People will change. Buildings will change. But when it comes to looking deep into the gee-whiz side of Denver’s future, we’ll always have flying cars.
Ask a professional futurist what “fun stuff” they’d love to see on — or above — the streets of the Mile High City in 50 years, and the answers always come back to floating autos and rocket-propelled commutes.
“I’m still holding out for the jet pack,” confessed Jennifer Schaufele, executive director of the Denver Regional Council of Governments. She’s only half kidding — one of DRCOG’s charges is to help in transportation planning, and Denver’s streets are not likely to get less crowded anytime soon.
But there are plenty of gee-whiz, almost- here technologies beyond levitating cars that likely will make a difference for Denver in some form over the next few decades.
Futurist Thomas Frey envisions Denver’s primary transportation system as a fleet of robotic cars patrolling the city, taxi style. A resident who wants to travel to the mall would use a cellphone connected to the Internet to call a car. The nearest robotic car would be sent, through a centralized computer program, and operate on GPS navigation along the fastest and least-crowded routes.
“There will be anxiety over giving up that control,” Frey said, but as with most technologies, a family will start by giving up one car for the new system. Their children will grow up with it, find it perfectly natural and never own a car, he added.
“Most peoples’ cars are only used 5 percent of the day,” Frey said. “Denver is an excellent candidate for this to happen.”
Various pieces of that are already working, including experiments with smart navigation systems taking over for drivers to relieve congestion, noted Frey, who writes and lectures on future trends for the Da Vinci Institute in Louisville.
Architect and planner Cindy Frewen Wuellner looks at aerial photos of cities such as Denver and sees future acres of solar panels and cells filling spaces on rooftops, in yards and along parking lots.
One given, as traditional energy supplies tighten up, is the pressure for people to generate their power closer to where they live, said Wuellner, who works in Kansas City, Mo., and teaches future studies at the University of Houston.
Buildings will once again be designed to use natural ventilation and insulation, Wuellner said. Air conditioning changed the world, not always for the better, she added. “Windows closed shut, and energy bills went up,” she said.
Some of the changes will be more whimsical, Frey said, as Americans will always want their entertainment and their shopping. He recently sat at an outdoor cafe with his wife and heard a song he liked drifting out from nearby speakers. He held his cellphone up to a speaker, and the phone identified the song, linked him to an Internet site to buy it and downloaded it to his phone.
That long-awaited “interactivity” will only grow, Frey said. The day is coming soon, he added, when stores will send models out onto the streets wearing desirable clothes. A passing pedestrian might like the dress — she’ll point her cellphone camera at the model, take a picture and the dress will be ordered for her instantly, complete with dimensions and alterations already stored in that consumer’s database.
Nor is Frey giving up on flying cars. “Yes, I get tagged with that,” he laughed. The first generation will be unmanned drones, like those already used by the military, designed to “dock” at individual homes.
The drones, Frey said, may also perform routine tasks, such as changing out batteries in a solar array at a Park Hill home or bringing prescription medicines to shut-ins.
The drones will also deliver pizza, Frey said. “That will happen before flying cars.”
