Managing the 21st Century City

Dr Lowell Catlett, Futurist and Regents Professor/Dean, New Mexico State University was the closing speaker at the League of Cities Conference.

This was the most bizarre, interesting, exciting, stimulating, funny, insightful presentation I have EVER seen.  Dr Catlett describes himself as weird as hell and I don’t think anyone in the audience would have argued.  Visualise ‘Back to the Future’s’ grey haired professor then add mad, brilliant and very entertaining and you are starting to get a picture

The 21^st century, according to the mad professor, will be the first in history where humans will begin to reach their full potential and cities will be at the heart of this revolution. Urban cities will have rural components. Cities will have wireless smart grids for everything from police, transit, to healthcare and self-contained energy production. Taxes and pensions will be mobile, reflecting a different type of labour force in cities focused on lifestyles.  Are we ready for the future?

He says we are living in the most segmented society in history.  The average America has 69% left in their disposable income after buying food, alcohol going out to dinner etc.  A 69% surplus left to do what? He calls it ‘buying CRAP’ and this is what drives the economy.  70% of America’s economy is consumer driven.

People  have the largest disposable income ever and expect a great deal. Abraham Maslow stated way back -  “what is a luxury to one generation becomes a necessity to the next” – and this is exactly what’s happening. Expectations are growing such as:

• green roofs, green walls
• healing gardens for hospitals
• Organic anything – even down to organic vodka
• Gluten free is growing
• People want free range chickens
• Micro breweries
• Get the point, people are able to be fussy today

This disposable income surplus is the core to what drives almost all we do.  So what will impact cities?

Cities want to make sure their people are healthy.

Healthy people bond and make connections, they want and need to be around plants and animals. (You must watch his utube videos to understand how important animals are to humans - its fascinating) Cities must foster deep and rich social connections. People want to be surrounded by trees, grass, flowers – check out Ferrari in Italy - floor to ceiling windows that look out on the rolling hills of Italy. It has the world’s largest commercial atrium – if you work there you can bring your dog to work.  The productivity in that place sky rocketed with these additions.

 

The ‘game changers’ as he puts it are extraordinary.  Dr Catlett discussed where technology is taking us and its mind boggling.  There's too much to describe in this blog  but here's just one example.

The Kindle – it’s a “game changer”. Dr Catlett has 3500 books in his kindle. He can get a book in 15secs.  He now travels with his library. Amazon made it as fast and cheap as possible to get books but now they are trying to get out of the very business they created.  They realise they are destroying the model that they built and don’t want to end up like Kodak – bankrupt.  The world is changing when the 5th strongest brand, Kodak, goes broke when we are taking the most photos than ever before.

The Kindle will change education for ever and a new model will be needed.  Currently a teacher stands up and pontificates, (how about this world), we will be able to get a lecture at any time or place we want from anywhere and we come to class/uni etc to do the homework.  FLIP it.  Don’t go home to do the homework, come to class.  He says in a flipped world I do not need students for 4 years to do the highest degree, I need em for 2.  The kindle has just changed the way we learn for ever.  In fact he feels degrees wont be needed in the future, we should be studying for a lifetime, not a 2year period.

 I haven't even mentioned the way APPS will go in the future or mobile diagnostics for health care, what about 3d modelling that is changing the world of manufacturing or open source software/hardware which will keep us on our toes.

Too much to think about, but I'll finish with my 2 main takeaways from our mad professor:

1. You cannot separate humans from plants and animals and expect to have healthy humans living in our communities.  The green movement is here to stay and we must continue to be animal friendly.  (by the way: the conference hotel was  dog friendly - people brought their dogs into the rooms)
 
2. We better personally keep ourselves abreast of technology and the massive changes in this world so that we can pass this on for the betterment of  our communities.