Author Archives: Tory Lam

In 2020, COVID-19 caused organizations and schools to adapt practically overnight to remote and virtual work, education, and lifestyle. Despite persistent reluctance over the last decades many remote practices have proven highly effective. As a result, they are now permanently integrated into our everyday lives. The daily commute has been replaced by high speed internet access and everyone’s radius of movement and interaction is shrinking. This development is changing the dynamics of urban and rural areas and allows for urbanization to slow down and decrease, while promoting in its place a hyperlocal focus. The hierarchy between city, periphery and countryside has disappeared.

Neighborhoods, small towns and villages are experiencing unique new pressures accelerating a decentralization of populations, infrastructures, and services. Rural middle spaces represent a network of mesh points formed through collaborations across rural and suburban areas. Middle spaces serve as multiple small decentralized hubs rather than large urban centers. A network of high-quality nodes evolves offering recreational and economic potential everywhere. Middle spaces provide new opportunities for the community and individuals to engage and access services within short distance range. What used to happen “in the city” is now happening everywhere. Cultural offerings will follow providing dynamic access to everything the city used to offer.

This can be observed in several areas:

RURAL ACCESSIBILITY
Municipalities continue to increase their digital infrastructures. High-tech replacements for in-person activities are preferred at this point, putting robotics, VR and AI technologies at the core of innovation harvesting the best talent for a company’s workforce. Digital accessibility goes up tremendously as new technologies are bringing the internet to every corner of the world.

CONVERGENCE OF HOME LIFE AND WORK
Make-shift offices in home environments initially sufficient are now replaced with a radical re-imagination of what living and working in one space will look like in the future. Homes are being reconfigured to provide dynamic floor plans and spaces suitable for work and learning separated from the rest of the family as needed. Independent work hubs are available in middle spaces offering professional contacts, technology and services outside of the home and a work environment with colleagues from different industries and companies.

FOCUS ON LOCAL COMMUNITY
Being home for almost 100% of the work week redirects people’s time, energy and focus to their immediate neighborhood and creates the inspiration and commitment to be locally involved. People are getting to know others in the neighborhood, understanding their routines, crossing paths and being able to support each other. The chance encounters expand new relationships and with this, new opportunities on a personal and professional level. These interactions create a new shared commitment to explore and strengthen the place we all inhabit.

ECONOMIC SHIFTS TO COLLABORATIVES
Resources are found or created locally leading to a thriving regional economy. The trust in national and global supply chains is irreparably destroyed and many communities and individuals have started to form collectives while also supporting local businesses such as local farms. Many citizens grow their own food and simply coordinate with neighbors produce creating a reciprocity cycle of production, repair and lending, sharing mindset and contributing to a neighborhood without walls. Keeping food distribution local with short distribution patterns especially in and to middle spaces.

DYNAMIC SUSTAINABILITY
Municipalities have transitioned to renewable energies taking advantage of solar, wind, and water and aiming to achieve carbon-neutrality while iterating new ways to live sustainably.

INTEGRATED HEALTHCARE
Telemedicine is a normal occurrence and the first access point to receive medical advice. The typical middle space does have emergency services, specialists and stand-by surgeons in case the general care is not sufficient while also embracing advances in technology and AI, remote and mobile diagnostics and treatments. The healthcare systems are integrated seamlessly, and a patient’s medical history is connected to the patient and not to the healthcare provider making it easier to receive holistic care across all providers from homeopathy, physical therapy, to medical treatments. Medicine is a shared resource rather than a business model; Social and psychological determinants of health are taking seriously, and medicine is integrated with research to be able to continue to improve.

MACRO AND MICRO MOBILITY
Limited travel and commute with private automobiles cause the highway system to become obsolete and a questionable expense. Citizens envision other ways to better use these spaces. With a more robust development of a national transit system connecting major hubs and dispersing to middle spaces through car or bike sharing the mindset of mobility has shifted. Private ownership of smaller vehicles has been replaced by a network of shared accessible transportation that is available when and where needed.

