Adobe PDF file of the Keynote slidedeck from my 22 June 2010 presentation to the Global Innovation Forum in Seoul, Korea. I was invited to speak on the future context for competitiveness in cities; I spoke last and most of the preceding speakers took a very econometric view. I wanted to emphasise that measuring and comparing competitiveness assumes a paradigm or model within which a city might be competitive -- and that economic and other paradigms might be very different across our possible futures. [Note that because it is an Adobe PDF file, it is missing some images and transitions available in the more graphically sophisticated Keyote environment.]

1. Dr. Wendy L. Schultz Future Outlook
Director, Infinite Futures
on
Principal, SAMI Consulting
Advisory Board, Shaping Tomorrow Urban
Competitiveness
Fellow, World Futures Studies Federation
Fellow, Royal Society for the Arts
Challenging
+
Complex
+
Creative
+
Courageous
=
Competitive

2. Five Key Activities
of Integrated Foresight
Identify & Critique Imagine Envision Plan &
Monitor Change Change the Possible the Preferred Implement
Identify
patterns of
Examine
primary,
Identify,
analyze, and
Identify,
analyze,
Identify
stakeholders, Integrated
change:
trends in
chosen
secondary,
tertiary
impacts;
build
alternative
images of
and
articulate
images of
resources;
clarify goals;
design
Foresight
variables, inequities in the future, preferred strategies;
changes in impacts; or futures, or organize
cycles, and differential ’scenarios.’ ’visions.’ action; create
emerging access, etc. change.
issues of
change.
Why explore possible futures?

3. Five Key Activities
of Integrated Foresight
Identify & Critique Imagine Envision Plan &
Monitor Change Change the Possible the Preferred Implement
Identify
patterns of
Examine
primary,
Identify,
analyze, and
Identify,
analyze,
Identify
stakeholders, Integrated
change:
trends in
chosen
secondary,
tertiary
impacts;
build
alternative
images of
and
articulate
images of
resources;
clarify goals;
design
Foresight
variables, inequities in the future, preferred strategies;
changes in impacts; or futures, or organize
cycles, and differential ’scenarios.’ ’visions.’ action; create
emerging access, etc. change.
issues of
change.
Why explore possible futures?

4. Because change happenz...
The original presentation featured an embedded
video of the Zurich “Change happenz” ad, which
may be found on YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ktjF2bXIo&feature=related.
This was to underscore the notion that plans rest
on assumptions and mental models, and change
renders our assumptions and mental models no
longer fit for purpose, or transforms them entirely
- as acknowledged by a major global corporation.

5. ...and fortune favours
the prepared mind.

6. ...and fortune favours
the prepared mind.

7. Noh Seung-yul, age 18.
2010 Malaysian Open Golf Champion
He’ll be 58 in 2050.
Beneficiaries.

8. There are no future facts...

9. ...and no such thing as
‘business as usual.’

10. Watersheds.

11. “3 Horizons” and Horizon Scanning
Dominance
of paradigm / worldview
STATUS QUO, MOMENTUM, INERTIA 3rd horizon
Invent, Develop, Deploy
Fading
paradigms &
technologies Research,
Demonstrate,
Disrupt
CURRENT 2nd horizon
Transition TRENDS &
paradigms & DRIVERS
technologies Envision, Explore, Embody
EMERGING
Pockets of ISSUES OF
future found CHANGE
In present 1st horizon
Time
“present” “future”
Sharpe, Hodgson, Curry

12. What are you
assuming?
10

13. Working assumptions,eg:
1. Agricultural land only contributes 2.8% to
South Korea’s GDP;
2. Patterns of housing and standards of living
remain essentially the same or improve;
3. Globalization and its advantages continue;
4. Human values hardwired into us as social
primates; and
5. Most significant market actions are human.

14. 2050 possibilities
suggested by scanning:
1. In 2050, agricultural land contributes
SIGNIFICANTLY more to the South Korean economy;
2. In 2050, houses / housing developments take up
CONSIDERABLY more space;
3. By 2050, the era of cheap-transport-derived
globalization advantages is long gone;
4. In 2050, we are not your grandfather’s primates;
5. In 2050, the internet will be smarter than we are: by
2018, the internet will have a million times as many
nodes as the human brain, and it will have senses, courtesy
of the cameras and microphones and compasses and
accelerometers built into our cell-phones, not to
mention the internet of things...

