The significant future challenge I can see, particularly in large crowded cities such as London (where I live) is lack of sustainable transportation.

According to technical gurus such as Elon Musk, no later than by 2050 the ratio of electric cars will be probably very high to the point that: "there will not be a steering wheel... It will be like having a horse”. These cars will be autonomous and if believing Musk’s vision, seeing a driver behind a steering wheel will be as exotic as seeing person on a horse riding among cars in today’s traffic. Others (Bloomberg New Energy Finance) are more careful in their predictions, saying that by 2040 electric and hybrid cars will account for one-third of the global auto fleet.

There is also alternative development of drone transportation technologies which will enable the companies such as Amazon to provide drop off deliveries directly to the drop off point. The development of drone technology is closely tied to the development of more effective batteries. That is something Tesla and other companies around the world are intensively working on.

There are also companies such as Airbus which are working on the construction of passenger transport drones with interesting concept designs in place.

Whichever will turn to be truth, we can safely assume that our cities transportation links will be overwhelmed by the non-combustive air and land delivery transport. This however will not resolve the problems associated with growing population moving to large cities due to geographically unbalanced economics. That will put more pressure on the public transport and the way how people commute on daily basis. In the same time we have to remember that cities like London are built on the medieval layout of streets which are far away from easy to navigate than for comparison grid street system we can find in the US, Canada, Australia or even in the modern cities of Middle East. It seems that no one had enough influence to dramatically challenge the existing status quo, so we have to wait patiently for whichever solution will come first.

The existing buildings will need to be adopted to be able to receive air deliveries made by drones and providing in house charging point for the electric or hybrid cars. The roof structures and other areas will have to provide an adequate capacity to be able to safely receive customers and materials. Also there will be expectation that commercial businesses will provide charging points for its employee’s cars. That brings the question of generating and, or storing cheaper energy overnight to be able to respond to that demand in sustainable way.

I would definitely start thinking about adaptivity of our buildings in relation to these challenges.