Different scenarios for the fall

Inside Higher Ed has come up with 15 different scenarios for the Fall semester. And, having already posted those, they are now exploring each with a deeper dive (e.g., The Late Start). For planners, scenarios are an important first step in addressing uncertainty.

5 Trends

According to Jack Dangermond, here are the 5 biggest trends impacting GIS. I probably don't give the location services enough attention. Maybe that should be my resolution for 2017.

GIS Futures

Mike Goodchild wrote, first in 2011 and again in 2015, about trends shaping GIS.

Both are well worth a review.

LAF's New Landscape Declaration

The Landscape Architecture Foundation has released a new manifesto for those driving the field into the future: The New Landscape Declaration. At 382 words, it says a lot in just a little space. But what it definitely says is that landscape architecture is still a profession that is evolving and that will change the world.

Work!

"Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!"

- Isaac Asimov 

1964 NY Times 

Map Story contest

Make a Map Story about the future and win $1000.

The future is now

"We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes."

 

– Bill Joy, Cofounder and Chief Scientist, Sun Microsystems

This past weekend the NY Times Magazine featured 32 innovations that will change your life. While all 32 are worth your attention (well, 29 of the 32), one is spatial: #30 GPS-enabled gardening.

Coping with a changing world

HBR posted an interesting column by Bill Taylor, "Are You Learning as Fast as the World Is Changing?"

You're not going to learn faster (or deeper) than everyone else if you seek inspiration from the same sources as everyone else. Educators know that we learn the most when we encounter people, experiences, and ideas that are the least like us. And yet, we spend most of our time with people and in places that are the most like us — our old colleagues, our familiar offices, our reassuring neighborhoods. If you want to learn faster, look and live more broadly.

What are you doing to expand your sphere?

Designing the future

Friend of the blog, Allan Shearer, gets a big shout out from the NY Times' Dot Earth blog.

Another is that breakthroughs only come with a lot of effort and experimentation and, unavoidably, failure. Learning involves breaking. This means that a useful trait these days is the “courage to fear” — a phrase used in a recent discussion of tipping points by Allan Shearer, an architecture professor at the University of Texas, Austin, who studies how humans design the future as much as he designs structures.

Great mention in the blog of record.

Future interfaces

Remember that these are already becoming more common. Are you imagining something new? What do you think we need to improve regional design?

Tools of the future

Harvard's Business Review online has a short post by John Sviolka looking at Augmented Reality technologies and how they could soon be changing a variety of practices. GPS already has hints, but he looks at how it can go farther. And BMW made a provocative short video simulating how mechanics might use the tecnology to improve car repairs in the future. He also asks:

What do you think? Are we at the beginning of a revolution or is augmented reality an idea that will always be in the near future, but never here?

This may or may not help you imagine how environmental planning and design could change in the near future. But it merits a peek.

The tanning pits of Fez

The always reliable Daily Dose of Architecture has posted a great exploration of a potential new life for the famous tanning pits of Fez, Morocco.

The future from BLDG BLOG

BLDG BLOG reports on a link between design and animal evolution and a wobbling Earth that leads to some pretty fantastic looks at the future.

A prediction about the future of NJ

From Jim Hughes and Joe Seneca: This will be the decade of lost jobs.

"Things are going to get worse before they get better," said Hughes, dean of Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.

I think it is safe to assume that these guys would like to be proven wrong.

The Five Lost Cities of the Future

As we ponder the future, it is also interesting to read the The Five Lost Cities of the Future from Environmental Graffiti. The have identified 5 US cities that might not be significant parts of America's future.

Future transit

Aside from personal hovercraft, it turns out that we aren't very good at imagining the future of transportation. Fortunately, other folks have figured out some better ideas about how transportation might look in the future. These images from BusinessWeek are pretty focused on examples that are already real, but that means it is in the future of our study area.

The future of freeways

Could the future of freeways be to tear them down and replace them with boulevards and surface streets? Next American City suggests just that.

Forty years later, the lifespan of most freeways has come to an end. This leaves urban planners and local governments with a choice: Do they demolish the existing infrastructure to make way for surface roads and boulevards? Or do they invest in freeways yet again, when it makes even less sense to do so – given their crummy past and the ever-rising cost of gasoline?

In our region the CNU has encouraged tearing down Route 29 in Trenton and the Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx.

Lilypad 2100

Vincent Callebaut has gotten a fair amount of attention for their ideas about how Lilypads could be the land use solution of the future.

The future

This postcard, from RootsWeb's Penny postcards collection, offers a rich look at how some imagined the future of Boston. The transportation is transformed while the clothing and buildings are not. How much better is your imagination?