15. Future
Cities:
Images and
Designs

16. Future
Cities:
Images and
Designs

17. The End of the World as We Know It
Life / Culture / Discovery /
Origin Global Warming Global Cooling
Demography Society Innovation
Fire Fade
Decreasing stability Accelerating change;
Desertification; slow and security locally nano-bio-info-cogno
End of interglacial, Slow decline in
Gradual sea-level rise; aquifer and internationally as convergence; ability
transition to fertility worldwide
Changes intrusion; agricultural people compete for to manipulate
glaciation. followed by global
decline. scarce resources. “nature” / ourselves.
population decline.
Flood Meltdown Sustain
New “little ice age,” Famine: starvation;
Singularity: radical
Increased sea melt, generated by, eg, depressed immune Mass civil unrest and
innovation feedback
Abrupt partial collapse of increased volcanic systems; resistant border / regional
blows away human /
Changes the West Antarctic dust and/or shifts in infectious agents and conflicts; failed states
machine /natural
Ice Shelf: sea level Gulf Stream. zoogenesis. explode.
boundaries.
rises 1 metre.
Ice Plague Blowup Transform
Warlord deploys Discovery of Grand
Asteroid strike
Wild Card / Super-volcano or Global plague: bio-WMD against Unifying Theory /
superheats Earth’s
Discontinuities Nuclear Winter population collapse. neighbouring “Theory of
atmosphere.
territory. Everything”

18. Transform: mutable cities.

19. Within thirty years, we will have
the technological means to create
superhuman intelligence.
Shortly after, the human era will
Transform be ended.
Vernor Vinge,
On the Singularity
presented at the VISION-21 Symposium
sponsored by NASA Lewis Research center and
the Ohio Aerospace Institute, 30-31 March 1993
(http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html).
In the late 21st C, the convergence of innovations in information technology, bio-
engineering, nanotechnology, and the cognitive sciences created a self-reinforcing
acceleration of transformative change. These innovations were underpinned by the
paradigm shifts emerging from complexity and chaos theory, and in turn catalysed a
state of accelerating and near-continuous transformations in worldview.
The results? a completely and continuously mutable reality -- people can bioengineer
themselves and “nature”; the human - machine interface is completely porous, with
biochips and DNA processors extending “pervasive computing” into the human body;
smart machines co-design and re-design themselves and, in concert with their post-
human partners, co-design and re-design the worlds around them. Assembly and re-
assembly at the atomic level are almost literally child’s play.
The late 21st century is also post-consumerist, post-literate, and post-Earth:
by the end of the 21st century the boundaries between producers and consumers
had been all but erased with pervasive home fabrication capability;
literacy had evolved into mediacy, and the new global pidgin owed as much to drawn from Ray Kurzweil, The
Mandarin and movies, and Hindi and high-impact role-playing games, as to Singularity is Near, 2005; Jim Dator,
English and the Latin languages. “Ubiquitous, Dream, Transformational,
the best and brightest have evolved as ‘homo stellae’, leaving the cradle of Earth, and Other Futures,” 2006.
or ‘homo oceanus’, adapted to life on and under the seas. [continued next slide]
“...technology will be the metaphorical opposable thumb that enables our next step
in evolution.” (Kurzweil)
16

20. Within thirty years, we will have
the technological means to create
superhuman intelligence.
Shortly after, the human era will
Transform be ended.
Vernor Vinge,
On the Singularity
presented at the VISION-21 Symposium
sponsored by NASA Lewis Research center and
the Ohio Aerospace Institute, 30-31 March 1993
(http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html).
By 2100, humans, and their technologies, and the environments of both, have all three
merged into the same thing. Humans, as humans, lost their monopoly on intelligence,
while new forms of artificial life and artificial intelligence emerged, eventually perhaps
to supercede humanity, while the once "natural" environments of Earth became
exercises in managed evolution that were (and are still) continuously envisioned,
designed, created and transformed first by humans and then in conjunction with our
post-human successors (paraphrased from Dator). From homo sapiens sapiens to homo
sapiens silica and homo sapiens stellae and oceanus, and bio-silica sapiens.
Lives are long, experience a currency, education continuous, production and governance
open-source and blurred between the local and global, and children few. The
population has declined and scattered, and old installations attract the idle curiosity of
nanotech-enabled amateur archaeologists of all ages. The ‘ancient world’ artifacts of
pre-singularity humanity are seen as interesting curios of species childhood. drawn from Ray Kurzweil, The
Singularity is Near, 2005; Jim Dator,
“Ubiquitous, Dream, Transformational,
and Other Futures,” 2006.
“...technology will be the metaphorical opposable thumb that enables our next step
in evolution.” (Kurzweil)
17

