Foresight

The role of future ICT in city development

Ian Pearson
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Ian Pearson, (2006),"The role of future ICT in city development", Foresight, Vol. 8 Iss 3 pp. 3 - 16
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 The role of future ICT in city development
Ian Pearson

Ian Pearson is based at BT, Abstract

Ipswich, UK. Purpose The purpose of this article is to explore the role of information and communications technologies
(ICT) in creating cities that are attractive, healthy and prosperous places to live, work and visit.
Design/methodology/approach Considers technological developments in information and
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communications technologies in the short- and medium-term and their application in the urban
environment.
Findings IT is developing faster than ever and will be a useful tool in the redevelopment of cities.
Short-term developments such as wireless LANs may be unglamorous but have large potential for
opening up new areas of opportunities, both in social and business uses. In the mid-term, these
networks will combine with ambient intelligence to make a smart digital air overlay, making every part of
a city electronically enabled. The result will be big improvement in public transport and city architecture.
Other IT developments will improve health, governance and security. If managed well, future urban
society will be happier, less lonely, more prosperous, healthier and more involved in decision making.
Originality/value Offers a personal view of the ways in which advances in information technologies
can make a positive contribution to urban environments over the next ten to 15 years.
Keywords Communication technologies, Cities
Paper type Viewpoint

Introduction
Cities are a combination of various physical infrastructures, and a wide variety of very
diverse communities that inhabit and use them. There is no common factor among the
resident people and businesses in a large city other than that they share the same physical
environment, but a healthy city will foster synergistic relationships between businesses,
encouraging inter-working in business parks, and supporting developments that provide for
the special needs of particular communities. Urban infrastructure therefore must cater for a
wide range of needs, fairly balancing the allocation of finite resources to meet these needs
across the whole community, and all the while trying to ensure continuing well-being by
looking to the future too. If a city is to flourish, it must provide not only for present needs but
also encourage front line businesses to locate there, enable existing businesses to expand
into new areas, and attract people and resources to the city.
This article considers the part that information technology can play in maintaining the
well-being of a city and ensuring its healthy development into an even more attractive and
prosperous place to live, work and visit.

Near future, 0-5 years

Any modern city requires modern IT infrastructure to support its businesses. Today, that
means a large installed base of fiber networks, mobile telecoms infrastructure, universal
broadband access across PSTN or cable networks, and of course a ready supply of support
businesses across the whole IT sector that can set up and maintain all aspects of IT

DOI 10.1108/14636680610668036 VOL. 8 NO. 3 2006, pp. 3-16, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1463-6689 j foresight j PAGE 3
 provision. Without a good IT infrastructure a city simply cannot compete in the modern world.
The same is true of any significantly large area of a city. People will avoid setting up
companies there if there is inadequate IT infrastructural and service provision. The IT
community is also a significant part of the modern business population of any city as well as
support for other sectors. Of course other areas such as good public transport, roads, refuse
collection, energy and other public services must be high quality too, and many of these will
use IT to improve their efficiency too.

Wireless LANs
One of the areas expanding fastest at the moment is the spread of wireless LANs. These are
extensively used internally within companies and homes already, and the number of public
access wireless LANs is increasing rapidly too, especially in rail stations and airports, even
in coffee shops. This will continue for some time until most of the urban area is covered by
wireless LANs. A new generation of telephone is capable of using voice over the internet
(VoIP), to give low-cost calls without the direct use of a computer. BTs Fusion product is a
new type of phone that uses Bluetooth to wirelessly connect to a fixed line when it is within
range, and when it moves outside of that range, it will seamlessly switch over to the mobile
phone networks. This phone will be followed in due course by a phone that will access
wireless LANs of the 802.11 series. This convergence between the fixed and mobile
networks is called fixed-mobile convergence. It will be accompanied by a convergence of
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the fixed networks with the internet as BTs twenty-first century network rolls out, which will
use internet protocol across all parts of the fixed network. One of the results of this
convergence will be a much more seamless integration of voice and data, fixed and mobile,
telephone and PC. Users care little about technology per se, but the effect will be the ability
to access any kind of service anywhere at high speed with the minimum of fuss. It can also
mean much cheaper calls when people are within a wireless LAN overlay area. But the main
advantage of wireless LANs is that they give wireless access to the internet, and the
enormous range of services connected to it.
Wireless LANs are thus an important step in the realization of a city where key services are
available anywhere at high speed.
Engineers who design technology are not always good at working out what society will do
with it. Many of the most widespread or innovative uses are created by ordinary members of
the public. Anyone can have an idea, and if they have reasonable technology skills
themselves or know someone that does, they can create and implement a new idea very
quickly, and change society. Social groups, clubs and societies or niche industries can often
start off a new craze or a more persistent activity. These may overtake the anticipated value
of a service, much as text messaging has become the biggest money-spinner for mobile
network operators.
What engineers can do is to encourage such public creativity by making platforms on which
services can be built easily. In the case of wireless LANs, this is very simple. The LAN itself is
a sufficient platform provided that it covers the right geographic area, with enough
bandwidth (the amount of simultaneous capacity that the LAN can offer). The degree of
openness is entirely user configurable. Wireless LANs can be made available to a single
individual, or absolutely anyone, a select group, or to subscribers. Airports and rail stations
often offer wireless LAN coverage to good effect, normally on a commercial basis, but the
access fees can be quite high. In an urban community support role, such high fees would be
a strong deterrent. If a LAN is provided by a city council, as a free public benefit, this could
be used by a range of social and community groups in support of their activities. It allows
them to communicate with each other, providing access to their web sites at high speed
within the LAN coverage area via laptops or PDAs, or future mobile phones. This type of
access already exists. But potential uses are evolving quickly now with improving
bandwidths and now that more devices have wireless LAN access capability.
One exciting potential development is in linking wireless LAN capability to positioning
information from new navigation devices or mobile phones. This makes a simple wireless
LAN into a smart electronic overlay on the geographic environment. Depending on the

