Communities of the future

If nascent technologies were to be embedded into a new community built from the ground up, what would life there look like?

After a long period of innovation that was mostly confined to the information technology sector, it seems that feats of engineering and science might once again transform our physical surroundings and the way we go about our lives. In this post, I’ll share some new advancements I learned about recently that make me much more excited for the next few decades than for those that came before.

Faster modes of ground transport

Japan's SCMaglev will begin operations in 2027. The first crewed hyperloop test run was completed in November 2020. These are new categories of transportation because they’re 2-4x faster than conventional high-speed trains (up to 600km/h for maglevs and 1200km/h for hyperloops). Such speeds would eliminate the need for flights via airplane on the most popular routes, for example between San Francisco and Los Angeles, Boston and Washington D.C., Shanghai and Beijing, and so on.

This could usher a new era of transport-oriented development, where governments could almost conjure new communities into being through new maglev or hyperloop stations.

Satellite Internet

COVID-19 accelerated the remote work paradigm, but services such as Starlink will sustain it. High-speed, low latency internet anywhere in the world is just game-changing. It will facilitate the best opportunities in work, education and entertainment without needing to tap into the extensive infrastructure of a major city (and shoulder the high cost of living that comes with it).

3D Printing

Imagine never needing to order anything from Amazon again because you can tell a computer what you want and it’ll make the item for you in minutes. That’s essentially 3D printing.

Printing speed, which was a bottleneck previously, is set to increase by orders of magnitude in the coming decade. Nearly any material we can think of (including most metals, plastic, glass, and ceramic) can be used.

A major application is 3D printed homes, which will revolutionize the speed and cost of building new communities. A complete dwelling that can be printed in under 24 hours for less than $10,000 was already a reality three years ago.

Vertical Farming

Imagine a skyscraper where the purpose isn’t to house people, but to grow food. Vertical farms offer up to 10 times the crop yield of traditional farming methods, are resistant to weather disruptions due to being indoors, can produce crops year-round, and most importantly, have minimal impact on natural ecosystems due to their small footprint. A few stacks of vertical farms could feed an entire community of thousands without needing extensive deforestation to clear space for traditional farmland.

The main challenges are start-up/maintenance costs and pollution from energy usage, which can be addressed in time with new innovations and a greater shift towards renewable energy sources.

Meat Alternatives

It’s estimated that lab-grown meat (i.e. real cell-based meat that doesn’t come from slaughtered animals) will reach cost parity with conventional meat by the end of this decade.

Aside from being the ethical choice, lab-grown meat reduces greenhouse emissions and land use by up to 90+% (in the case of beef production). For those who balk at the idea of eating meat from a lab, plant-based alternatives are also increasingly available and cost-effective.

Such meat alternatives, together with vertical farming, are major advancements in food science that will make it possible for communities of the future to be more self-sustaining and in harmony with the environment.

My bold predictions for the future:

• Most people will leave major cities for new, medium-sized communities that are about 600km apart and connected by maglev/hyperloop lines
• These communities will be almost entirely self-sustained with a minimized ecological footprint; they will generate their own renewable energy, grow their own food, and 3D print virtually anything they might need
• Population density will be high and centered around the maglev/hyperloop station; electric bikes and autonomous electric vehicles will be commonplace and usually shared
• People will either: work remotely for industries that scale beyond the immediate community (such as entertainment, education, and software); or work in the physical world for the immediate community; or not work at all due to dramatically lower costs of living enabled by technology and automation

People don't want to live in mega-cities; they want to live in happy communities. I think the current trend towards urbanization will reverse, though I'm quite sure I'm in the minority regarding this. However, if there's one thing I've internalized from my personal growth journey, it's that taking a truly long-term view is rare but immensely rewarding in the end.

I hope my predictions are right, not because I like to be right, but because they would truly be good for the world. A few times a year, I contemplate whether it's time to leave my current profession to jump headlong into one of the more interesting fields I discussed in this post - perhaps by starting a new company. So far, I haven't reached that tipping point. Yet.