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Are you interested in the urban trends on 3 different time scales?
Our summary today works with the report titled 2025 Trend reports for planners from 2025, by Petra Hurtado PhD, Ievgeniia Dulko, Senna Catenacci, Joseph DeAngelis, Sagar Shah PhD, and Jason Jordan, published by the American Planning Association in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
This is a great preparation to our next interview with Petra Hurtado in episode 352 talking about urban trends and their management.
Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how urban planners and individuals can plan for the upcoming trends. This report organises crucial trends and signals into three timeframes: Act Now, Prepare For, and Learn About and Watch.
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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today we will introduce a research by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original investigation, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole documentation. This conversation was produced and generated with Notebook LM as two hosts dissecting the whole research.
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Speaker 1: Today we’re diving into the American Planning Association’s 2025 Trend Report for Planners is produced with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy,
Speaker 2: right? This is their fourth annual report, and it’s really designed to help planners communities well. Everyone stay ahead of the curve on issues impacting our future. It lays out trends in three timeframes. Act now. Things happening right now. Prepare for what’s coming and learn and watch for those signals that could really reshape things down the line.
Speaker 1: Okay, let’s jump right into act now. These are shifts already changing our daily lives, especially around home and social interaction. First up, the new average demographics and housing needs. And one stat that really jumped out at me here, the traditional nuclear family, married couple kids. It’s less than one fifth of US households now. Just think about that for a moment.
Speaker 2: It’s a massive change. And what’s interesting is single person households and married couples without kids together, they make up more than half of all households. Plus you’ve got multi-generational living, really taking off much more than it used to for you the listener. This isn’t just numbers, it means the whole feel of your neighbourhood could be shifting, impacting schools, services, local businesses, everything. And
Speaker 1: here’s where it gets tricky. Our policies haven’t really caught up, have they? Federal legislation often seems stuck in the past, not really recognizing these non-traditional families or chosen families, as the report sometimes calls them this gap between demographics and policy, the report says it just makes the housing crisis worse. And affordability 2023 was the least affordable year to buy a home in over a decade. We’re talking homes, almost 50% pricier than renting. It’s a huge challenge.
Speaker 2: It absolutely is. And when you look at who’s impacted, it’s pretty stark, like almost a third of Gen Z living with their parents. That’s the highest percentage in a century, but it’s not just the young folks. The US is also frankly unprepared for the housing needs of over 58 million people, 65 plus. Many baby boomers hanging onto larger homes. Maybe not because they want to, but because there just aren’t good, affordable, accessible options for them to downsize or age comfortably in their communities.
Speaker 1: Okay? So with these huge demographic changes and the affordability crunch, I. What’s one practical thing communities could do now? Yeah, beyond just build more.
Speaker 2: A big one for planners is often looking at zoning. So many zoning laws are still based on that old nuclear family model, allowing things like ADUs, accessory dwelling units, granny flats, or encouraging different housing types like co-living or even micro apartments that can boost suitable housing options pretty quickly without needing massive new developments. It’s about being flexible, really. Flexibility.
Speaker 1: Okay. Moving from our physical homes to our digital lives. The report flags another act now trend. Many of us probably feel digital fatigue. Mm-hmm. And it’s not just too much screen time, it’s says growing distrust of online news worries about AI content.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It’s significant. A 2024 Reuters report found, get this, 72% of Americans are worried about telling real from fake info online, 72%. And globally 39% said they actively avoid online news up from 29% back in 2017. Why? Often because it just makes ’em feel disappointed or distressed. There’s a real weariness setting in,
Speaker 1: and that weariness seems especially tough for Gen Z sometimes called the anxious generation. We’re even seeing laws react to this Florida barring kids under 14 from TikTok Instagram, US Surgeon General suggesting warning labels on social media like cigarettes and Australia, a total ban for under 16 starting next year.
Speaker 2: Wow. It really shows a kind of societal pendulum swing, doesn’t it? After years of pushing for more connection online. People are actively like putting their phones down. You see it anecdotally too, no phone dating events, people bringing back dumb phones for parties, even scream free public spaces popping up in places like the Netherlands, there’s this real craving for face-to-face connection. So the big question for planners for communities is how do we design spaces that actually encourage that places where people want to disconnect to actually connect with each other?
Speaker 1: That’s a great point. These immediate shifts definitely make you think about tech’s role in our lives. Let’s pivot now to the prepare category. Looking ahead a bit, and AI is a big one here. It’s not just impacting climate, but also how we think about work, about who makes decisions. The report calls it AI’s, double-edged sword and the AI power struggle.
Speaker 2: AI really is full of contradictions. On one hand, you hear about its amazing potential for sustainability, right? AI satellites spotting wildfires instantly, or optimizing water use in farming huge potential benefits. Yeah. But there’s a definite environmental cost that’s growing fast.
Speaker 1: That’s the paradox, isn’t it? Training these massive AI models takes incredible amounts of energy and water. Just one chat. GPT query uses nearly 10 times the electricity of normal Google search. Globally data centres are already around 3% of electricity use, and the IEA predicts AI’s demand will basically double by 2026. The report even says this demand is delaying the shutdown of some coal plans. Yeah, that’s significant, often overlooked, I think.