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PAGE 4 foresight VOL. 8 NO. 3 2006
 location this could provide shopping assistance and adverts, cultural overlay (e.g.
electronically mediated tours), tourist information or business support services. Types of
overlay can be as varied as imagination. Much of the hype surrounding third generation
mobile (3G) arose from the potential uses of the positioning information that 3G provides.
With ongoing integration of 3G with wireless LANs, this information will be available to PDAs
and laptops accessing LAN overlays. Personal navigation systems will gradually integrate
better with road traffic information systems to give real-time navigation around town that
adjusts to current traffic loading and bottlenecks. For pedestrians, they can show what is
available in the nearby urban area, and could show scenic routes rather than necessarily the
fastest. Media Lab Europe (now closed) developed a prototype of a system called
Walk-time, which shows a map of the local area showing points of interest, with an indication
of how long it would take to walk to any location. So there will be a variety of ways of getting
hold of information associated with geographic locations, buildings or other facilities.
The portable terminal that people use today already combines a multitude of functions, but
the list will continue to increase (Figure 1). The portable in a few years time will do almost
everything that IT can do. It is akin to the late Douglas Adams creation, The Hitchhikers
Guide to the Galaxy.
When people are at a location, wireless LAN overlays can provide any type of information
that can be stored on a database or web site. This can be made fully context sensitive.
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Context is one of the hottest current IT development areas, and is basically about making
sure people get the information appropriate to them given their current preferences,
circumstances and location. So one person might be fed an alert about a new exhibition in a
nearby gallery, while someone else might be shown details of a charming restaurant just
around the corner, or that a no. 6 bus is just about to arrive. In a few cities around Europe
already, local residents have taken it on themselves to broadcast their web sites into the
nearby air space, so that people walking past their homes can see their works of art, read
their poetry, or whatever. Shops can similarly broadcast their web sites so that people could
shop electronically to beat queues in the shop itself and get access to special offers, while
reducing costs for the shop. This could be integrated with home delivery of course, so that
such shoppers could access anything from the chain, not just what is available today in the
local store. Or using the positioning systems, a smart PDA can become and electronic
shopping assistant, helping shoppers navigate through stores and advising them on where
the best offers are for what they need.
Tourist information is obviously a useful service to provide over wireless LANs. Given the
location of some tourist destinations, they may not be included in the normal urban wireless
map. It may therefore be appropriate to have tourist information beacons at some places.

Figure 1 The future portable

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 These could offer a local wireless LAN, or Bluetooth, but may also have USB or infrared ports
too so that people can easily connect to them by a range of mechanisms. Tourists could thus
download electronic guides, which could be fully interactive and position sensitive.
Even public meetings or demonstrations could benefit from wireless LANs. Within a building
such as a council building or conference room, visitors could read documents made
available to them via the LAN, or check out facts on the internet to enrich the debate.
Leaders of particular groups in the audience could communicate in real time with their
members distributed throughout the room via instant messaging. And of course, the same
would apply to open-air meetings within the coverage are of the LAN.
A lot of the services appropriate to wireless LANs are also suited to provision via 3G. The
main differences are that 3G is generally associated with small display size, and data
downloads would be more expensive.

