Dexign the Future Project 1

Alternative worlds and economies
Link to assignment
Dan Tasse

Topic

Transportation in American cities in 2050

Assumptions

Step 1: Drivers of Change

Framework and mini-scenarios

Personal vehicle tech

Personal cars stay popular. The auto industry, which took a hit in the 00s, bounces back with fully electric cars for green-conscious consumers and self-driving cars. Parking remains an issue, but self-parking, smaller cars mean we can fit more in fewer spaces. They remain status symbols as well, but instead of BMW and Mercedes, hot brands are Google, Tesla, and Apple.

Bicycling

Millennials drive a systemic change towards biking. They enjoy the lack of noise, exercise potential, outdoors lifestyle, and convenience. In addition, GPS trackers (like Lojack for bikes) reduce bike theft substantially, which means fancy bikes become more common and therefore higher-status items. City planners reorganize their cities to enable more biking and walking by centralizing things. Unfortunately, this also leads to increased prices in these highly-sought-after areas, which means poorer people are pushed farther out into suburbs where mobility is limited.

Global decline

The world is beset with crisis after crisis; money gets diverted toward defense, medicine, and environmental issues. As a result, cities are unable to improve their infrastructure. Public transit stagnates, and Americans need to divert income and energy to their cars and commutes. This causes the US to lose its edge economically.

Economic forces

The city becomes the headquarters for "spaceless" work - work that can be done anywhere. Cities lose all reason to connect to the natural world at all. Like banking centers in the 20th century, IT centers in the 21st century become the centers of power, while anything that has a space - farming, factories, etc. - becomes marginalized and moved outside the city. Even food production moves, aided by micro-delivery services.

Urbanization

Moving becomes much more frequent; owning a home becomes much less frequent. Neighborhoods change much more rapidly due to trends than anything else. Everyone moving to a city tries to catch the next wave of city trends as they grow, but each wave produces a few "winners" and many losers who lose their longtime homes and move to cheaper but less convenient suburbs.

Mass transit

Demand from rich young people, plus new tunnel-boring technology, causes subways to be constructed more widely, even when they're not necessarily the best solution. As a result, public transit loses popularity and funding stalls.

Information technology forces

Old fashioned "mass transit" falls apart, replaced by waves of on-demand taxis, shared rides, buses, and deliveries. This puts bus drivers out of work, but creates more jobs for taxi drivers and IT workers. However, without public funding, these pay worse and are less protected. The net effect is that people who make a living providing transit have to work longer hours, but they also can get around better thenmselves.

Scenarios

Rock Candy World

People have always clustered together into cities, but in this business-as-usual scenario, that clustering accelerates. Furthermore, the larger cities grow bigger, like rock candy crystals, while smaller cities shrink until they effectively disappear. Metropolitan centers like New York, San Francisco, and Chicago grow beyond 10 million, and a few "boutique" cities like Seattle and Boston grow into metropolises due to their multifaceted appeal. These cities are served by largely pay-as-you-go private services, including health care and transportation. Rich people continue to flock there, along with poorer people who hope to become rich.

Meanwhile, most people are stuck in smaller cities or towns that are floundering. Shrinking tax bases mean transit gets cut further, to the point where it's not even useful; bus systems in many cities are dismantled. After the Great Stagnation of the early 21st century, the gap between urban and rural America grows wider, which further deadlocks the federal government.

Leapfrog Cities

Due to increased centralization and the massive rise in costs among large cities, along with technological advances, a new wave of small cities arises to combat the calcified giants. Coastal cities are also hit by the effects of climate change and the scarcity of nearby fresh water. Leading the charge is the former Rust Belt, anchored by the "Silver Triangle" of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Columbus, and New York's I-90 Corridor of Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester. These cities, which never developed strong transit ecosystems, found ways to leapfrog over their lack of a subway with large fleets of autonomous, low-emission vehicles. Residents enjoy the permanent taxi service, low cost of living, temperate weather, lack of natural disasters, and friendly lifestyle. As a result, these rapidly-transformed cities become very popular for young people and entrepreneurs.

Large older powerhouses start to lose relevance. Money starts to be more evenly split between these small "leapfrog cities" and the coastal powerhouses. More richer people living in the interior makes for more balanced policy. Immigrants begin to be able to more fully use their abilities as well, so visas become easier to acquire.

The Age of Great Mini-Mobility

As the 21st century progresses, large cities grow out of control, so Americans avoid moving there. Suburbs have proven to be a failure, but people still want the benefits of living in a comfortable city while being near an urban metropolis. Furthermore, long-distance travel grows more expensive, so people try to stay near their extended families.

Medium-distance travel becomes easier due to two trends: electric cars and a restructuring of Amtrak. Electric cars begin to drive hundreds of miles at once, but recharging still takes time, so driving more than 200 miles becomes inconvenient. Government subsidies continue to make them cheaper as well. In addition, Amtrak's ridership continues to grow, but the long distance routes lose money, so Amtrak refocuses on shorter routes.

As a result, people begin to flock to small cities near large urban centers. Denver/Boulder provide a good example, as do San Antonio/Austin and Detroit/Ann Arbor. Drawing a cue from China and Korea, the US government invests heavily, too, in revitalizing tiny cities and suburbs into sub-cities within 100 miles of megacities. Unlike 20th century suburbs, these sub-cities are fully self-contained; few people commute daily from one to the other, so there is a stronger sense of community. But travel is easy, so it's easy for families to live between clusters of sub-cities. People are able to customize their lives within these city clusters, while avoiding constant long-distance travel. This situation prevents the worst effects of sprawl, getting people closer to nature and the food system as well.

Mood boards

pdf - 6mb

Reflections

Rejected scenario:

Sticking Close to Home

All fuels become so expensive, and people gain such a sense of the climate change impacts of their actions, that they stop traveling as much. Coast-to-coast travel, particularly, slows down, which leaves the populous west coast and east coast relatively isolated. Eventually the three West Coast states, with their culture increasingly strange from the rest of the country, attempt to secede. Like Scotland today, their motion fails, but the idea scares Washington enough to make sweeping liberalizing changes in government.

I rejected this scenario because there seems to be little support for the idea that people would discipline themselves to avoid travel. It has to make economic sense. Furthermore, the West Coast secession seems unnecessarily farfetched. I built some of these ideas into The Age of Great Mini-Mobility above.

References