SOCIAL IMPACT EDUCATION
Universities and colleges are offering hybrid and remote options as a standard practice. Middle spaces serve as an opportunity to congregate and collaborate in person on projects on real local challenges and with local organizations. University campuses are decentralized and offer classrooms in all middle spaces. K-12 schools remain localized and also offer hybrid options to shift towards a more meaningful applied learning model with project-based education tackling local challenges for civic and social impact rather than simply delivering knowledge. Higher Education is made available for all at no or very low cost.

EMPLOYEE-OWNED EDUCATION
Universities and colleges are entirely decentralized. Only few large universities exist as umbrella universities and are affiliated with many smaller entities across the country. Local community members manage the educational operation, any offerings, collaborate across the university-wide network and with external partners extensively. The smaller, de-centralized organizations are 100% employee-owned, which creates a strong commitment to thought leadership locally, across the university-wide network and well beyond to impact globally.

Since remote work proved effective, the recognition that the link between time and space is dynamic and can change became more apparent than ever before. Employees are not only loosely coupled to one organization; they typically work for multiple organizations at the same time. They are hired based on very specific skills and competencies needed to maintain business operations and functions, turnaround or ideate new services and products. Nomadic employees prioritize being on the move over the location of company headquarters. At the same time, it is possible to continue to work in one country but live in an entirely different country. It is not unusual for someone to have lived in 10 different countries at a minimum over the course of a lifetime.

The value of multi-cultural diversity is redefined as everyone is a stranger somehow everywhere allowing for the global community to truly come together as one strong nomadic fabric, learning from each other, sharing experiences with one another and contributing to each other’s local challenges. Creating a sense of community is requiring constant nurturing and work as individuals are coming in and out of communities, neighborhoods, and towns. The reliance on community is in many ways greater but evolves constantly and exists physically and virtually, in person, and through avatars. Nations are becoming irrelevant as they are replaced by networks of shared values, lifestyles and collaborations.

This can be observed in several areas:

MINIMAL LIVING ENVIRONMENTS
Housing is affordable and flexible. People can choose between high-density developments close to transit and cultural centers. The separation between the inner city and the periphery is dissolving. For those who prefer remote locations, mini houses and tents are a preferred way to live lightly on the land. Owning homes has made place to co-op systems based on land trust models that are inclusive and community-oriented. Modular and mass-customizable housing units are ubiquitous and make it easy to move to a similar configuration of spaces elsewhere. Work and life are combined into layered architectures that allow togetherness and separation as needed.

TRANSPORTABLE DIGITAL INNOVATION
With the possibility to live and work anywhere connectivity and digital accessibility is a given and tied to individuals through personal hotspots. Complex technologies requiring special training are reduced giving way to intuitive software and advanced VR and AR technologies to create permeability across organizations and individuals improving collaboration and contributions. Virtual space and real space have a zone of close overlap through innovative terminals.

MOBILE INCOME
The idea of a universal income that provides individuals with the baseline support to feed themselves and their families is related to minimum work contributions needed during any given year to assure affordability and equality for the overall society to work globally. It also frees up time for volunteering and the flexibility to move from place to place.

WELLNESS AND WELL-BEING
Everyone feels grounded and understands their own strengths and weaknesses while nurturing the ability to learn, advance and explore other areas of interesting engagements. Experimentation and following own instincts are critical to adopt a fulfilling work life that fits to every phase in life and honoring individual interests. Wellness and mindful living are commonplace, health care can be accessed worldwide – life is networked and permeable creating systems accessible from everywhere.

MINIMALIST MINDSET
Individuals and families move frequently and have no interest to pack all their belongings every time. It calls into questions what truly is needed to be happy and how memory is created through things and/or experiences while staying connected to self and others. Owning things is replaced by having access to high quality items and services that get constantly improved based on feedback and testing.

HEALTHCARE GOES UNDER THE SKIN
Individuals are now implanted health chips that contain all relevant information about prior health history, vaccines, surgeries and allergies as well as lifestyles. This information is transferable from country to country. Because individuals may be living in different climate zones and under differing conditions in a variety of countries it allows for a more holistic viewpoint of one’s health and is immediately readable by any doctor’s office or hospital. The massive global network of real-world data contributes significantly to breakthroughs in treatments improving early detection and prevention of diseases and the sharing of best practices.