21. We change ourselves.

22. New territories,
layered identities.

23. Wiring Up Our Brains
• The Emotiv headset (pictured right) is the first
commercially available user interface allowing
people to control computers with their brainwaves.
• Implantable chips connecting microprocessors to
the human nervous system have been prototyped
and tested, both by Prof. Kevin Warwick at
Reading, and also via the Braingate chip, used as a
therapeutic implant for a paralyzed patient. Intel
forecasts that chips in brains will control
computers by 2020.
• This will be accelerated by the recent
announcement of the BCI (brain computer
interface) X-Prize, organized by the Singularity
University and the X-Prize Foundation.
20

24. graphics from WIRED’s “Found: Artifacts of the Future” feature.
Our belongings evolve: AI.

25. graphics from WIRED’s “Found: Artifacts of the Future” feature.
Transforming transit and transport?

26. A “SensorNet of
Things”
• Connections will multiply and create an entirely new dynamic network of
networks – an Internet of Things.
• There will be an increasing convergence of technologies whereby a
number of disparate goods and services may be coupled with IT in the
same way in which mobile phones, for example are currently capable of
taking video footage and photographs and permitting access to the Web.
• New ICTs enable 'ubiquitous computing' or 'ambient intelligence' to play
an increasing role in our lives through the use of embedded devices which
can continuously collect and process information. The devices sense
movement and monitor how individuals interact with objects such as
vehicles and domestic appliances, making it possible to 'customise' the
use of technology in the home, the workplace, and elsewhere.
• By 2036 'it is likely that the majority of the global population will find it
difficult to ‘turn the outside world off ’. ICT is likely to be so pervasive
that people are permanently connected to a network or two-way data
stream with inherent challenges to civil liberties; being disconnected
could be considered suspicious.
• Our “things” will be increasingly embedded with sensors allowing them to
monitor their own operations, need for supplies, the ambient
environment, and to connect with other appliances and devices -- and us
-- through the Internet.
23

27. 3D ‘fabbers’:
printing anything.
• Fab@Home distributes “open-hardware” plans and DIY
instructions for building simple, low-cost home “fabbers.”
Fabbers are 3D printers or prototypers. They replicate
objects from plans supplied by a computer, and can use a
variety of materials, from metal to plastic to sugar or
chocolate. It is possible not only to print 3D objects, but to
print objects with moving parts. Commercial fabbers are
also available, and prices are dropping rapidly.
• Researchers at the University of California have designed “Such devices could change
optical decoding software that is good enough to create a how we acquire common
working copy of a key by analysing a photograph of the key. products. Instead of buying an
Once the key type and code is identified, the software can iPod, you would download the
drive a key-cutting tool, creating duplicates of the original. 5 plans over the Internet and the
• The world is increasingly being recorded to high-quality fabber would make one for
digital databases; cell phone cameras are increasingly high you.”
definition. - Prof. Hod Lipson, Cornell
24

28. Fade
Fade: aging cities.

29. Fade
Fade Away: aging cities
Detroit: about 90,000 abandoned and
vacant buildings; about 30% of the city's
housing is vacant.
Flint: the original home of General
Motors, which once employed 79,000
local people but now only around 8,000;
unemployment is approaching 20%; the drawn from Patrick McIlheran, “The ruins
of Detroit,” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel,
June 15, 2010: http://www.jsonline.com/
total population has almost halved. blogs/news/93934929.html; BBC2,
“Requiem for Detroit,” http://
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rkm3y;
and Tom Leonard, “US cities may have to
be bull-dozed to survive,” Telegraph.co.uk,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/
financetopics/financialcrisis/5516536/US-
26 cities-may-have-to-be-bulldozed-in-order-
to-survive.html.

