Cities of the Future

I drive through downtown GR on my daily commute and have admired its simplicity and quaintness for the two decades I've lived here. The city has an interesting history and seems to be doing okay in spite of the problems typical of many other Midwestern industrial areas. Many commercial businesses have come and gone from the downtown area. Blue collar jobs continue to disappear. New construction has continued mostly nonstop though. There is still some charm to be found in the few family-owned business still left. Going from one side of the city to the other takes twenty minutes compared to double that in many larger towns.

One afternoon during my commute home I started thinking about what "the perfect city" would look like in fifty or more years. You know the types. Writers and Hollywood have presented us with many versions of Utopia. Of course, when I was a child, many thought we'd be using flying cars by now. The basics of daily life for me are not terribly different than those of my parents. But what would most of us want in a city in the far future? Will the suburban or country life still be as highly desired or will we mostly live in shiny communal areas?

Many science fiction works show future cities as dense metropolitan areas where every citizen seems highly educated and with a purpose. No poverty. Little if any crime. Clean environment. Easy transportation. Sounds like a nice vision doesn't it? Of course, our present-day realities of automobiles, crime, pollution, unemployment, etc., don't easily translate to such a future any time soon. If all citizens are due to be scientists or philosophers, who will pick up the trash or build the wonderful architecture?

I suppose future cities will most likely change based on the needs of the citizens and not so much just by the dreams of city planners. The very real problems many cities face are not going anywhere soon. Who wouldn't want everyone to be better educated, with safer streets, and in clean and inspiring surroundings? Perhaps the better question is who will want to see these things happen the most? Much like other changes in life, the most dramatic ones seem to only be the result of necessity. If we ran out of fossil fuels tomorrow, we'd somehow find a way to survive. If living in some sort of massive living structure proved to be dramatically cheaper and safer than the outside world, perhaps we'd consider it. Without those benefits, few would chose that option.

One of the greatest things about living in this day and age is choice. With travel and communication opportunities, we can live anywhere we want. The costs of living on our own piece of earth combined with long commutes are justified for those lucky enough. Our future generations may not always have that choice and wonder why we ever lived the way we do.

Of course there may be just as many people resistant to change as those looking forward to it. Life, and the city or town we live in doesn't follow a script. And maybe that's okay. Our city streets may look largely the same in fifty years or even a hundred years, but would that be considered a failure? I guess our grandchildren will be the best to decide.