THE 21ST CENTURY: URBAN LIFE

THE re-urbanization of underused city centres and the rise of 24 hour a day trading practices will be the two biggest trends to hit urban life in the coming five to ten years.

With more and more people working around different international time zones, high streets will be busy throughout the day, thereby easing traffic congestion and also reducing crime - given that there will be fewer hours of emptiness.

The boom in people working from home will also mean a boom in cafe culture. All of those people working alone will need to get out and interact with like minded individuals, so high streets will be filled with retail and service outlets that resemble the fixtures that are now to be found on most university campuses or corporate complexes.

Cafes will have meeting rooms that can be booked, bookstores will become informal reference centres and gyms will offer more team sport programmes like volleyball and basketball in order to feed the need for human contact.

Cities of the future:

Bristol, Glasgow, Burlington (Vermont), Rotterdam, Antwerp, Vienna, Beirut, Cape Town, Chapel Hill (North Carolina), Buenos Aires, Dubai, Melbourne, Auckland, Berlin-Hamburg, Oslo, Portland (Oregon), Singapore.