Will the future world be more rural?

What about technology? Will people still live an advanced tech life in a rural environment?

Carmen, I can't answer that but don't see any reason why not.  Others have seen technological advances in the future.  This rural issue is just one set of visions I'd had, but it doesn't exclude technology. 

Heatwaves are probably going to be a factor in the industrial world's ruralization, but I think we should also be open to possibility that global culture will be undergoing some fundamental shifts in the decades to come. I also recently read through the long-term predictions posted on this site, and I was struck by two enduring themes: that people from all walks of life will be involved in food production, and that there will be a grater emphasis on small-scale, human centered communities (at least in the US).

As climate change, topsoil loss, and insect depletion (particularly of pollinators) ramps up and disrupts our eating habits, more people will be induced by high food prices to grow food on their own (Jeanne, I'm thinking of that vision of the $50 apple you've mentioned before). Despite urban agriculture initiatives, more people may decide that it's easier to live on and farm a plot of land in the countryside (or better yet, join an intentional community where land is owned in a cooperative arrangement). 

The inevitable failure of growth based monetary systems may also push people to question the social atomization and bare-knuckled competition endemic to urban living. Coupled with our ecological crises, we may be deciding that rural living is much more nourishing and conducive to human-to-human contact than living in a concrete jungle. In general, as E.F. Schumacher details in his book Small is Beautiful, networks of small communities are much more resilient and stable than big cities or nation states. Perhaps dangerous heat waves will be the final straw atop a long list of drawbacks for people who are reconsidering the wisdom of city living.

@Carmen: About 7 years ago I started thinking deeply about what path technology would take in the next 25 years. The vision I kept getting in my mind was that of an airy, sun-filled library. About half the people in the library were contentedly reading books while the other half were tinkering with contraptions that looked like they came from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci and Nikola Tesla. I got the sense that by the mid-2030s, a renaissance in "old knowledge" would be in full swing. People would be unearthing and finessing ideas and modes of knowing that had previously been marginalized by the Western reductionist worldview. In turn, these "old" sciences (things like indigenous knowledge and free energy technology) would be synthesized with our current digital innovations and give rise to a whole new class of technology. There was no indication in my vision that this paradigm shift would be dependent on the dominance of cities.

Hi Echec!

I liked reading about your thoughts including the $ and apple as it brought an interesting perspective to the conversation.  

I have also thought about fruit trees.   When we originally bought our home 25 years ago, it was newly built so the back yard was ours to design.  We planted 10 trees in our back yard, 3 of which were citrus trees.  We use the fruit every season, especially the lemon tree.  I will juice the lemons and pour juice into ice cube containers to freeze and take out what I need for cooking throughout the year.  We also have a small vegetable garden in the backyard which we have begun raising crops in again.  It is a process as my  (our) green thumb isn't always green. ( The wildlife in our yard love the garden as well. )  I have pondered planting non-citrus fruit trees over the past few years. I think it will be good to have some variety and well, because who doesn't enjoy fruit, especially grown without pesticides?  

The other trees in our yard  help in other ways.  First, they shade  our house which is especially  needed here in Arizona during the oppressive summer months. They cut down on our electricity bill which helps our wallet and our environment.  Second, all of the bushes and tress in our yard proved a rich environment for wildlife. Daily I see/ hear  humming birds, doves, quail, boat-tailed grackle, kingbirds, blackbirds,  rabbits, and butterflies .  Frequently there are woodpeckers, mocking birds, raven and occasionally owl, duck and hawk.  There are others but  I am still learning the names of the birds I see.  Since  we have so many trees and bushes, our yard is often full of wildlife.  We would likely have more but we have a dog who loves to chase the birds when I let him out. He is a Sheepadoodle, (part Old English Sheepdog and part Poodle) so, he tries to herd them and then catch them.  Birds don't herd well ha ha, but when it is extremely hot, they can be slower to take off in flight.  He can actually catch a few in the summer months if they aren't careful.

