Trends and countertrends: Where are we going?

We approach the end of the first quarter of the 20th century amid confusion and chaos. Wars, climate change, political fragmentation, runaway inflation—how do we make sense of a world that has increasingly become uncertain? How do we build for the future if navigating it is daunting enough?

In our desire to make sense of an increasingly complex world, we seek patterns and clues that may help sieve meaning behind the noise and clutter and get some insights as to where we’re headed.

There are a few emerging trends that can serve as guideposts in navigating the future. Many of these are nested within larger meta trends and entrenched realities. These realities include urbanization, climate change, and technological advancement. Within these are shifting trends, some incipient micro trends, while others are more evident and almost inevitable mega trends (such as AI).

There are also countervailing trends that oppose these emergent patterns. Some trends may never make it to the mainstream, but whatever will prevail will be the ones that will be potentially transformative. How can the built environment harness these trends to adapt society to these shifting tides? We enumerate a few of these trends here. Our list is not exhaustive nor representative of the most important trends that could affect the physical environment. These serve more as highlights, offering a glimpse of what may be possible during these turbulent times.

Urbanization, the aging metropolis, the Gen Z countertrend

Demographic shifts have a tremendous impact on the shape and form of cities and societies. As more and more of the world’s population become city-zens, micro trends have been evident concurrent with increasing urbanization. The global population is estimated to grow by another 1.5 billion people in 25 years, reaching 9.7 billion.

Most of that increase will happen in developing nations. Advanced economies, with their slower or declining population growth rates, will increasingly have an aging population. This is a trend that will persist into the future. The Philippines continues to have a positive population growth rate with a relatively younger population, which economists call the demographic sweet spot where the high proportion of working-age population will yield economic dividends for the country.

A closer look at our urban population, however, shows a less robust demographic growth. NCR population growth is at 0.97 percent compared to 1.5 percent at the national level. The declining population growth has been evident since the 1960s. The relationship between reduced fertility rates and smaller family sizes in urban areas has been long established. The decreasing rates of registered live births in NCR over the past years point to a gradual aging of the NCR population, even while urbanization rates continue to rise.

Concurrent with the imminent aging of the metropolitan population is the growth of the Gen Z population. This generation, born between 1997 and 2012, is now coming of age with many now joining the workforce. This cohort is considered as the largest demographic segment on earth, representing 32 percent of global population. In the Philippines, the Gen Zs represent an even higher 38 percent of our total population.

This generation is digitally savvy, socially aware, environmentally conscious, highly mobile, and has spent a significant amount of their years during the pandemic lockdown. They have unique consumption patterns, and most will be of home-buying age in a few years. How this generation will influence property development is something to be anticipated.

Climate change, the necessary transformation of the built environment

The reality of climate change can no longer be denied with the frequency of extreme weather events occurring globally. The trend is no longer about how climate is changing but about how quickly societies can adapt to it. Already, many architects, planners, and even ordinary citizens have tried to rise to the challenge, making bold proposals to transform cities into more resilient environments.

Among these are proposals to respond to urban flooding. Pioneered in China by architect Kongjian Yu is the Sponge City concept, where instead of channeling storm water through conventional engineering, a more nature-based solution is applied. In his concept, large urban areas are kept open to allow flood waters to be detained, absorbed by the ground, and released slowly to the natural bodies of water. This would allow numerous benefits apart from managing floods including reintroducing bio-habitats, creating recreational outdoor spaces, reducing urban heat island and carbon sequestration. This concept is part of a broader sustainability trend called urban renaturing. The idea is to bring nature back into city environments and restore natural ecosystems.

For established cities, more tactical approaches have been initiated by citizens themselves. These range from urban de-paving to re-imagining streets. In the former, hard and impervious surfaces such as parking lots within the city are torn up to create pockets for native landscape to be re-established, enabling urban biodiversity. In the latter, streets that would otherwise be devoted to vehicles are reclaimed by residents and converted into people-places where neighbors can converge, children can play, community art can flourish, and small businesses can thrive.

These tactical efforts are often citizen-led and thus strengthen community bonds. They emerge from an increasing awareness and need for people- and nature-oriented solutions and challenge our conventional norms about the city.

The countertrend to all to these ideas, quite sadly, is the tendency toward business-as-usual. Despite the overwhelming evidence of sea-level rise and global warming, advanced economies and wealthy corporations who are in the best position to avert catastrophic crisis remain reluctant to initiate widespread change.

Technological disruptions in energy, digital spheres

Technological advancement often drives significant transformations in the shape and form of cities. For instance, the invention of the internal combustion engine 100 years ago transformed the concept of mobility and led to ever larger conurbations of urban areas. At present, technological advancement in the energy and digital spheres are potentially the most transformative and significant.

Our dependence on fossil fuels, while enabling industrialization and wealth creation, also brought about our present climate crisis. History shows that major societal upheavals coincide with developments in energy capture. Prehistoric hunters and foragers had limited energy capture, hence limited social structure and economic development. Those tribal societies were able to breach their energy capture ceiling with the development of agriculture, thus enabling surplus energy production which led to more complex social organization. At some point, even agrarian societies hit an energy ceiling until fossil fuel was used, which enabled industrialization and the complex global economy we have today.

At present, we may be facing another ceiling in our energy capture. The adoption of alternative and revolutionary energy forms may allow the necessary transformative change that society needs. Already, the use of renewable energy such as solar and wind power is gaining widespread use. But the more promising areas of nuclear fusion and hydrogen power generation may hold the key to clean and cheap energy which can bring society to the next level of economic and social development.

Lastly, digital technology, and more specifically Artificial Intelligence. is now more than just a trend and has seemingly evolved to be an unstoppable force that has far-reaching implications for the whole of humanity. How we are to adapt to this evolving technological space is still largely unknown. What counters the digital disruption trend is its tremendous demand for energy and water during a time of scarcity for both resources. This puts AI development at odds with sustainability objectives. Unless AI itself is the key to unlocking near-limitless green energy capture.

The challenge of the future

The signs of the times may be turbulent and unpredictable, but it is possible that all this chaos signals that we are at the cusp of major societal transformation. After all, crises, upheavals, and disruptions have historically marked the end of major epochs and the beginnings of new eras. Cities have proven to be among the most resilient of human inventions. Societies that have thrived through tumultuous eras were those able to adapt to changing environments and adopted new forms of technology and energy capture.

Our cities today will have to do the same, albeit as fast as the tides that shift around us. It is for this reason that human ingenuity, with a good dose of providence and the most principled of intentions, can be our guideposts for the future.

The author is a built-environment professional and the founder of JLPD, a master planning and design consultancy practice. www.jlpdstudio.com