The super century arrives.

An international development consultant anticipates massive new construction projects for the next decade, including global highways, huge island airports, and "super metros."

The twenty-first century seemed remote just a few years ago, unfolding only in the theoretical realm of cocktail

Now that its first decade is about to become our real world, it is easier to predict many near-term new developments. The first concrete has been poured for some ambitious projects, while others are advancing from the idea stage to feasibility analysis.

Advances in transportation infrastructure will be among the first changes we notice in the next century. Boeing will introduce a new SST that makes the Concorde obsolete. The new generation of SST aircraft will fly at three times the speed of sound and have a range of close to 10,000 miles (16,090 km).

The new decade will also bring the first test flights of the trans-atmospheric vehicle - a cross between a conventional airplane and a space vehicle. After a conventional takeoff, rockets will boost the vehicle into low earth orbit at hypersonic speeds before descending and landing at an airport. Flights from the United States to Tokyo or Sydney will take about two hours. Commercial service of the trans-atmospheric vehicle will begin before 2020.

New tilt-rotor aircraft that can take off vertically and cruise horizontally will soon be introduced on many short commuter runs to leapfrog areas of surface congestion. Already in flight testing, tilt-rotor planes will shuttle passengers to large airports from small towns not now served by airlines. The planes will also carry commuters to small mid-city terminals atop rapid transit stations, freeway interchanges, and other sites offering maximum convenience.

New airports at Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, and Bangkok will facilitate travel to the Pacific Rim. Construction will begin on a $20 billion airport on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay. In the United States, Chicago and Atlanta will start new airport projects.

Intelligent Highways

First-decade highway construction will be extensive. Major projects will add vital links to the long-proposed great global highway, which eventually will serve more than 100 nations on five continents. High priority will be given to a new "Silk Road" linking Europe with the Pacific Rim.

The first segments of intelligent vehicle/highway systems will open by 2010. These specially equipped highways will provide navigation guidance, cruise control, and vision enhancement. Expressways will see the first "car trains" - high-speed strings of cars traveling bumper-to-bumper under electronic control - occupying special lanes. Such advances will more than double the hourly capacity of the typical freeway.

New vehicles will have imbedded computer chips that can trigger sensors placed on roadways, at toll gates, at entrances to military bases, and elsewhere. The sensors will perform multiple functions, such as automatically counting traffic, controlling highway access, and collecting tolls.

Before 2010 there will be extensive tests of vehicles driven by robots and guided by a precise positioning system. They will offer local transportation to riders who cannot drive because of age or physical handicaps. Also, they will serve as unmanned pickup and delivery units for business firms. Some municipalities will approve the operation of robot-run vehicles on designated routes. Use will increase rapidly, and robot vehicles will become the feeder units for mass transit systems.

Riding the Rails

The efficiency of high-speed-rail service has been demonstrated by Japan and France during the last few decades. Many nations will certainly launch new high-speed-rail projects in the years just ahead. A number of projects are already in the discussion or advanced planning stages:

* Belgium will connect with the French TGV (high-speed-rail system) at the border and extend via Brussels to Amsterdam. France will extend its system via a new line to Bordeaux and the Spanish border.

* Spain will build links from Madrid to Seville and Barcelona. Italy will build Turin/Venice and Milan/Naples links. Switzerland will install high-speed sectors in the Alps region via a system of new tunnels. Russia has announced plans for a high-speed link between St. Petersburg and Moscow.

* Other high-speed-rail proposals around the world include Casablanca to Cairo, Quebec City to Toronto, and Hamburg to Berlin.

* Several high-speed links are proposed for the United States. These include a route from Dallas to Houston, a line between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and a Florida link among Orlando, Tampa, and Miami.

A number of tunnel, bridge, and causeway projects are worth noting. Work will likely begin on the long-delayed Gibraltar crossing to connect Europe and Africa. Planning will also continue on the proposed Bering Strait crossing to link Asia with North America, although construction will not begin until a later decade.

China will plan a link between Hainan Island and the mainland. In South America, discussions will proceed regarding a connection between Argentina and Uruguay. New Zealand will explore a link between the North and South islands. And, in the Middle East, Egypt will begin widening the Suez Canal.

Truly Global Communications

One spectacular advance in the 2000-2010 decade will be the introduction of worldwide cellular telephone service. Users will have a global code and phone number that follows them wherever they go. The new system will use satellites to cover every part of the earth, providing global communications for anyone, anywhere.

In the last few years, several groups have been racing to launch the new service. A Motorola group proposes to use some 70 satellites in high orbit, while a competing Teledesic group suggests using 840 low-orbiting satellites. The satellite-launch industry will expand rapidly. Two hundred new satellites will need to be launched every year to meet the growing needs for global communications. A consortium led by Boeing will begin operating a floating launch platform in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Meanwhile, the language barrier will be minimized as refined software for automatic translation of voice transmissions is developed. Thus, a user speaking English, for example, will be able to transmit in Chinese, and vice versa.

