What’s not going to change (in cities) in the next 10 years?

“What’s not going to change in the next 10 years? And I submit to you that that question is actually more important than asking what will change — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.”

That insight from Jeff Bezos is important for founders to consider when building products and picking markets. It seems particularly relevant in the urban / govtech space right now. All we hear about is what’s going to change; no one will drive, everything will be monitored, the coast will be swallowed by rising tides. Those, and other predictions, may end up being true, but is there anything that won’t change over the next 10 years? What do we know, with certainty, will be true in cities a decade from now?

I submit the following list of things I believe will absolutely be true in a decade when it comes to cities. There is intentional vagueness in these statements (i.e. #1), and the most vague will likely be areas that present the best business opportunities.

1. People will need to get from Point A to Point B. Cities will be the primary facilitators of this movement.
2. Cities will need to understand and monitor how people get from point A to point B in order to provide the necessary infrastructure.
3. Cities will continue to borrow against their future in order to pay for this needed infrastructure.
4. Cities will be using outdated technology and people will complain about it. The outdated, legacy systems will just happen to be what is currently considered innovative.
5. People will need places to live, work, and play.
6. People will continue to have children and those children will need to be educated.
7. People will still buy things and at least some of that will happen in physical stores.
8. New forms of mobility will continue to be introduced and most will die after brief hype cycles.
9. Cities will continue long-range planning excercises despite their empirical ineffectiveness.
10. Representative democracy will still exist (in U.S.) and local politics will still drive key decisions.

It’s more fun to predict what won’t be the same, but likely more critical to consider what will stand the test of time. What is something you believe will absolutely be true in cities in 10 years?

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