Here’s What Cities Could Look Like in 2050

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To me, the greatest and most outlandish prediction of what the future was going to look like was through the TV show The Jetson’s. 

Flying cars, super-high sky rises, intergalactic space travel and robots to complete every tedious task. Apparently they weren’t too far off.

According to Ian Pearson, futurologist and fellow at the World Academy for Arts, 2050 could look a lot more like the futuristic kids show than we ever thought, Business Insider reports.

Samsung also got in on the fun, with a report on the future titled SmartThings Future of Living Report.

Here are six ways Pearson and Samsung said the future will change:

Buildings will get tall – really tall

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According to the futurologist, buildings will reach as tall as 18 miles – more than 8,000 stories high. For reference, the current record-holder is Dubai’s Burj Khalifa at 163 stories.

And our ability to make taller buildings will mean we will have massive spaceports – making time travel to space shorter

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A space port in the future is basically a super tall building that would support a rocket launch.

Pearson said launching a rocket from one of these would make our trips to space shorter – requiring less fuel.

And Samsung’s report says that massive drones will transport people to different floors because elevators will be difficult to build in a building this big.

We may have self-contained cities

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There’s actually one of these in the works already, but these cities within a building could hold thousands of residents – which may not be a bad thing, as people get older, over-population becomes a problem. This could possibly fix that.

Underwater hotels and tourist attractions will exist

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Samsung’s report seems to think that aquatic homes will exist in the future, but Pearson thinks otherwise.

Speaking to Business Insider, Pearson said: “There’s also quite a lot of nonsense about cities under the sea or floating cities, but they would be extremely expensive.”

It’s not all negatives though – Pearson thinks underwater tourist attractions could be a thing of the future.

Buildings will be able to charge your devices over radio waves

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No more rushing around trying to find a plug. The future will charge your phones for you.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that there are a number of startups already racing to create this.

We’ll have self-driving cars, and they’ll charge themselves

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The first thing that comes to mind when most of us think future is: flying cars. Well, Pearson doesn’t think we’ll have those. But we will have driverless ones. And they’re the stuff of the future.

By 2050, Pearson imagines cities will build roads that will charge electric cars as they drive. And right now the UK is actually testing such a thing. Could be sooner than we think.

The future is definitely looking bright.

UNILAD