

5. As brains are concentrations of nerve
cells, cities are concentrations of brains
How well cities give coherence to these brains
to address global challenges will determine the
future quality of our future cities

6. Each can change the other

7. Collective Intelligence
• It is an emergent property
• from synergies among
• data/info/knowledge
• software/hardware
• experts and others with insight
• that continually learns from feedback
• to produce (nearly) just in time knowledge for better
decisions
• than these elements acting alone.

9. 15 Global Challenges
#1 is no more important than #15. This global agenda is a system:
improving any improves others; reducing any reduces the others

10. Prices are going up…

11. High Food Prices – Long-Term
• population growth
• rising affluence especially
India & China
• diversion of corn for biofuels
• soil erosion
• aquifer depletion
• the loss of cropland
• falling water tables and
water pollution
• Increasing fertilizer costs
(high oil prices)
• Market speculation
• diversion of water from rural
to urban
• Increasing meat
consumption
• global food reserves at 25-
year lows
• climate change
• Increasing droughts
• Increasing flooding
• Melting mountain
glaciers reducing water
flows
• And eventually saltwater
invading crop lands

12. TransInstitutions
1. Boards of Directors whose members come from UN agencies,
corporations, governments, NGOs, universities, and individuals,
but are not from a majority of any one institutional categories;
2. People who work for the transinstitution come from all of these
institutional categories, but do not form a majority of anyone one
institutional category;
3. Income from at least four of the following categories but does not
receive its funds from a majority of any of the above institutional
categories; and
4. Products, services, and/or other outputs that are purchased or
used by all of these categories, but by a majority of any one
institutional category.

13. Future Management
1. Hierarchy
2. Networks
3. Intersection of
Networks: Nodes
4. Connecting Nodes
into Fields of Play
5. Connecting Fields of Play

14. Ifthen Synthetic
Biology
Nano-
technology
3-D
Printing
Internet
of Things
Conscious-
Technology
Artificial
Intelligence
Synthetic
Biology xxx 1
Nano-
technology 2 xxx
3-D Printing
xxx
Internet of
Things xxx
Conscious-
Technology xxx
Artificial
Intelligence xxx
Future S&T Interactions

15. Integration of Archeology, urban
systems ecology, and cyberspace
http://www.jvrb.orgwww.jvrb.org

16. 46 Millennium Project Nodes...
are groups of experts and institutions that connect global and local views
in:
Nodes identify participants, translate questionnaires and reports, and conduct interviews,
special research, workshops, symposiums, and advanced training.

17. Korean Sustainable City Concept

19. 2012 State of the Future
Or…a 1-year subscription for ongoing updates in
the Global Futures Collective Intelligence System

20. For further information
Jerome C. Glenn
The Millennium Project
4421 Garrison Street, NW,
Washington, D.C. 20016 USA
+1-202-686-5179 phone/fax
JGLENN@IGC.ORG
www.StateoftheFuture.org