About 70 per cent of the world population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050, according to data from the United Nations.

That means most cities are going to need more infrastructure. Roads, public transportation and waste management will need massive expansion and upgrades. The average person produces 4.9 pounds of waste a day, up from 3.66 pounds in 1980. But here’s a trend going in the other direction as a result of technology: Paper and paperboard declined from 87.7 million tonnes in 2000 to 67.4 million tons in 2018, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

We’re also going to need a lot more energy.

The US Energy Information Administration projects that the world will need about 28 per cent more energy in 2040 than it did in 2015 based on the number of people in the country and consumption patterns; on our current trajectory, about 42 per cent of electricity in the United States will come from renewable sources.

Where will that electricity get produced? Solar power could be produced on largely unpopulated land masses and transported to population centres, an idea Elon Musk raised about China five years ago. China has “an enormous land area, much of which is hardly occupied at all,” he said, noting that most of China’s population is concentrated in coastal cities. “So you could easily power all of China with solar.”

Another trend that, like increasing energy needs, isn’t new and isn’t going away: on-demand everything. Technology has led us to expect that goods and services will be delivered at the push of a button, often within minutes. That could transform real estate, especially space in cities that is currently used for retail. As companies work toward instant deliveries, they’ll need to warehouse items closer and closer to customers. Real estate investors are already contemplating how to create mini-warehouses on every block. And the density of people in cities is likely to affect the farming and delivery of food. To get fresh produce to customers quickly, vertical farming — in indoor, controlled environments — could move from being the dream of some startups to a new reality.

And we’ll be older. In the United States, we’re likely to live until 82.4 years old, compared with the current life expectancy of 79.1 years, the United Nations forecasts. That’s a good thing for health care companies and others that cater to older people. But living three extra years is going to be more expensive, which will have implications for both working and saving. According to the Urban Institute, government “projections indicate that there will be 2.1 workers per Social Security beneficiary in 2040, down from 3.7 in 1970.”

Entrepreneurs, industry leaders and policymakers are already at work solving for some of the problems that demographic data suggest are ahead of us, whether it’s figuring out how to incentivise farmers to sequester carbon; use insurance as a tool for reducing coal production, reinvent the motors that power heavy industry so they use less energy; or write laws that help govern code.

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What about the metaverse? Or crypto technology? Or robots taking our jobs? Or artificial intelligence taking over everything? Demographics can’t answer those questions. All of those things may happen, but life in 2041 may also look a lot like it does today — maybe with the exception of those flying cars.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times

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