116. Three Futurist Urban Scenarios

We've found crowdsourcing (i.e., the gathering of ideas, thoughts, and concepts from a widespread variety of interested individuals) to be a very effective tool in enabling us to diversify our thoughts and challenge our assumptions. Dr. Buras' post takes the results from one such crowdsourcing exercise and extrapolates three future urban scenarios. Given The Army Vision's clarion call to "Focus training on high-intensity conflict, with emphasis on operating in dense urban terrain," our readers would do well to consider how the Army would operate in each of Dr. Buras' posited future scenarios…] The challenges of the 21st century have been forecast and are well-known. In many ways we are already experiencing the future now. But predictions are hard to validate. A way around that is turning to slightly older predictions to illuminate the magnitude of the issues and the reality of their propositions.1