Community networks
Community networks are one of the most promising developments on the internet. When
local clubs and societies hold meetings, there are always people who would like to attend
but cannot. But if meetings are broadcast on the net using web cams, anyone (with
password-based access if necessary) can access the meeting from anywhere in the world.
They can also participate by text messaging, e-mail, instant messaging, videoconferencing
or audioconferencing. The community network can provide access to local government too,
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allowing anyone to be tele-present at a council debate. By opening up access to the whole

community, rather than just those who are readily mobile, community networks can make for
a fairer society. Encouraging involvement in local politics by making debates available
on-line can only be a good thing. Even theatres can benefit by putting their productions
on-line. People from other towns and cities may visit on-line, perhaps even paying a fee. This
is a form of cultural export that advertises the merits of a city, bringing in business and
tourism.
A well-designed and supported community network can also provide chat rooms, social
support services, local information, host sites for local clubs and societies, and so on. Most
councils already provide lots of information to their community in this way, but there is always
room for improvement in broadening access and awareness. There is little point in having
first class services on-line if few people know they exist. It is well worth councils subsiding
such services so that everyone can afford access. Access to high-speed networks is quickly
becoming a necessity for modern living, so not having such access is a big disadvantage. In
the interests of avoiding haves and have-nots, councils can provide community networks to
all, if necessary subsiding infrastructure in poorer areas.
And of course, at least some of these services are useful to people on the move, so would
benefit from wireless access via LANs or 3G.
At village or estate level, community networks can provide a means to link cameras and
other sensors together into a neighborhood watch system. The ability now to automatically
detect and recognize car number plates allows communities to log traffic in and out of their
area, helping to control crime, especially in conjunction with ubiquitous video cameras.

Mid-term future, five to ten years

In the short term, many new technologies such as electronic paper, the semantic web,
flexible displays, storage-based nets, symbiotic nets, and various incremental advances in
terminals will also reach the marketplace, but they probably will not have reached sufficient
penetration to have any dramatic influence on urban development. In the mid-term future
they might well have significant impact.

Ambient intelligence
The wireless and community network technologies outlined above will still be around, but as
other technologies develop in parallel, they will evolve into parts of much more useful
systems. Perhaps the most significant development will be the growth of ambient

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 intelligence, also known as pervasive ICT, pervasive computing or chips everywhere. This
will use microelectronic technology such as sensors, communicators, storage and
processor chips all over the urban environment (Figure 2).
These chips will monitor what is going on and bring useful information to everyone. The key
common factor is that ambient intelligent systems put people and peoples needs right at the
center of the design, rather than making technology and then trying to find a market for it.
The technology is also largely invisible, only becoming apparent when it needs to. A good
early example is a gadget that BT has designed which glows and is an attractive part of the
household ornamentation. When an e-mail or voice message comes in, it simply changes
color and makes a pleasant sound. It is much less offensive than conventional IT.

Sensor networks
Sensor networks will collect data on all manner of things, from traffic levels to air temperature
and rainfall, making it easy for someone to decide whether to go into town now or leave it until
later. Video cameras may even be able to show real time video of the situation at any location
in town. Sensors can measure almost anything, from pollen counts to UV radiation level,
pollution and noise, or the delay on accessing a web site. Networking these and making the
processed data available to residents can improve quality of life across a wide field.

Advanced public transport system

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Some cities already have bus stops that show exactly when the next bus will arrive, since
GPS systems in the buses can tell exactly where the bus is, and knowing current traffic
levels, the computer can calculate an estimated time of arrival. This data can be made
available on web sites so that people can stay at home until they need to leave to catch the
bus. This is already here today. In the mid-term future, it is expected that for some services
people will be able to place a request on a web site for the bus to stop outside their door.
Such a personalized and responsive public transport system would give mobility to a lot of
people who currently are unable to walk to a bus stop and who cannot afford regular taxi
fares. Since the community network has put everyone on-line with 24/7 access to the
internet, and its public services sites, via a simple interface, placing such requests should
be pretty simple.
It would make a lot of sense to reconfigure bus routes into a different architecture to make the
most of such promising technology. Today, buses often use very circuitous routes that take a
long time to get into town, because they have to visit many places with few buses, and need
to get reasonable occupancy on those buses. But this is inefficient and a strong deterrent to

