By Ida Auken
Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city - or should I say, "our
city." I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I
don't own any appliances or any clothes.
It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this
city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We
have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we
need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it
ended up not making sense for us to own much.
First communication became digitized and free to everyone. Then, when
clean energy became free, things started to move quickly.
Transportation dropped dramatically in price. It made no sense for us to
own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a
flying car for longer journeys within minutes. We started transporting
ourselves in a much more organized and coordinated way when public
transport became easier, quicker and more convenient than the car. Now I
can hardly believe that we accepted congestion and traffic jams, not to
mention the air pollution from combustion engines. What were we
thinking?
Sometimes I use my bike when I go to see some of my friends. I enjoy
the exercise and the ride. It kind of gets the soul to come along on the
journey. Funny how some things seem never seem to lose their
excitement: walking, biking, cooking, drawing and growing plants. It
makes perfect sense and reminds us of how our culture emerged out of a
close relationship with nature.
In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our
free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for
business meetings when I am not there.
Once in a while, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy - the
necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes.
Since transport became free, we stopped having all those things stuffed
into our home. Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into
our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them.
This also made the breakthrough of the circular economy easier. When
products are turned into services, no one has an interest in things with
a short life span. Everything is designed for durability, repairability
and recyclability. The materials are flowing more quickly in our
economy and can be transformed to new products pretty easily.
Environmental problems seem far away, since we only use clean energy and
clean production methods. The air is clean, the water is clean and
nobody would dare to touch the protected areas of nature because they
constitute such value to our well-being. In the cities we have plenty of
green space and plants and trees all over. I still do not understand
why in the past we filled all free spots in the city with concrete.
Shopping? I can't really remember what that is. For most of us, it
has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun,
and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my
taste better than I do by now.
When AI and robots took over so much of our work, we suddenly had
time to eat well, sleep well and spend time with other people. The
concept of rush hour makes no sense anymore, since the work that we do
can be done at any time. I don't really know if I would call it work
anymore. It is more like thinking-time, creation-time and
development-time.
For a while, everything was turned into entertainment and people did
not want to bother themselves with difficult issues. It was only at the
last minute that we found out how to use all these new technologies for
better purposes than just killing time.
My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city.
Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all
this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI
took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political
system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside
of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others
just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century
villages.
Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real
privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere,
everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that
nobody will use it against me.
All in all, it is a good life. Much better than the path we were on,
where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model
of growth. We had all these terrible things happening: lifestyle
diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation,
completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social
unrest and unemployment. We lost way too many people before we realized
that we could do things differently.
This blog was written ahead of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils.
Ida Auken is a Young Global Leader and Member of the Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization of the World Economic Forum,
