A decade after the United Nations declared that a tipping point had been reached and more than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas, cities all over the planet are growing in scale and density. Despite falling birth rates in most countries, the world population is predicted to grow by almost 40 percent between now and the middle of this century.
The challenges this poses are innumerable and range in scale from the massive – building and maintaining infrastructure, homes and civil institutions, for example – to the small scale and the personal, with each generation having their own needs and wants. We asked experts in three countries to identify a key trend affecting different age groups.
Workplace design has to change in response to the rise in the average age of workers, taking their physical and psychological needs into account.
Globally, the population aged 60 or over is growing faster than all younger age groups. In 2017, there were an estimated 962 million people aged 60-plus in the world. That number will probably double by 2050, according to the United Nations, which says that "population ageing is poised to become one of the most significant social transformations of the 21st century, with implications for nearly all sectors of society." Deborah Burnett of the Benya Burnett design consultancy in California says that we have to rethink our workplaces and our homes to take account of older workers' needs, not only for their sake but also the businesses they work for.
"A number of years ago as soon as you hit 50 you were totally worthless in terms of employment, skills, just about anything. But we're starting to realise that we should value employees whatever their age. Because ageing is a biological process this involves knowing what's happening to them so that you can take appropriate built-environmental measures and apply them to your space whether it's a two-person office or 5000 in one building."
"A well designed building can impart the opportunity for the occupant to utilise the resources of the space to enhance their individual health, well-being and lifestyle both at work and after work."
By 2020, the average worker in the US is going to be in his or her mid-40s.
"From a design perspective, we need to understand, for example, that higher light levels are required for the older worker, which means these folks," she says.
"They can need anywhere between 20 and 50 percent more light to do the same critical task job as a 20-year old. But simply increasing the amount of short-wavelength energy within their visual field may be fine for 20 or 30 minutes but anything longer than that is going to create a photo-stress response."
Design solutions need not require heavy investment but they need to be thought through, recognizing that health and performance are interconnected with the interior environment. "You have to start by thinking about the body and the brain," she says.
One of the biggest, continuing changes in Russia has been the emergence of consumerism but, recent history also shapes the present.
With a population of more than 140 million, Russia has one of the highest rates of home ownership in the world, at just over 87 per cent, according to the global analyst trading economics. com. Three quarters of the population are in cities where almost all live in small apartments, frequently inherited and often with generations sharing the same rooms. But with US style consumerism taking hold attitudes to debts including mortgages are rapidly changing, along with aspirations.
"Behind encouraging GDP demand and retail trade numbers Russians have become increasingly hooked on credit," says the Moscow Times.
"Part of the rapid rise in debt has been the concurrent rise in mortgage borrowing, which is the fastest growing debt product in Russia."
After a dip in growth due to international sanctions, the volume of housing construction is set to grow to 4.1 billion sqm in 2023, almost a fifth more than in 2017, says the Agency for Housing Mortgage Lending. This includes plans to renovate tens of thousands of five-storey Krushchev-era blocks known as pyatietazhki. They were built so that multiple families would not be forced to share flats. Now they present younger Russians with the chance of a place of their own. An emerging middle class of around 25 million accounts for about 80 per cent of demand in the country and buying patterns are changing with a new generation of consumers. Russian millennials are essentially the country's first "proper" consumers says Arina Khodyreva, the director of technology and digital at PBN Hill+Knowlton Strategies, an arm of the global public relations company, Hill+Knowlton.
"While they never experienced the deprivations of the Soviet era themselves, Russian millennials are nevertheless influenced by an older generation that is very keen to consume after years of empty shelves," she says.
The average Russian now owes five months' wages in addition to any mortgage debt. Eight years ago the figure was closer to two months".
"Accustomed to economic uncertainty and volatility, many Russian millennials value short-term enjoyment, achievement and products over potential gains down the line," she adds.
"Why work half your life for something when you don't know what will happen tomorrow?"
"As in the rest of the world, millennials living in big cities are overwhelmed by their daily routines and stress at work, which disrupts work/life balance," she points out.
"Russian millennials have embraced the trends of healthy lifestyle and community building, and they have started looking for activities that will help them stay healthy and connect them with like-minded people but which don't require too much effort. One of the most apparent manifestations of this is the rise of running clubs in big cities, which have become an essential part of many millennials' sporting and social lives."
But, she also add, bear in mind that, "trust is a key element in any sharing economy; wary of past experience in Russia from the days of communism and the volatility of the 1990s, Russians are not fully willing to trust each other. This is holding back the development and spread of innovative sharing services. Individualism is still holding strong over the benefits of the sharing experience."
Huge population growth is being accompanied by massive pollution. As megacities grow in number means have to be found to make life bearable for their millions of inhabitants.
As the world population continues to balloon, megacities with populations over 10 million are proliferating. There are now 47 and China, alone, has 15 according to the country's National Bureau of Statistics. Beijing with nearly 25 million inhabitants, together with Tianjin and Heibi are on their way to merging into a huge megatropolis with more than 100 million citizens. And as more and more people crowd together, pollution inevitably creates a huge problem. A study by the Environmental Research Group at King's College London recently noted that "air pollution is one of the leading risks to health in China, with particularly large impacts on the rising burden of cardiopulmonary diseases. After smoking it is the second biggest health problem they have."
Along with the medical problems attached to burgeoning greenhouse gasses, there are also big climate-related risks to people and infrastructure. In 2013, Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde was so alarmed at the air quality in Beijing that he was inspired to create the world's first smog vacuum cleaner. The seven-metre tall Smog Free Tower uses ionisation to cleanse 30,000 cubic metres of air an hour. It is designed for use in areas such as in parks and has since been tried out in Beijing, Tianjin and Dalian among other centres. The tower's effectiveness was validated by the Eindhoven University of Technology and he and his team went on to create another device, an innovative bicycle that inhales polluted air, filters it, and releases it cleaned up, around the cyclist.
As a by-product, Roosegaarde realised that most of the muck that the Tower collects is carbon and that if it were compressed it could produce something akin to a diamond. The result is a piece of jewellery, the Smog Free Ring. He admits that by themselves, the tower, the bicycle and the ring can make only a small dent in the giant problem of megacity pollution, but they help generate ideas and awareness. If villages can grow into megacities, anything is possible, even eliminating pollution.
"We have a plan," he says, "to create new realities, to make sure that when my grandchild asks me what I did and I say "I built a smog-free tower", they say "what's smog?"