Figure 2 Ambient intelligence

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VOL. 8 NO. 3 2006 foresight PAGE 7
 many potential bus users. If instead, small buses just made continuous loop around a village
or estate, picking up people at their homes and dropping them at a node where they can get
a big bus direct into town by a fast route, then more people would use buses because they
would be faster and they would have to walk less. This type of architecture is actually used in
some telecoms networks as an efficient mechanism for traffic routing.
Also in the mid-term, personal identity cards are expected to be deployed and even be
compulsory. The design and content of these is under discussion. It may be possible to have
a radio-frequency identity (RFID) chip included to allow remote interrogation. While there
would obviously be some issues with civil liberties and the desire to safeguard the rights of
criminals, it would certainly be technologically feasible to include a field that says whether
the card holder is known to the police as a potential mugger, sex offender, or anyone else
that would not be ideal to share a car with. If car owners and pedestrians could be sure that
someone was safe, they might be much more tempted to car share with them. Even if the ID
card does not contain this information, it would be possible for communities to set up to
positively vet their members so that members could pool cars with each other. Anyone who
becomes suspect for any reason could easily be ejected from the community. Cars
themselves are likely to have simple black boxes in this time frame too, so that the identity of
the passengers would be known. It would be possible to automatically share the costs of the
journey as well as ensure safety. In this way, private cars could become part of the public
transport infrastructure.
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Urban positioning system

The GPS system that most car navigation systems rely on uses a collection of satellites to
give positioning accuracy of a few meters. The new European positioning system, Galileo,
will have better accuracy and when combined with 3G positioning (based on triangulation
between cell phone masts) should be accurate to within 10 cm. This is more than adequate
for most purposes, but within a city, there are many places where a clear signal cannot be
obtained from satellites because they are obscured by tall buildings, the urban canyon
effect. An urban positioning system can be constructed that uses land-based beacons as
triangulation points. These beacons could simply be mobile phone masts. The new types of
mast are very small indeed, and there would be many more of them to compensate, so they
would be ideal in this capacity. There may also be some of these inside large buildings to
ensure mobile phone coverage in malls, department stores and the like. So it is reasonable
to assume we will eventually have an urban positioning system with almost total coverage
and an accuracy in the centimeter range. With this level of accuracy, a device will know not
only where it (and hence its user) is in a particular shop, but also in which department, which
shelf and which products are nearby. This extra context information is crucial to precision
marketing, especially since the shop will know exactly who the customer is because of their
loyalty card, so will have a full record of their preferences and recent purchases. And the
credit card company can also offer services to the person too in collaboration with the shop.

Digital air
Digital air is simply the realization that with accurate positioning and the knowledge of who a
person is, the air they pass through effectively becomes digitized. Personalized information
can be delivered to them that is associated with that particular location. This would be a far
more precise service than those currently available with wireless LANs. A few years ago,
Hewlett Packard demonstrated the principles in a project they called Cool Town, where
people could leave messages for their friends at particular points, such as
recommendations about where to get a good pizza. Their friends would only receive the
message if they walked through that patch of air, and nobody else would ever see it at all.
The air could be thick with virtual messages. People could also display their art works and
such to people who fitted a given set of criteria. These types of services seem attractive and
are likely to succeed as the supporting technology becomes ubiquitous. It gradually
becomes a social and cultural overlay on the air space in the city. We might imagine all kinds
of treasure hunts and urban games, as well as digital pheromones marking out gang
territories, or secret messages on buildings that mark them out as a good spot to tap into a

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PAGE 8 foresight VOL. 8 NO. 3 2006
 free wireless LAN. Many of these ideas have already been prototyped by various people,
and just need time to take off.

Dual architecture
As portable DVD players are gradually superceded in a few years by video iPods and other
hard disk or memory card video players, we are very likely to see a parallel development in
personal displays. People will have a wide choice. Already Philips have a flexible display
that is only 0.3 mm thick. Its successors may be rolled up into a tight scroll and put in a
pocket like a ball-point pen. Or they may be attached to a coat sleeve or even stuck onto a
forearm. We might even have video t-shirts! Other displays will be based on wireless
headsets. Some already exist, with quite low resolution compared to a computer monitor, but
with 300 lines or more, higher resolution than most mobile phone screens, and they are
improving all the time. These various displays will make it taken for granted to be able to
access the net and public services on the move. People will use the net everywhere they go,
it will just be a constant companion. They will feel isolated and out of touch if they cannot get
on-line.
In this world, only a few years away from today, many people will wear head-up displays as
they wander through town. Their e-mails will appear on them, along with navigational
directions and tourist information and anything else they might be interested in. Ugly people
could be digitally replaced by more attractive versions. More importantly, augmented reality
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technology will have developed substantially from today. People will naturally expect to see
buildings with dual architecture. There will still be the real physical architecture, with the
building appearance regulated by local authorities. But there will also be a
cyber-architecture, which is designed by company marketers and image consultants. This
is what people will actually see through their head-up displays. It could be personalized, so
that different people would see different versions of the same buildings. It could be a lot
more fun, with kaleidoscopic materials, or elaborate imaginary structures that could never
exist in the real world. It need have nothing in common with reality at all. It does not even
need to be constrained to the same physical dimensions. A McDonalds restaurant may be
apparent to a mother with three young kids at lunchtime because she can see Ronald
McDonald having a party in the virtual street. We will see a seamless merging of the video
games world and the real world, with all the imagination available from both domains, linked
together only by a positioning system and personal and company preferences (Figure 3).