Speaker 2: Definitely overlooked and beyond the environment, AI is creeping into decision making in ways we might not even notice. We’ve seen actual AI enabled political candidates. Yeah. A mayoral candidate in Wyoming said he’d let an AI bot make his decisions. A UK candidate represented by an AI avatar. Some CEOs apparently think AI could automate a lot of what they do,
Speaker 1: and it goes into public services too, like law enforcement using AI for crime prediction, identifying suspects. But that immediately raises huge red flags about bias, bias baked into the data. These systems learn from This could just reinforce existing inequalities or even create new ones. The report mentions a really worrying case in Spain where an algorithm failed to predict repeated domestic violence and the outcome was fatal. So it really makes you ask who is making the decisions and how do we keep things fair and transparent when AI is involved?
Speaker 2: That’s the fundamental question. The report really stresses that as AI gets more common, understanding its limits, its potential for bias. That’s crucial for everyone, not just the tech folks. We need to ask questions about the data, about the process.
Speaker 1: Okay. Shifting gears slightly within prepare, let’s talk about our relationship with work. This trend is called redefining balance Life in the post-work era seems like tech advances plus that whole post pandemic rethink of life are fuelling. Talk about shorter work weeks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the research backs it up. Studies consistently show that things like a four day week can actually boost productivity and make people happier, more satisfied with life. Data from Europe suggests longer hours drag down happiness and health. And in the US surveys show 79% of workers say they’d be happier with a four day week, and interestingly, 81% think they’d be just as productive.
Speaker 1: What really stands out here for me is this idea that our jobs are becoming less central to who we are. A 2023 Pew study found only four in 10 US workers see their job as core to their identity. That’s a big shift. Combine that with a silver tsunami of boomers retiring, plus the fact that maybe 27% of current jobs could be automated. It points towards a future where leisure maybe becomes more central than work,
Speaker 2: which raises a key point for communities, right? If people have more free time, what do we do? How do we create meaningful opportunities for leisure, for community involvement? It’s not just about parks, it’s about fostering connection, learning, engagement, and you’re already seeing some pushback against things like overt tourism residents saying, Hey, our needs matter too. Juno, Alaska limiting cruise ships, because it was overwhelming local life. It’s a hint of this rebalancing act.
Speaker 1: Fascinating. Let’s venture into the final category. Learn and watch. These are the signals may be quieter ones now that could really reshape things down the road in unexpected ways. First up, something I found amazing. Harnessing fungi for a sustainable future. Seriously, if you just think fungi are mushrooms, get ready. This report positions fungis is ancient, powerful and incredibly adaptable tool, not just food, but for cities, for humanity.
Speaker 2: It’s truly mind-boggling the potential here. We’re talking about a kingdom with maybe 6 million different species and scientists are exploring them for incredible uses. Food. Yes, mushroom farms are way more sustainable than livestock, but also lab grown micro foods, getting new proteins from agricultural waste, even making things like fungal boba or caviar. It’s wild. Expanding sustainable food in ways we just didn’t foresee,
Speaker 1: and it doesn’t start at food. Medicine beyond penicillin. Fungi give us cholesterol drugs, vital immunosuppressants for transplants. They’re even being seriously studied for mental health. Psilocybin for depression. PTSD, we’re still learning so much
Speaker 2: and linking this to the bigger picture. Environmental cleanup. This is huge. Researchers are finding fungi that can actually break down plastics. Imagine that others can treat contaminated soil after wildfires or pull forever chemicals. PFAS, pesticides, pharmaceuticals out of wastewater. There even projects using fungi to take toxic rubble and turn it into clean building bricks. Seriously.
Speaker 1: So the bottom line here seems to be we might be entering the age of fungi. These organisms are offering solutions for everything from sustainable food and medicine to pollution control and even new building materials. Nature’s ingenuity right there. Okay. Finally, a truly unexpected one. The role of planners in space exploration. Usually when we talk about planning a city from scratch, we mean on earth. But this report actually gets into planning settlements on the moon or Mars,
Speaker 2: which makes you ask why planners in space Right now it’s mostly engineers, scientists leading the charge, and obviously you need them, but the experts here argue planners bring crucial knowledge that gets missed, like sci-fi loves cities under domes. But planners might point out that historically building underground offered better protection from radiation temperature extremes. Lessons from ancient cliff dwellings on earth, basically. They think about long-term liveability, not just the engineering.
Speaker 1: That’s a really interesting angle, and it brings up some deep ethical questions too. Life on Mars or even the Moon, hmm, it’s incredibly dangerous, resource heavy. So should we be trying to change alien climates to suit us, or should we maybe leave them alone? Focus our efforts here. It’s a big dilemma,
Speaker 2: and planners with that kind of holistic view are well suited to grapple with those questions.
Speaker 1: Funnily enough, it leads to this unexpected lesson that brings us right back to earth. There’s a quote in the report from an expert, and it’s pretty striking. She says, I cannot tell you how terrified I am of the idea of living on Mars. It’s such an awful place. We are so lucky that we have Earth. We have something really good right here under our feet. So the surprising takeaway from thinking about space planning, maybe it’s just being grateful for Earth and doubling down on planning to protect this planet
Speaker 2: from shifts in our own neighbourhoods to potentially planning cities on Mars. This A PH Friend report is a powerful reminder that the future is complex, it’s interconnected, and it’s always changing and foresight as the report really makes clear. It isn’t about having a crystal ball predicting the future perfectly. It’s more about understanding the forces driving change, especially those outside our control. Figuring out how to prepare when to act. It’s really about building resilience even when things feel uncertain
Speaker 1: as you think about all this. The power of fungi AI is double nature. The changing face of home and work, it really hits home that the future isn’t just something that happens to us. It’s something we actively shape often in these surprising, interconnected ways. So maybe the question for you is, what shifts are you seeing around you in your life, your community, and how might you start planning for your future with some of these insights in mind?
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