30. Fade
Pruning cities.
50 cities have been identified in a recent
study by the Brookings Institution, an
influential Washington think-tank, as
potentially needing to shrink
substantially to cope with their declining
fortunes.
Strategy: buy back vacant/abandoned drawn from Patrick McIlheran, “The ruins
of Detroit,” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel,
sites, demolish, convert to meadow, park, June 15, 2010: http://www.jsonline.com/
blogs/news/93934929.html; BBC2,
urban farms, art installations. “Requiem for Detroit,” http://
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rkm3y;
and Tom Leonard, “US cities may have to
be bull-dozed to survive,” Telegraph.co.uk,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/
financetopics/financialcrisis/5516536/US-
27 cities-may-have-to-be-bulldozed-in-order-
to-survive.html.

31. Fade
excerpted from RE-BURBIA design contest
organized by Inhabitat and Dwell, http://
www.re-burbia.com/.
Recycling suburbs:
re-thinking middle class sprawl.

32. Fade
excerpted from RE-BURBIA design contest
organized by Inhabitat and Dwell, http://
www.re-burbia.com/.
Recycling suburbs:
re-thinking middle class sprawl.

33. Fade
excerpted from RE-BURBIA design contest
organized by Inhabitat and Dwell, http://
www.re-burbia.com/.
Recycling suburbs:
re-thinking middle class sprawl.

34. Fade
excerpted from RE-BURBIA design contest
organized by Inhabitat and Dwell, http://
www.re-burbia.com/.
Recycling suburbs:
re-thinking middle class sprawl.

35. Fade
excerpted from RE-BURBIA design contest
organized by Inhabitat and Dwell, http://
www.re-burbia.com/.
Recycling suburbs:
re-thinking middle class sprawl.

36. Fade
drawn from BLDGBLOG, “Crypto-forestry
and the return of the repressed,” http://
bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/crypto-
forestry-and-return-of-repressed.html;
photo: from personal library: plants reclaim
building in the Indian quarter of Singapore.
Urban crypto-forests:
Nature moves back.

37. Sustain
Sustain: parsimonious cities.

38. Sustain
graphics from WIRED’s “Found: Artifacts of the Future” feature.
We change where we live.

39. Transforming Food
Dominance
Sustain
of paradigm / worldview
commercial intensified agriculture vs.
organic artisanal agriculture
Fading 3rd horizon
paradigms &
technologies
Transition hydroponics and
“Cornucopia”
paradigms & aeroponics
food printer
technologies 2nd horizon
Pockets of
future found
cloned-tissue meat production 1st horizon
In present vs. tourist ‘art’ cattle
Time
“present” “future”

40. Transforming Food
• “Cornucopia” food
• Aeroponics: NASA printer - MIT student
developed, now small- design: extrudes
scale products and favourite ingredients
large-scale research / and then heats or
design centers cools as appropriate.
• Constraints: costs of
infrastructure
• Paradigm shift: from
earth to Spaceship Earth
• In-vitro meat: PETA has
offered a $1 mn “X-
Prize” for science team
that develops
commercially viable
process
• Constraints: social
attitudes re: natural
foods - snobbery /
luxury backlash
• Paradigm shift: from
natural to biodesigned

41. Blurring the Urban and Rural
Dominance
Sustain
of paradigm / worldview
urban-rural
agricultural divide
Fading 3rd horizon
paradigms &
technologies
Transition
urban agriculture &
paradigms &
vertical agriculture;
technologies
vertical ecologies; 2nd horizon
and ‘pooktre’
Pockets of
future found natural systems agriculture:
melding ecology and agronomy 1st horizon
In present
Time
“present” “future”

42. Blurring the Urban and Rural
• Vertical Farm research centre attracting both professionals and students of design
•Constraints: costs of new installations - finding investors; regulations; retrofitting costs
• Land Institute: creating prairie-
like perennial agriculture
• Constraints: in development
• Paradigm shift: biomimicry

43. A “PowerNet of
Things”
Power generation capability built into
everything:
small gadgets: solar rechargers
houses / residences: solar, wind, and piezo-electric
clothing and floors: piezo-electric (pressure) rechargers
infrastructure: desalination plants are also power plants
roadways: piezo-electric and solar generation
Power stored, recycled, sold on:
Extra energy can be ‘stored’ as hydrogen via chemical
process similar to photosynthesis
Closes loop to create viable hydrogen / fuel cell economy
Sustain
36