Maturing community networks

Community networks will have developed substantially in the five to ten year time frame.
Today, many people are still novices as far as the web is concerned, and some people have
never used the net at all. But as each new computer is cheaper, but more powerful and
easier to connect, as people see more and more advantages of being on-line, they will
gradually absorb it into their everyday lives. Then with more potential customers on-line for
more of the time, the net becomes more attractive for companies to invest effort in, so their
web sites become better and they will invest more in providing faster service and better
support. And thus a virtuous circle makes the net more useful and attractive to everyone.
And it will therefore be a natural platform for people to develop their own ideas. Someone
who might be challenged in setting up a new club in the real world because of administrative
or logistical barriers, can more easily get on-line and do it there. We will thus see more social
opportunity and diversity as more clubs and societies appear. People will get more involved
with their local communities and will probably be happier as a result, meeting new friends
and having more contact with the ones they have.
Local government can certainly help these beneficial activities by providing advice and
assistance to people wanting to set them up or in advertising them, or providing the IT
resources such as server space for web sites. The rewards for the local government are a
happier population, stronger community, lower crime and reduced loneliness. These would
seem well worth the investment. In addition, a strongly IT aware population is a necessity to
provide a stream of good employees for future companies.

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VOL. 8 NO. 3 2006 foresight PAGE 9
 Figure 3 Duality
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Tackling loneliness
Loneliness itself is one of the biggest problems in any city. It appears to be a result of modern
society, notably with cars making it easier for people to have distant friends, and thus
reducing emphasis on the local street as the source of social networks for most people.
Consequently, some people, mainly the old and frail, have been disenfranchised from a
healthy social life. New technology promises to greatly reduce this problem (Figure 4). One
of the key developments is in large flat screens at low cost. These offer much bigger display
areas, but take up much less living space. Another is the rapid spread of low cost
broadband access, which will increase in data rate and probably reduce further in cost in the
next few years. People will make new friends through the web as a matter of course, in clubs
and societies that they might frequent on the community network. They will then be able to

Figure 4 Tackling loneliness

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PAGE 10 foresight VOL. 8 NO. 3 2006
 use simple webcams to hold video communications with life-sized images of their new
friends, almost as if they were in their living room. Similarly, broadband will make it easy for
them to keep in touch with their families and with friends who live far away, also using video
communications. With life-sized pictures, communication includes body language and facial
expressions, giving a much richer communication that is offered by simple voice telephony.
It will still not be as good as meeting people physically face-to-face, but will be a lot better
than not having any communication at all, which is todays usual alternative. Social services
can assist people in making friends on the network if they are not able to do it by themselves.
There already exist many software tools that can match people up with others that they are
likely to get on with. These were first used by companies such as Dateline, but are now much
more ubiquitous.
One kind of novel gadget starting to arrive in this field is the ego badge (with various other
names depending on manufacturer) (Figure 5). This stores various aspects of a persons
personality on the badge and can communicate with other peoples badges and exchange
information with them. When two people meet whose badges have agreed should be
introduced, the badges introduce them (by a sound, flashing, ringing their phones, romantic
music, whatever). This obviously has strong dating uses, but is already being used to match
business executives at conferences according to their areas of interest so as to maximize
business opportunities during networking times at conferences. In the future, many people
might use badges such as this routinely as just another way to meet interesting people.
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Some of this can be done in the short-term, but the most rapid growth is likely to be in the
mid-term future, because of the timing of the various technology platform developments.

AI
Artificial intelligence is often dismissed as bad 1980s sci-fi, but in niche areas, it is moving
ahead very rapidly. Web searches use a great deal of AI, as do web sites that allow users to
shop around, and a number of computer games such as The Sims use AI to good
advantage. Chat bots allow computers to hold fairly convincing conversations with people.
We are not far from the point where a lot of public services could be based on AI, with the
mental work being done by computer software and automated voice recognition and
synthesis as the human interface, packaged in attractive avatars (computer generated
pretend people). Again, while this is achievable in part already, in the mid-term we will see

Figure 5 Digital bubble ego badge

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VOL. 8 NO. 3 2006 foresight PAGE 11
 rapid acceleration of the use of such tools. And although this will mean that a lot of public
servant work can be done by machine, a more socially sustainable view is that such
technology up-skills people rather than down-skilling jobs, though it does both of course.
One of the key advances that will enable machines to take over a lot of administrative work is
the development of the semantic web. Other tools such as neural networks, inductive logic
programming, evolutionary programming and so on will help in the automation of large parts
of professional jobs too. There are very few areas of intellectual endeavor where computers
cannot make substantial inroads. Computers have even demonstrated good skill levels in
music and romantic novel writing, as well as making a number of patentable inventions.