Building (and Rebuilding) Cities

As we enter the twenty-first century, citizens of many nations will seek to enjoy the benefits of big cities without living in them. They will want to live simple rural or small-town lives while having all the conveniences and pleasures of the space age at their fingertips.

As a result, a business firm selecting a site for a new facility will face a complicated task. It will no longer be enough to choose a good site for a plant. To accommodate its employees, the firm must now look for an ideal site that has these attributes:

* A metro center with excellent urban services, including a convention center, international airport, and research and medical centers. It will have great universities, a domed stadium, museums, and a symphony.

* A satellite area with high-performance business parks and office and/or industrial areas offering outstanding functional and aesthetic features, including water, waste disposal, and other environmental systems.

* A hinterland will offer quiet, protected residential areas served by good schools, shopping, law enforcement, and utility services. Also, the area should be close to the shore, lakes, and the mountains, and have a pleasant year-round climate.

All of these areas must be linked by high-speed rapid-transit systems. There must be a coherent overall plan for protecting quality of life in the future.

Locations that come closest to meeting these criteria will become world-class "super metros." To provide such lifestyle opportunities, planners are adopting new concepts of "loop cities," wherein a circumferential artery links the old city with the new hinterland. The effect is to expand the size of metro areas dramatically.

If we define a super metro area as one in which a round-trip journey by surface transport can be accomplished easily within a business day, the new metro areas may extend out more than 100 miles (160 km). Such new metros might cover much of northern Europe, most of Japan's main island (Honshu), or the entire Boston-to-Washington corridor.

The design concept of a loop highway encircling a city has evolved from a traffic bypass, to an economic development tool, to the urban plan for the twenty-first century. Perimeter routes can be seen in two dozen U.S. metro areas, as well as in Moscow, Rome, and London. The next step in development is to add an outer loop, as has been proposed for Atlanta.

The decade of 2000-2010 will also bring noteworthy urban redevelopment projects. War-torn Beirut and earthquake-shattered Kobe will rise again - new cities built on the ruins of the old. The Mitsubishi Estate Company has proposed a gigantic redevelopment of the Maranouchi business district in Tokyo, a project with 60 high-rise office towers providing work space for 200,000 people.

Environmental Investment

New projects early in the twenty-first century will focus on solving water problems and finding alternative fuels.

Seawater desalination plants will be built in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, using fossil fuel. Other smaller units will be built on many islands and at key locations such as Santa Barbara, California. The combination of cheaper energy and more-efficient desalination plants could be dramatic, improving the quality of life for billions of people.

In the Middle East, a canal from either the Mediterranean or the Red Sea will be built to bring seawater to a new desalination plant in the Jordan Valley. Planning continues for a "peace water pipeline" that would bring fresh water from Turkey to Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Arabian Gulf states. It awaits final political agreement. In Libya, new areas will be served by extensions of the "Great Man-made River Project," an effort to pump water from aquifers under the Sahara and bring it by aqueduct to the coasts.

On the energy front in 2000-2010, new oil-field development will provide additional fossil fuel. Among the most-active sites will be Papua New Guinea and southern Asia. Some areas will receive new energy from distant sources via underwater cable. A plant on the Big Island of Hawaii will deliver power to Oahu (Honolulu), and a source in Iceland will deliver power to Europe.

Substantial progress will come in the development of alternative fuels, leading to many economically feasible installations. There will be a fast-growing market for wireless energy for remote regions. Solar power and fuel cells look most promising.

The merit of hydrogen as a new fuel will also be realized. Readily manufactured via electrolysis - that is, passing electrical current through water - hydrogen can be shipped and stored easily. It will become cost-competitive with oil during the 2000-2010 decade. BMW is already operating experimental hydrogen automobiles that demonstrate high fuel efficiency and reduced emissions.

Despite environmental problems, there will be new hydroelectric plants built as a part of huge flood-control projects. Locations to watch for mixed-use development include India's Narmada River valley, Brazil and Argentina's Parana River project, and China's Yangtze River Three Gorges dam.

A global power grid is in the planning stage that would link Europe, North America, and Asia. Such a grid would make it possible, for example, for North America to use power from Siberia via a link across the Bering Strait.

Cleanup Time, 2000-2010

We can expect large and expensive projects for the cleanup of nuclear sites and the decommissioning of obsolete power stations. In Russia, the cleanup cost of Chernobyl and other sites is estimated at $50 billion. The shutdown and cleanup of nuclear weapons plants in the United States is projected to cost $35 billion. Japan is facing an estimated $8 billion outlay for waste handling at 37 nuclear power plants. This is only the beginning of a cleanup program that will never end. In the next decade, some 50 nuclear plants will become obsolete and will have to be decommissioned.

Greenhouse warming will continue to be debated, but stringent controls will likely be put on all emissions that threaten to change the atmosphere.

The decade will see an unprecedented global commitment - a crusade supported by all elements of society - to clean up toxic wastes, conserve rain forests, and repair damaged environments. Large nations will have to impose controls on small nations to prevent further large-scale destruction of forests. Massive global tree-planting programs will be implemented to improve the atmosphere and to generate biomass products.