44. Biomimicry: designing from nature
Scientists, engineers and designers
increasingly innovate by studying
nature’s efficiencies, following Zimbabwe office
complex air
these rules of thumb: conditioning
modeled on air flow
– Nature runs on sunlight; within termite
mound.
– Nature uses only the energy it needs;
– Nature fits form to function;
– Nature recycles everything; Self-cleaning fabrics and glass
modeled on surface structure
– Nature rewards cooperation; of a lotus leaf.
– Nature banks on diversity;
– Nature demands local expertise;
– Nature curbs excess from within;
– Nature taps the power of limits.
What would your city look like if planned by these rules?
Sustain

45. Economic models change.

46. ‘For now, the amounts [of
Growth of local currency] in circulation
are minuscule. Most are a
gesture of defiance against
globalisation by encouraging
New Currencies local commerce rather than a
rigorous economic
experiment. But there may be
more converts if monetary
policy eventually runs out of
road.’
• The New Economics Foundation recently argued that in – The Economist
the long term we ‘need to re-link our money system and
currencies to local and regional economies, so that if the
national (or even international) currency collapses, others
will continue to enable people to conduct economic
exchange’. Bernard Lietaer cites the example of the Swiss
WIR B2B model, which has been proven to act as a
‘significant counter-cyclical stabilizing factor’.
• In the UK, 30,000 ‘Lewes Pounds’ have been issued since
the local currency was launched in Lewes, East Sussex, in
September 2008; in Detroit ‘Detroit Cheers’ have been
used in an attempt to reinvigorate downtown areas.
• Digital currencies also generate economic growth: Second
Life’s Linden dollars have fueled an economy robust
enough to create real-world millionaires
39

47. Crowdsourced: Credit, Investment, Philanthropy
Dominance
of paradigm / worldview
captains of industry,
dragons’ dens, angel
investors
Fading 3rd horizon
Everyone’s
paradigms & a vendor:
technologies Square
Grameen Bank
microcredit;
Transition
Zopa person-to-
paradigms &
person lending;
technologies
‘crowd-funding’, 2nd horizon
eg, “Diaspora”
Pockets of
future found • Constraints: momentum/inertia of current investment
systems and traditional approaches 1st horizon
In present • Paradigm shift: from top-down to networked/dispersed
“present” “future” Time

48. ‘Lease, don’t own’: Community Ownership
• The general shift from commerce dominated by products to a service-based
economy is starting to affect the possession and use of goods. It is increasingly
common for tangible or intangible goods to be accessed for a short period of
time on a licensed basis, as if they were an externally-held service.
• Examples: Zipcar, USA and London; Windcar, Japan. About two thirds of
Zipcar's members are under 35 and based on survey data, the company says
that more than 40 percent of Zipcar users either sell their car or decide not to
buy one.
• Such leasing arrangements could expand until nearly all fixed assets could in
principle be leased to business and consumers rather than be owned by them.
• Leasing and short-term access models have grown for entertainment (e.g.
iTunes, Spotify, Lovefilm). ‘Lease, don’t own’ models may expand to other
areas of life, and more companies may become involved in financing leases.
Participation in car sharing Sources: Foresight/GOS (2009) Sigma Scan (270);
DFT (2008) Public experiences of car sharing
by age, UK

49. Will your city be competitive?

50. Emerging patterns
of leverage:
Printing From economies
Everything of scale...
Printing electronics to economies of
Printing 3D objects grid
Printing food
Printing organic tissue
Each home a
micro-state /
Nets of Everything
economy.
Internet of things
Sensornet of things Parsimony:
Powernet of things sustainability as
Blur elegant design
43

51. Just one more thing...

52. Just one more thing... Surprises.

53. The future will be framed by how we answer
five fundamental questions:
DEFINE: What new concepts, ideas, and
paradigms will emerge to help us make sense
of the world?
RELATE: How will we live together on planet
Earth?
CONNECT: What arts and technologies will
we use to connect people, places, and things?
CREATE: As human beings what will we be
inspired to create?
CONSUME: How will we use the earth’s
resources?
Michele Bowman and Kaipo Lum
How do we create competitive
cities for the future?

54. Challenging
+
Complex
+
Creative
+
Courageous
=
Observe.
Competitive
Explore ahead.
Challenge assumptions.

55. Dr. Wendy L. Schultz
Infinite Futures:
foresight research and training
Oxford, England
http:// www.infinitefutures.com
Thank you.