Semantic web
The semantic web is the creation of Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the worldwide
web, and some other less well-known engineers. The idea is that information written for
humans can be translated into machine-readable form. Today, web sites are mostly
designed to be understood by people, and the information may be shown in a wide variety of
formats and places, often making it impossible for a computer to capture key data that is
needed for automated processing. Sites that use XML to mark data for computer processing
are the exception rather than the norm. The semantic web will allow automated interpretation
of data in a variety of different forms, even plain text, and will allow computers to understand
the information on a site, extract useful meaning from it, and use this to make decisions or
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even create new knowledge. The semantic web is already starting to make some progress,
but the main thrust will be later this year. In the few years following, we will see most web sites
starting to use this technology. Well within the five to ten year time frame, we will consider it a
fault if a web site cannot easily be processed for us by our computer. So we will be able to
easily automate tasks such as negotiating diary slots, shopping around and booking
suitable flights, arranging a hire car and booking a hotel for a trip. Many other clerical and
administrative tasks will become automatable.

Care economy
This potential displacement of people in intellectual and administrative tasks is likely to
accelerate dramatically during the five to ten year time frame. It is possible or even likely that
by 2015 we will have computers that are broadly equivalent to people in overall intelligence
terms, with some areas where they still under-perform, balanced by other areas where they
greatly out-perform humans (Figure 6).
If we do see such growth of AI, then the nature of the economy will change. If information is
cheap to create, manipulate and distribute, then it will gradually lose its place as the basis of
the economy. It will still be essential, like air, but like air it just will not cost much. The economy
is generally based on those things that people do, since people are generally the highest
cost. If robotics gradually automates physical jobs, and computers gradually automate
intellectual jobs, then what is left are those jobs that are based on core human skills,

Figure 6 Care economy

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PAGE 12 foresight VOL. 8 NO. 3 2006
 interpersonal skills, personal contact, personal services, caring, policing, teaching,
leadership and motivational skills.
This is called the care economy and it will start in earnest around 2015, though we are
already seeing rapid growth in some of these areas such as personal services. There were
few Feng Shui or lifestyle consultants a few years ago. We also see growth in personal fitness
instructors. While some of these are passing fads, others will be created to replace fads that
die out. These and other areas that nobody has even imagined yet will see creation of many
new jobs in the 2015 time frame. So there is no reason to expect that the care economy will
have massive unemployment, just that many more people will be working in roles where
personal contact is a much more important part of the job, and intellect much less so.

Storage based and symbiotic nets

Terminals are getting ever more sophisticated, and in the few years time will have better
displays, faster processors, faster communications and more storage. Many people already
walk around with MP3 players holding their entire music collection. In the mid-term future,
this might also include their entire photo and video collections too. This casts skepticism on
ideas that people will use 3G to download movies or music on their train journeys. The
chances are they will do so across high-speed connections at home, or simply rip them off a
disk, then store them on their portable devices for the day or week ahead. There will still be a
lot of use of networks for a wide-range of services, but it will be balanced with the use of very
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high capacity storage on the devices themselves.

Storage based networks seek to make good use of both the high-capacity storage and
high-speed connections to ensure that the user gets very high speed whether they have the
content with them or need to access it online.
Storage based networking will make good use of high capacity DVDs and hard drives, as
well as broadband access over fiber, DSL or wireless nets. They may well also make use of
another upcoming technology, symbiotic networking, also knows as ad hoc networking. An
ad hoc network is set up by devices themselves, with no need for a public network. Two
devices can easily talk to each other by a straightforward radio connection and if a third
device joins, messages can be routed among them all. As further devices join, a network
may extend across a wide area, with any device on the net able to talk to any other by routing
the calls via other devices, hop by hop. Wireless LANs can also play a large part in such
networks, acting as bridges between symbiotic nets and extending their effective reach,
possibly right across town. This will enable services such as text messaging free of charge
between network members. It may (and much less certainly) allow voice calls across a town
too. This has been identified as a potential commercial threat to public communication
networks, and though it has not happened in large-scale yet, improving technology and
gradual adoption in the marketplace might make it a serious network contender in the five to
ten year time frame.
Another new technology that might accelerate such a trend is software radio. This allows a
fast (digital signal processing) chip in a device to create any type of radio signal on request.
So the device might emulate a 2G or 3G phone, or access any kind of wireless LAN, or join a
symbiotic net. Its versatility means that the device can search for a free network that it can
use, or attempt to set one up with devices nearby. If that is not possible, then it might
reluctantly use a commercial network. Although a terminal that includes such functionality
would be considered extremely powerful by todays standards, it might well be standard
equipment in the mobile device in ten years time.