 I am also more mindful of how I use water and will reuse it on occasion for plants like leftover cooking water and often turn it off mid shower during warm months while washing my hair.   Again, it is a process, (baby steps) as this is a newer thing for me.  I am trying to make it more of a habit. In Arizona, water is life and it will be in less abundant  as time goes on.   I want to respect and conserve what we have now.  

I also know the luxury of taking "baby" steps will not be an option soon.  Some days I think I am "awake" and yet others I realize I am still "waking up".  We do have some  grass in our back yard.  Not a good thing for water conservation, but it cools down the surrounds in the summer, dramatically,  and our wildlife spend much or their day on the grass and near the grass.  So, for now it stays.

Lastly, I am beginning to notice something here in Arizona.  I think it is getting more windy. The trees seem to be in near constant motion nowadays.  Gentle breezes to more gusty wind seem more frequent. 

@echec_et_maths: The study you linked is one more addition to a growing body of literature about how we as humans need close contact with nature in order to function properly. Not all of us get headaches from seeing repetitive, geometric patterns, but a great many of us are faintly uneasy about cramming ourselves into gargantuan metropolises, probably for the reasons pointed out in the CNN article (we didn't evolve to be army ants, after all). Which is one reason why I think we can expect a fundamental cultural shift away from urban living in the decades to come, although that shift will probably be prefaced by extreme weather and a collapse of our growth-based economic paradigm (most modern cities look the way they do because of a late capitalist logic that has traded in natural beauty and human health for exponential capital growth and efficiency gains). 

I've visited a number of intentional communities in New England and upstate New York where the built human environment has tended towards yurts, round adobe houses, and compact cottages fringed by shade trees and gardens. I can attest that, yes, those architectural schemes are much easier on the eyes (and soul). 

Another long-term vision I’ve had that I never thought to post  on this site is something I think about almost every day when I go down to my basement.  In winter it’s naturally warmer, even though the basement is not heated.  In summer the basement is much cooler and during a heatwave it is the coolest place to be in the house.

in 1989 I had a dream of something going on in 2040.   I saw someone I knew working in an office located below ground.  I got the feeling that more residences would be built below ground then.   It is a natural energy free solution to extreme temps especially extreme heat. 

I've been thinking about subterranean living as well as the heat of summer settles in (I have a basement too). The much-touted passive cooling building techniques that have been used for centuries by Pueblo Indians in the Southwest are only effective in climates where nighttime temperatures reliably drop below 65 degrees every night for hours at a stretch, and much of the humid eastern US does not meet that threshold in the height of summer. So I guess its hobbit holes for the rest of us, which sounds fine to me. We could dig our houses 6 feet deep into the ground, leave the top 2-3 feet exposed to allow for natural sunlight, and heap any soil that has been displaced in the digging process atop our roofs to amplify the effects of natural heating/cooling while also providing rooftop space for our gardens.

Who wouldn't love a real life Shire?

Coyote, I would love a hobbit house. 

Coyote, count me in.

Jeanne, I am putting this here because I can't find your post about goat milk. Please move it if need be.  Just drop the "g"!  We drink oat milk.  It's high in calcium & nutrients, tastes good, and is made entirely from oats.

I've never liked cow's milk, even as a kid, and am not a fan of almond milk and all the other variants (hemp, flax, ect) but I do really like the oat.  The brand we drink is called Oat-ly.

@carmen

I think more people will be living a simpler and less materialistic life in the future, hence the more rural setting. At the same time, everything will evolve. So living a rural life with the aid of technology is part of the picture. I'll just post a related quote here lifted from what I believe came from sacred text:

"Life will revert to simple living. However, it cannot totally go back to what we were before. We already have advanced science and technology. They will be used to ease our return to nature."

Norberg-Hodges knows her stuff. As an anthropologist who worked for several decades in the alpine region of Ladakh in India, she witnessed firsthand the ravages that globalized capitalism wreaked on Ladakh's pastoral culture.