By Liz Enbysk.

As Frost & Sullivan senior partner Sarwant Singh notes in a recent Forbes piece, it wasn’t all that long ago that driverless all-electric cars and digital currency like bitcoins seemed far-fetched. They aren’t any more, which begs the question, what next? Frost & Sullivan has provided its view of the decade ahead in an analysis titled World’s Top Global Mega Trends To 2025 and Implications to Business, Society and Cultures (2014 Edition).

In his Forbes piece, Singh drills down on what he considers the top 10 mega trends culled from the report. We’ve highlighted a few with big implications for cities (although in some way, shape or form they will all transform city living).

  • Connectivity and convergence: With Internet connectivity and the number of connected devices soaring, Singh refers to a new wave of technology-enabled services – from smart lighting to smart governance – that will shape our daily lives.
  • Future of mobility: “In the future, people and organizations will want personal mobility (not necessarily cars or trucks) to travel from A to B, as journeys will become integrated with intelligent and smart technologies, enabled by a single ticket or membership to provide seamless travel on multi-modal transport systems,” Singh says. And the use of apps to order and share cars (which  is causing many cities grief today) will be commonplace in 2025, he says.
  • Urbanization – city as a customer: Expect not only mega cities, but also mega regions and mega corridors in the future, Singh says. “These ‘mega districts’ will be so large that businesses will increasingly regard them as key focus centers for investment and put ‘city as a customer’ as a central piece of their strategy, as opposed to nations.”
  • Smart is the new green: Green was the mega trend of the last decade; smart products will be a hallmark of the next decade with smart clothing, smart watches, smart buildings and smart cities. “The smart city market in particular will take off with the industry expected to be worth $1.5 trillion by 2020,” Singh says.

Singh also writes about the future of energy (smart grids and storage technologies), innovating to zero (zero emission and zero accident cars and carbon neutral buildings and cities) – and more; all of it very interesting. You can read his insights on all 10 mega trends here.

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Originally posted at Smart Cities Council.