Health
A huge amount of technology development is ongoing in the health area, not only in biotech,
but also in IT and nanotechnology. On-line expert systems can already do a good diagnosis,
and these may well become the first line of care for an overstretched health service, allowing
self-treatment in many cases. Monitoring systems are also becoming widespread. Many old
people live with various sensors in their homes to monitor their behaviors. If they do not get
out of bed, or boil a kettle often enough, alarms can be raised and a nurse sent around to

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VOL. 8 NO. 3 2006 foresight PAGE 13
 investigate. These systems are being developed so that in the mid-term future, the home will
be able to detect quite subtle changes in life style that might give clues that something is
going wrong. This technology is not invasive. People are aware it is there since they have to
authorize it, but it does not appear in their field of view, being hidden away or disguised. Yet it
allows people to maintain a degree of independence and dignity that they would not
otherwise have, to a much greater extent than the simple alarm buttons that many old people
carry today. Future sensor networks will become ubiquitous, so that people could even be
tracked and monitored when they are out and about. Provided that such systems are
consensual, they could offer significant improvement in quality of life for many.

Governance
Community networks are an important development for local government to make sure that
they stay in the loop as far as the provision of local services and information goes. It would be
easy for alternative networks to capture many such services and thus local power, if
government does it badly or not at all. Political power is not something that local government
has a monopoly of either. Many other organizations have influence too. There have already
been many examples of demonstrations and direct actions that have been orchestrated via
the web or even via text messaging. Flash mobs are an unusual social phenomenon, where
people arrange to meet up at a given location at a particular time, do something wacky, and
then disperse. It is just fun, but can cause some congestion and some inconvenience for
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businesses and individuals. As people use the net more and more, and can access it more
easily at high speeds, everywhere they go, all of the time, it will become a much more
powerful political weapon. Mass demonstration could be coordinated very quickly, giving
authorities very little time to react and making the result of the action more powerful. Once a
few such demonstrations have happened and been seen to be effective, more and more
pressure groups will begin to use them. They will be backed up by direct action on the
internet too, such as coordinated denial of service attacks.
But it is not all bad. Community networks will make it easier to involve people in decision
making even without them having to leave the comfort of their homes. So local democracy
could flourish.

Security
Increasing use of the net to commit crime is obvious. We are seeing more identity theft, more
posing as back web sites to steal bank account details, lots of imaginative ways of luring new
and nave users into giving up their money. This is a non-geographic problem, so has little
relevance to cities per se, except in that it undermines the trust that people have of the net,
and therefore undermines some of the advantages that the web would otherwise confer.
A bigger IT security threat is in bringing down the city networks. This might be via a few
well-placed bombs or via an internet-based attack. As we become ever more dependent on
IT in every aspect of our lives, so the threat becomes bigger, since there is more incentive for
enemies to attack the IT infrastructure. Fortunately, IT companies such as BT take such
threats very seriously and have large numbers of people employed to keep network threats
at bay.
Other new threats are devices such as GPS-based bombs, which could be attached to any
vehicle (such as a petrol tanker) and go off once it arrives at a particular location (such as a
city center, important building or a key bridge). This gives all the efficacy of a suicide bomber
but kills someone else instead of the bomber.
IT offers a range of surveillance tools. Video cameras are already commonplace, many of
which are so tiny they are hard to spot. RFID tags on clothes and DVD cases are helping to
reduce shoplifting, and these will become very widespread in the near future. Face
recognition systems are also already being used in some stores to spot regular shoplifters
and in football stadiums to spot known hooligans. Airports and banks are trialing iris
recognition techniques, and these may well be one of the biometric systems used on the
future identity cards.