MOBILITY 24/7
Mobility services adapt and evolve organically based on emerging migratory patterns. Increased global mobility taps into sustainable transit systems that use renewable energy and continue to evolve. Nomadic networks are defined by connection nodes that allow transitioning between different means of transportation seamlessly. Personal car ownership is replaced by access to ride share services, a generous system of bike lanes, light rail and other train connections.

TRAVEL MONITORING
The constant movement of individuals has changed travel protocols across the world. Proof of health is a requirement before boarding any plane or means of transportation taking an individual from state to state or country to country. Typically, five days prior to any trip a doctor must verify a clean bill of health. Upon entering the train station or airport, the Proof of Health document is checked at the entrance just as one would show their ID.

PARALLEL EDUCATION
Educational credentialing has become equally flexible and customized. Students can identify their interests and collect credits towards these interests taking classes anywhere and everywhere. Lifelong learning is now a lived experience and students typically work and learn in parallel. Instead of being taught specific skills, students learn processes, methodologies problem solving with a focus on human interaction and collaboration. Degrees have become obsolete since there is a recognition that skills and competencies evolve, and credentialing is a snapshot in time.

Decentralization of work and life has decreased the city population by over 70% and has resulted in many office and retail buildings being vacant. Cities are re-defining their purpose and are evolving into destinations and innovation hubs with a renewed responsibility to serve citizens and prioritizing developments that improve the quality of life everywhere through conservation, production and sustainability.

Reclaiming spaces and turning them into urban farms is supporting local food production beyond the city with new innovative technologies, creating short distance delivery of produce and promoting healthy living while also addressing food deserts more pervasively throughout the city. The establishment of living labs inspires experimentation with a variety of different food sources and methodologies. It stretches our understanding of what can be considered edible and creates alternative nutritional sources unique to the local environment.

Incubators work at the forefront of developing new scalable solutions to societal problems such as pandemics and climate change destined to replace outdated systems with sustainable solutions utilizing raw and renewable resources. Blocks and urban neighborhoods are networked to share such resources and generate them for each other creating a cyclical economy while also actively contributing to global knowledge sharing and collaboration.

This can be observed in several areas:

GREEN MINDSET
People are mindful about what and how much they consume and how and where it is being produced. The 2020 pandemic has brought into focus, how vulnerable supply chains are, how we are globally connected and that our immediate environment is precious and requires protection.

FOOD EXPERIMENTATION

Urban farms create a connected network among each other, with each farm contributing different types of produce. From fermenting unusual plants, converting foods to local climates, to hydroponics and 3D printing meat, innovation has been promoted to develop ideas and solutions that could be widely distributed across the country to decentralized communities as well as shared with partners across the world. Due to food production in close range, food is more affordable and in pain view, which has significantly increased overall well-being and healthy lifestyles.

HUMAN-POWERED TRANSPORTATION
An active lifestyle is the focus within car-free cities and exclusively powered by humans such as walking, biking, scooting, skateboarding, and kayaking. Every citizen receives a universal code that can unlock any mobility device from docking stations. Each device also stores the energy created through manpower and converts it to energy at docking stations, returning it back to the city. Citizens can also choose virtual reality glasses that map out our route in front of them, making it easier to exercise and travel hands-free. These glasses also monitor speed, heart rate, and distance traveled, which can earn you credits to be used in local stores as a currency.

REVERSE HEALTHCARE
Doctors’ offices and hospitals report a decrease in obesity and other diseases. Since environmental factors, work structures, and the built environment have improved, the healthcare system works with a reverse set up where doctors are paid for keeping their patients healthy rather than just treating illnesses. Different schools of thought co-exist and mental health care is completely integrated with regular treatments.

ENTREPRENEURIAL SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability is front and center across different industries and cities are developing goods such as clothing with locally sourced materials as much as possible. Processes are being simplified allowing individuals to do it themselves and dramatically drop the need for factories. Automation and robotics have enhanced delivery mechanisms connecting these suppliers directly with the customer from delivery drones to robots to pick up stations available on every street corner.