At all government levels, contracts will be let to private firms to restore vast expanses of tropical rain forest and denuded woodlands. Other projects will focus on dried-out savannas, destroyed coral reefs, and damaged barrier islands and seashores. Unique corporate units that merge the expertise of developers and ecologists will carry out these important programs.

Looking Further Ahead

Beyond the first decade of the new millennium, almost anything is possible. For 2010 through 2030 we can still make a few cautious forecasts; beyond that we can only speculate.

Perhaps the safest prediction is that population pressure will continue to drive extensive urban development and innovation. Planners and builders will be challenged to meet ever-increasing demands for facilities and services. We will not only see more projects, but more complex and expensive ones. Ultra-high-rise structures will dwarf existing buildings.

A Japanese engineering firm, Kajima, says it has the technology to build a 200-story tower, but, so far, no commission to build it. Takenaka, a respected construction firm, has proposed "Sky City 1000," a 3,000-foot (1,000 m) tower, to be built in Tokyo. Another firm, Ohbayashi, proposes to build a 500-story high-rise building that would offer apartments, offices, shopping, and service facilities. It would cost an estimated $326 billion. "Aeropolis 2001" would be about five times taller than the World Trade Center in New York. Its high-speed elevators would take 15 minutes to reach the top floor.

While some of the high-rise projects have been propelled by civic pride or the ego of developers, the key factor in the proposed new Japanese projects is economics: Land prices in Tokyo are extremely high.

Another solution to the problem of high urban land costs is to build below ground. Planners argue that, in many respects, it makes more sense to develop downward than upward.

As a demonstration of concepts, the Japanese engineering firm Taisei has proposed to build an underground complex called "Alice City" (named after Alice in Wonderland), which would leave surface areas open for parks and forests. Shimizu Corporation envisions a subterranean development called Urban Geo Grid - a series of cities linked by tunnels - accommodating half a million people.

Many central cities will become multi-level environments, with one level below ground, another at grade, and a third built on air rights. There will be widespread construction over freeways and service corridors. Extensive underwater development will also become reality - on ocean platforms, artificial islands, and structures attached to sea-mounts.

Deep mining will open vast new opportunities as techniques are developed for finding and extracting minerals far below the levels previously explored. A Soviet deep-mining project has already found deposits more than 6.2 miles (10 km) below the surface in Siberia. The heat energy in the earth's core will eventually be used.

There will also be new and more extensive use of domed structures. Fly over many cities today, and the most conspicuous structure you see is a shining dome covering a sports stadium. Fly over cities of the future, and you may see only one huge dome. Agribusiness firms see the prospect for new "bubble farms," in which thousands of acres are covered by domed units. They will be used to protect seedlings and to control the growth of new genetically engineered crops.

Domed enclosures may be particularly suitable for new towns in the Arctic region, trapping solar heat and keeping out mosquitoes. The Japanese firm Taiyo Kogyo proposes to use huge tent structures to alter the climates of low-lying islands. Many such islands are arid and uninhabitable because there is no water to drink. However, a tent structure 2,000 feet (666 m) high and 10 miles (16 km) long would lift the prevailing wind, cause precipitation, and make the island habitable. Planners also see the possibility of using such tent structures on ocean floors to redirect currents and create new fishing zones.

Moving into Space

During the 2010 to 2040 period Man will move into space to stay. In addition to continuing exploratory probes, we will establish living facilities and industrial operations in permanent space colonies. Space factories will be common in industries ranging from semiconductors to pharmaceuticals. Space mining will be closely related to, and often integrated with, space manufacturing. Huge antennas in space will beam solar energy to cold areas on Earth. Space tourism will begin to grow; the first hotel will be on the moon. The first child will be born in space.

Terraforming - the manipulation of bodies in our solar system - will move into the experimentation stage. An early project will attempt to heat a section of Mars to make it habitable.

The most important space project in the minds of many will be an asteroid collision-avoidance system. The new system, similar to the "star wars" military defense system proposal, would use missiles with nuclear charges to knock Earth-bound asteroids off course.

It is no exaggeration to say that global lead-time for such things as an asteroid collision is a key to survival of our civilization!

Futurism serves the early warning needs of the world, its nations, and its cities with regard to matters of security and quality of life. For companies and business ventures, futurism is a key factor in competitive survival and growth. And for the family and individual it provides psychological and emotional support during times of change. Thus, as the twenty-first century opens, futurists will have begun to show the way.

About the Author

McKinley Conway is an aeronautical engineer and author of a dozen books on economic development and technology. He founded the International Development Research Council and the World Development Federation. His address is Conway Data, 35 Technology Parkway, Suite 150, Norcross, Georgia 30092. Telephone 1-770-446-6996; fax 1-770-262-8825; e-mail info.mgr@conway. com; Web site www.conway.com

This article is adapted from Highlights of the Twentieth Century - With Lessons for Century 21 (1997, Conway Data, Inc.). Previous articles on super projects by McKinley Conway appeared in the March-April 1993 and March-April 1996 issues of THE FUTURIST.