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 It may be the case that people carry varying degrees of identification. Someone who is able
to prove absolutely who they are, with a clean criminal record and top security clearance
might qualify for a first-class identification. An illegal immigrant with a completely unknown
previous identity that has since been convicted of serious crimes might qualify for a very
negative identification. The rest of the population would qualify for grading somewhere in
between. Even if the government identity cards do not carry such graded data, there would
be a strong business incentive to create such a scheme in order to create trusted customer
groups. While this may sound big brotherish, on-line companies such as e-Bay already run
schemes where people establish trust credentials over a period of time, and can lose them if
they misbehave. Extending this sort of idea into the everyday world would be quite easy.
Ordinary businesses may then choose to do business only with people with a particular trust
rating. Over time, everyone would be forced to carry such trust verification with them, or else
be excluded from some desirable services, such as car pooling or access to desirable
places.
The benefits of these technologies would be a potentially more secure city, with lower crime,
and clear social and financial rewards for good behavior. The downside is equally obvious.
There could be haves and have nots, with some people being electronically excluded by a
society that does not trust them. There may be a great deal of resentment about the
intrusiveness of surveillance and identification technology and the consequent loss of
privacy and freedom. As tension grows, it is possible that there could be an anti-technology
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backlash. This would be more likely still because of other impacts of IT such as the impact of
AI forcing people to retrain or lose their job. An anti-technology backlash could take the form
of civil resistance, strikes or even violence. If it happens at all, the most likely time period is
between 2010 and 2015.

Summary and recommendations

Future IT will play an important role in maintaining and increasing the desirability of living and
doing business in a city, so should be a key part of any urban regeneration plan. If done well,
it can improve social cohesion, reduce loneliness, increase the happiness level of the
population and increase prosperity. If done badly, it can increase division, create a big
brother atmosphere, with haves and have nots, rising tension and ultimately social
breakdown.
In the short-term, cities must ensure that they have the highest quality IT infrastructure,
across as much of the city as is possible. Areas that do not have it will not prosper. This
means a good fiber infrastructure, full broadband availability, and total mobile network
coverage should already be in place, and if not, this should be rectified. Next, councils
should aim for extensive coverage of non-residential areas by public wireless LANs, starting
with areas of highest visitor density. These should be made free to air as far as possible for
non-commercial (public service, tourist information and social communication) uses, and
commercial wireless LANs should also be encouraged.
Cities should also develop extensive community networks, subsidizing access and IT
resource provision where necessary to ensure that the whole population have fair access to
public services across the nets, as well as access to clubs, societies and cultural activities.
This will foster social inclusion and cohesion, reduce loneliness, improve local democracy
and stimulate social and business innovation. It will make the city a nicer place to live and
work and attract new businesses and investment. The increasing prosperity of the city will
more than pay for the subsidy cost.
In the mid-term future, much more can be done, but there are more opportunities also to
make things worse. The rewards will be a very healthy city, but only if IT is used sensitively, so
as to avoid a strong anti-technology backlash.
Ambient intelligence, digital air, dual architectures and urban positioning systems can help
make a digitally rich city, with an extensive information overlay. This could add significant
value to almost every kind of activity, while remaining invisible to people who have no interest
in it. However, over time, people may find that they are effectively forced to use such facilities

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VOL. 8 NO. 3 2006 foresight PAGE 15
 or else fall behind, in much the same way as people have little real choice about having a
mobile phone or email today. Cities should nevertheless cautiously invest in these
technologies as they come along. The timing for most of these is flexible, and there is no
need to be the first, so it is reasonable to wait and see how some other cities adopt them
before investing significantly.
Beyond the control of any city, the care economy, caused mainly by the rise of AI and the
semantic web, will force people to re-skill, and will greatly change the nature of the
businesses in a city. While cities cannot stop this global trend, they can certainly prepare for
it by ensuring resource flexibility. In an evolutionary environment, it is important to note that
flexibility is a much more valuable attribute than optimization. This will be profoundly true in
the next decades.

IT has a strong part to play in every business and social sector, the details of which are
largely beyond this paper. However, health, transport, security, education and governance
will all be strongly affected.

About the author

Ian Pearson is a futurologist with BT and can be contacted at: ian.d.pearson@bt.com
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PAGE 16 foresight VOL. 8 NO. 3 2006
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2. Mingfeng Wang, Felix Liao, Juan Lin, Li Huang, Chengcheng Gu, Yehua Wei. 2016. The Making of a Sustainable Wireless
City? Mapping Public Wi-Fi Access in Shanghai. Sustainability 8:2, 111. [CrossRef]
3. Mei-Chih Hu. 2014. Antecedents for the Adoption of New Technology in Emerging Wireless Cities: Comparisons between
Singapore and Taipei. Regional Studies 48:4, 665-679. [CrossRef]
4. J. de Haan, J.L.M. Vrancken, Z. Lukszo. 2011. Why is intelligent technology alone not an intelligent solution?. Futures
43:9, 970-978. [CrossRef]
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