LOCAL GOES GLOBAL AND REVERSE
The development of sustainable solutions is depending on a variety of formal and informal, local as well as geopolitical agendas and interests. Countries across the world have agreed that their cities and governments partner with private enterprises, non-profit organizations and individual citizens rather than imposing top-down solutions. The government supports privately led sustainability efforts through grants and funding to encourage utilization and scalability on a systemic level through knowledge exchanges on a global scale. Companies and citizens are protected from any liability, which ensures that services and innovation can be developed and iterated to benefit society more rapidly.

EDIBLE BUILDING MATERIALS
All buildings have already been converted to being sustainable, net zero, and outfitted with solar panels, harvesting wind or water energy. Active testing of new energy sources and building materials is at the heart of promoting sustainable living concepts. New developments are now built as passive neighborhoods and constructed only with recycled or biodegradable materials, which has led citizens to experiment within local labs and develop new testing environments for materials.

COMMUNITY SERVICE FOR ALL
Every two months the community comes together to clean the public spaces of the city. From landscaping and maintaining green spaces to picking up trash it is expected that every citizen contributes and thus identifies with their living environment. There is a broad system of services people can provide for the community, all of which encourage getting to know each other and to collaborate.

SOCIAL IMPACT EDUCATION
Universities and colleges are offering hybrid and remote options as a standard practice. City and middle spaces serve as an opportunity to congregate and collaborate in person on projects on real local challenges and with local organizations. University campuses are decentralized and offer classrooms everywhere. K-12 schools remain localized and also offer hybrid options to shift towards a more meaningful applied learning model with project-based education tackling local challenges for civic and social impact rather than simply delivering knowledge. Higher Education is made available for all at no or very low cost.

Technology is present in all aspects of life, personal affairs, work and business as well as politics creating an inclusive environment. The entire globe has access to free internet regardless of income, religion or social affiliation, removing disadvantages of rural or remote areas. Companies and citizen organizations are one and the same distributing new developments evenly. Government is furnished by networks of people and require each business to spend 20% of their revenue towards local and global issues. Instead of leisure being at the forefront of everybody’s aspirations, purpose is the driver of all activities.

Digital innovation to track and collect data points is widespread from wearing personal devices to embedded artificial intelligence in public spaces such as pathways for bikes or pedestrians, in building materials to feed information back to the building’s nerve center, and in locations frequented by citizens to travel, shop, work, or simply engage with each other. The pervasive use of AI is creating hyper-responsive and transformable environments depending on demographics and quantity of citizens present at any given time. In addition, health data can easily be aggregated leading to early detection of citizens carrying contagious diseases, inhaling polluted air or ingesting contaminated water. This provides opportunities for rapid activation of coordinated municipal or city-wide responses.

While digital enhancements are creating a democratization of engagement, they also are increasing concerns about privacy and ethics resulting in discussions and constant negotiation as new technologies are being released.

This can be observed in several areas:

HYPER-RESPONSIVE + TRANSFORMABLE ENVIRONMENTS
Artificial Intelligence is transcending everyday life. Streets and bike lanes work with embedded sensors collecting traffic data, health stats of people utilizing streets, bike lanes, walkways and capture last visited locations to determine movement patterns and type of transportation. Green spaces feature integrated technology responding to quantity and demographic usage. Steps transform into ramps, if senior citizens or individuals in wheelchairs are being detected. Walkways turn into trampolines once kids are in close vicinity.

TECHNOLOGY AS EQUALIZER
Governments and companies are working together to provide citizens with the most up-to-date technology for free in regular update cycles. This provides every citizen with the necessary technology to interact and communicate with one another and removes technology from a status symbol to an essential tool to navigate life and work while democratizing the playing field.

DETECTING PATTERNS
Companies are collecting data usage of their products identifying how many strollers, bikes, cars of a certain brand are being used. The kind of sneakers being worn by what demographic and in which parts of the city leads to adjustments of brand positioning. Shopping patterns are being recorded and inform about which demographic or neighborhood is seeking specific services or products, which can lead to conclusions around civic unrest, natural disasters, health issues, or an impending economic crisis.

