*Hmmm... seems to have decaying imperial splendor at the top and weird favelas all over the bottom, with no remaining middle class.
http://varnelis.net/blog/the_decade_ahead
(...)
Gopal Balakshrishan predicts that the future global economy will be a stationary state, a long-term stagnation akin to that which we experienced in the 1970s and 1980s. China will start slowing. The United States, EU, the Mideast and East Asia will all make up a low growth block, a slowly decaying imperium. India, together with parts of Africa and South America, will be on the rise.
To be clear: the very worst thing that could happen is that we would see otherwise. If another bubble forms—in carbon trading or infrastructure for example—watch out. Under network culture, capitalism and finance have parted ways. Hardt and Negri are right: our economy is immaterial now, but that immateriality is not the immateriality of Apple Computer, Google, or Facebook, it's the immateriality of Goldman Sachs and AIG. (...)
Climate change will become more widely accepted as corporations realize that it can lead to consumption and profits when little else can. (((That would be a pretty good trick... kind of like profiting from earthquakes, somehow. "Boy, these shattering tremors and mangled remains are a source of market vitality!"))) If we are unlucky, the green "movement" will become a boom. (((I'm cryin' all the way to the wind farm.)))
We will finally realize that peak oil has past, perhaps around 2006. (((Sooner or later an atemporal cult will arise to predict that the world actually ended, not in 2012, but in 1912.))) Climate change will be very real. It will not be as apocalyptic as some have predicted, but major changes will be in the works. We should expect more major natural disasters, including a tragic toll on human life.
Populations will be aging worldwide during the next decade and baby boomers will be pulling more money out of their retirement accounts (((their what?))) to cover their expenses. At the same time, younger people will find it harder to get a job as the de facto retirement age rises well into the seventies, even the eighties. (((Welp, back to the Rogaine and the Stairmaster.)))
A greater divide will open up between three classes. At the top, the super-rich will continue controlling national policies and will have the luxury of living in late Roman splendor. A new "upper middle" class will emerge among those who were lucky enough to accumulate some serious cash during the glory days. Below that will come the masses, impossibly in debt from credit cards, college educations, medical bills and nursing home bills for their parents but unable to find jobs that can do anything to pull them out of the mire.
The rifts between all three classes will grow, but it's the one between the upper middle class (notice there is no lower middle class anymore) and the new proles that will be the greatest. This is where social unrest will come from, but right now it seems more likely to be from the Right than the Left. Still, there's always hope. (((For instance, hopefully, the united peasants and workers might liquidate the kulaks and shoot the Czar while Anastasia screams in vain.)))
Speaking of hope, if things go right, governments will turn away from get-rich-quick schemes like "creative cities" or speculative financial schemes and instead find ways to build long-term strategies for resurrecting manufacturing. (((Why.))) It will be a painful period of restructuring for the creative industries. Old media, the arts, finance, law, advertising, and so on will suffer greatly. Digital media will continue to be a relatively smart choice for a career, even as it becomes more mainstreamed into other professions. For example, it will become as common in schools of architecture to study the design of media environments as it is now to study housing.
We will see a rise of cottage industries in developing nations as individuals in their garages will realize that they can produce things with the means of production at hand. Think of eBay and Etsy, but on a greater scale. National health insurance in the US will help in this respect, as it will remove individuals from the need to work for large corporations. (((Why not just build the cottages, stick people in there and have them websurf totally randomly. Really, how much could that cost.)))
But all will not be roses in the world of desktop manufacture. Toxicity caused by garage operations will be a matter of contention in many communities. ((("Fab cancer." You heard it here first. Actually, you WOULD have heard it here first but that cellphone gave you brain cancer.)))
Some cities are simply doomed, (((I don't know why bald assertions of this kind cheer me up so much – maybe because one gets so tired of the shiny-toothed hokum in mainstream media))) but if we're lucky, some leaders will turn to intelligent ways of dealing with this condition. To me, the idea of building the world's largest urban farm in Detroit sounds smart. Look for some of these cities—Buffalo maybe?—to follow Berlin's path and become some of the most interesting places to live in the country. If artists and bohemians are finding it impossible to live in places like New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles anymore, they may well turn elsewhere, to the boon of cities formerly in decline. The hippest places to live will no longer be New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco. The move toward smaller cities—remember Athens, Georgia, Austin, Texas and Seattle? (((that's "Seattle, Washington," for those of you who've never heard of "Austin, Texas"))) —will explode in this decade as the over-capitalized major cities will face crises.
But to be clear, this is an inversion from the model of the creative city. These cities will not see real estate values increase greatly. The new classes populating them will not be rich, but rather will turn to a of new DIY bohemianism, cultivating gardens, joining with neighbors communally and building vibrant cultural scenes. (((Okay, I'll go there, but tell me I don't have to *$#&$#$ garden.)))
With the death of creative cities, planners will also have to turn toward regions. As jobs continue to empty out, city cores will also see a decline in their fortunes. (((I find this hard to understand.))) Eventually, this may resurrect places like New York and San Francisco as interesting places to live in again, but for now, it will cause a crisis. Smart city leaders will form alliances with heads of suburban communities to force greater regional planning than ever before.
This will be the decade of the suburbs. (((Anything's possible, folks.))) We began the last decade with over 50% of the world's population living in urban areas. I predict that by the end of the next decade over 50% of the world's population will live in suburban areas. This isn't just Westchester and Rancho Palos Verdes but rather Garfield, New Jersey and East Los Angeles. Worldwide, it will include the banlieues and the shantytowns....
