By 2050, mobility requirements will have changed completely. The high level of networking means that long-distance travel will be shaped by important personal and professional relationships.
Thanks to considerable cultural adaptations and the proliferation of slums, the supposed recreational value of “foreign” worlds will no longer carry the charm that is still very much a part of travel today. This means that people will only travel long distances in the context of personal or professional relationships.
Travel which isn’t done by plane even today will also decrease markedly.
The journey as an ultimate goal will no longer exist. Where travel is undertaken then it is time which must be spent to get from one place to another, and only seems sensible if this time can be used to do other things. This means that it will no longer be necessary for individuals to drive themselves long distances. As the self-driven car makes its way to my destination, I can work, shop online or Skype with friends.
In the completely digitised world with transparent customers, mobility can be tailored to personal needs. The data cloud “floats” over the city of the future and organises the virtual fleet of vehicles. Ultimately, there are more important or nicer things that people would rather be doing, which do not include standing at the bus stop waiting for a bus.
Motorways can be rebuilt to meet the demands of automated car transport.
The vehicles responsible for transportation within urban areas will be small, light and quiet, and the cars will be available for hire in three to four different classes. Thanks to the hole in the ozone layer, convertibles can only be experienced by looking at historical vehicles such as the Ford Mustang (year of construction 1967). Many will marvel at the type of driving and the real old timer cars, finding it impossible to comprehend such low ecological and safety standards.
In addition to a highly developed public transport network, the usual way of moving around will be in self-driven vehicles. These will be provided directly when the destination is entered into a smartphone and the carrier is selected from various alternatives. The price, the weather and the desired mode of transportation will all affect the decision of which carrier to chose. If the weather is nice and I don’t feel like walking, I’ll be offered a segway with a canopy. When I arrive at my destination, the vehicle will automatically return to a nearby storage facility for the power source to charge and for maintenance and repair. This enables a paradigm shift towards a city with no parking in public streets.
The new cities benefit from great potential, supporting the trend to no longer have a kitchen in your own home.
Catering will be made communal, both to provide healthy nourishment and to ensure social contact to compensate for the change in workplace structures. This will change the criteria which currently affect the search for a home considerably. People will choose their residential area on the basis of its range of culinary facilities. In this way, the public space will be redefined on the basis of eating and will become more sustainable, which in turn will lead to a decline in individual car ownership. In 2050, people will enjoy spending time in a beautifully designed public space once more, in which people and not cars dominate.
About Konrad Rothfuchs
Konrad Rothfuchs is one of germany’s leading experts in traffic planning and research. He studied civil engineering at the Fachhochschule Hildesheim Holzminden and urban planning at the Technical University Hamburg-Harburg. He is chairman of the Coordination Committee of the Federal Association of Road and Traffic Engineers (BSVI), chairman of the Association of Independent engineers for road construction in Hamburg (VFIS) and Vice President of the Hamburg Chamber of Engineers.
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