“GLASS CITIZEN”
Since technology is so pervasive, governments and companies can control and track their citizens. This can pose not only a serious cyber threat on a systems level, but also creates a “glass citizen”. Personal data and information is easily accessible and various personal and public devices and technologies interact with each other 24/7. Ethical issues become more apparent and challenging to balance with the need to stay proactive in the event of major disasters or impeding crisis.

DYNAMIC LIVING ENVIRONMENT
Private homes are defined by spaces that dynamically change depending on how they are used over the course of day and night and the patterns of their users. Fold away furniture and sliding walls offer flexibility and a customizable set of spaces for life and work. Lighting and temperature regulation react to the users present and their preferences creating individual zones. Houses are self-cleaning and self-disinfecting through UV lights, robotic cleaners reacting to sensors and working as needed. Technology is used to create a clean and natural home environment. Use data including movement patters (which connect to health data) are used to constantly refine performance and comfort provided.

CONNECTED HEALTH MONITORING
Technology has completely deleted the necessity of touching any surfaces or products in the public realm, office buildings, stores, hospitals and nursing homes changing the way we interact with each other and with our environment. People are more antisocial due to less physical interaction and connections being facilitated often through virtual means only. Depression has become a major issue among citizens of all ages. Every household has a personal health robot connected to primary care and specialist offices. Unless a person has a serious illness, it is entirely obsolete to visit doctor’s offices.

GLOBAL OFFICE

The virtual world meshes time and space shifting work significantly. People walk around their global virtual office either from home or their physical local office space stopping by the desk of a colleague in Australia, Europe or Afrika and seamlessly interacting with one another. Virtual reality paired with new AI technologies is the forefront of human sociability, virtual interactions for all purposes are the new normal.

FOCUS ON HUMAN SUPERPOWER
For the last few decades, careers have been focused on the idea of ‘doing’, if you’re not doing something constructive, regardless of the field, then you are failing at life. Automation will cause to shift from the ‘doing’ mentality to one that focuses on thinking instead. Cerebral pursuits will become the norm and will change the way we work and the way we build our careers. As automation and optimization become more prevalent, competencies and skills unique to being human will become more valuable.

INTERCONNECTED EDUCATION
With the ability to access education everywhere and anytime, students can now engage across the world. There is no point to enroll in one single university. Universities have formed massive coalitions, where a university’s survival is contingent on how many students they recruit into the system, how many of their faculty connect with others, how meaningfully they integrate diverse world-wide knowledge, and how many impact points they score. Universities are closely tied to business and industry, embedding practitioners and sharing projects. Not one professor teaches a class, but a fleet of experts across the world are participating virtually to discuss specific subjects.

CONTINUOUS MOBILITY
Autonomous cars and trolley-type vehicles roam constantly up and down each street within a city, which eliminates taxis or the need for any type of public transportation schedule. Magic carpets exist around dense city blocks and in city centers. Smaller electric vehicles are in docking stations all over the city and can be checked out anytime.

The most uncertain and most impactful drivers aggregated out of the multiple scenarios, student teams generated were the following driving forces:

1 RELIANCE
[Human Centered <> Technology Driven]
The 2020 COVID-19 crisis has challenged our known patterns and structures of living and working that we used to rely on. Forced isolation made clear that depending too much on externally driven services and interaction points may become a challenge in a time of need. On the one side advocating for and relying on self, family, friends, and immediate community may produce solutions that would juxtapose an entirely technology driven approach, where our actions, interactions, attitudes, and behaviors are informed and shaped through technology.

2 SUSTAINABILITY
[Decentralized <> Re-invented Center]
A decentralization of living and working environments as well as services is deeply rooted in the notion of place making wherever we are. As residential neighborhoods become workplaces, new uses need to be considered for the urban areas formerly filled with office uses–now free for cultural, retail, residential programming.” Multiple additional drivers are contributing to future developments. The most relevant contributing ones were digital innovation, healthcare, economics, social engagement, and globalization.