I THINK THE FUTURE WILL LOOK LIKE 30 YEARS OR SO FROM NOW?

AND
WHAT WILL CITY: 2050 BE LIKE?

POPULATION: 2050
City: 2050 will be more dense, larger and older.

Colombia will grow to 2 million people by 2050 – up 35% from our 2017 population of 2 million.
And upwards of 75% of future Barranquilleros will live in cities and urbanized areas (up from 50%
in 2008). In other words, by 2050 there will the same number of people living in cities as there are
in the entire nation today!

MOBILITY: 2050
City: 2050 will be more multi-modal and less reliant on cars:

Walking – Denser cities make walking a viable mode for many people once more. City: 2050 may
actually resemble walkable neighborhoods common in the early to mid-Twentieth Century. And
that includes today’s suburbs, which are exhibiting renewed interest in traditional urban principles
of mixed-use, walkability and density. By 2050, many of those suburbs will be 100 years old (or
older) and will have evolved into stand-alone, mixed-use, urbanizing areas and employment
centers;

Automobiles – Should current trends continue, 2050 car ownership should decrease in favor of car
sharing, autonomous vehicles and other disruptive technologies. And our lives will not rely solely
on cars for mobility;

ARCHITECTURE: 2050
It is not unreasonable for a building to have a lifespan of 30 years or more. So today’s new
buildings currently under construction will be important components of our built environment in
City: 2050. Architectural design will undoubtedly change over the next 33 years, so expect our
cities to be a mix of old and new, just as they are today. What other changes can we expect?

More Mixed Use – Expect fewer monolithic (single-use) buildings. Today’s office buildings may
transition into vertical “neighborhoods” with 3 or more uses in each building. Today’s 25-story
office towers could transition into a combination of office, residential, retail and even educational
spaces. It’s already happening in the world’s most populous cities;
INFRASTRUCTURE: 2050
Supporting will require massive reinvestments in our current infrastructure – water, sewer, storm
drainage, electrical power, telecommunications, etc. And if we rely on today’s delivery systems,
our carbon footprint will actually increase, even with denser development patterns. The
infrastructure must evolve to be more efficient, flexible, and decentralized.

Take electric power. Today, thousands of homes already generate their own power through solar,
wind or geothermal, and are selling unused kilowatt-hours back to the grid. This is attractive to
homeowners and it helps decentralize our aging power grid, which experts agree is vulnerable to
cyber-attack. Decentralizing even a small portion of the grid could have significant cost-savings
and environmental benefits over construction of new power plants. And the ongoing
improvements in solar cell efficiency make this more attractive every day, especially given our
desire for more digital devices that require recharging. But expect resistance (again, pun intended)
from power companies to a future decentralized grid.

Improvements in rainwater harvesting and small sanitary sewer “batch plants” can have similar
positive impacts on drainage and sewer systems. At the same time, new investments in our legacy
infrastructure will still be required in order to provide reliable water, sanitary sewer and storm
drainage services.