A slow week for futurist in media returns, there was nevertheless one mention that stuck out to me. Australian minister of parliament Jamie Briggs is being called a “born-again urban futurist.” Briggs has apparently taken a turn from a conservative present-focused to a more futuristic way of looking at urban planning in South Australia’s capital city, Adelaide. His newly found futurist ideals focused on public transportation. “There’s no doubt public transport is vital to cities, particularly big cities, and the Commonwealth must play a role in facilitating that.” He wants to deregulate liquor licenses in Adelaide to attract more small bars to the area, thereby increasing tax income, which could then be used to fund public transportation. He notes that “a huge portion of our GDP is driven from our capital cities – 80 % of our jobs and 75% of our population exists in capital cities.” That’s a massive chunk of the Australian population.
He also looked at livability factors of Adelaide. He sees a rise in difficulty associated with life in bigger cities like Sydney and Melbourne leading to increased attractiveness of Adelaide, which is about a quarter the population of Melbourne and Sydney. Briggs notes that “Heavy manufacturing is coming to a pretty significant end and we have to continue to think through what our strengths are and how do we play to them”. Briggs says engagement between citizens and government would go a long way, as would affordable housing. Briggs, though he isn’t a professional futurist per se, is looking to the future, and he is trying to solve some fairly broad issues felt by much of the dense urban areas of the world. Perhaps something new will show itself from the “born again futurist?” — Will Williamson
About Futurists in Media: The Houston Foresight program is tracking, collecting and analyzing mentions of futurists in the media in order to gather evidence for how we are being talked about in order to inform a potential strategic response.
