227/08 Social challanges s the basis for foresight - Gaia

Increased costs of energy and materials and
climate change were named as the major
trends that will greatly affect the societies in
the future. Also aging was recognized as one
of the major drivers that will create the opportunities
for Finland.
Major issues identified as the most important
cross-cutting topics can be grouped under the following
titles and themes. These themes and these
conclusions were produced through few separate
discussion steps.
1. Smart and sustainable living
environments
Finnish building infrastructure will face a large
renovation and re-building boom as the building
generation from the first urbanization period after
WWII is getting old. At the same time there is a
need for housing suitable for aging population.
This situation creates a great opportunity to build
living concepts that take into account both needs
of aging people as well as the energy and material
efficiency. The export opportunities for these solutions
are also very good. The participants particularly
emphasized the role of increasing Russian
markets. Finnish building cluster is taking a
step ahead to use this opportunity, but it will be a
challenge. The specific issues discussed under
this topic were the following.
Flexibility and adaptability are the main characteristics
of future buildings and environments.
Aim is to increase the life cycle of
buildings.
Home ICT is at the edge of big changes. Monitoring
and continuous network connections
open up new opportunities (easy communication
with personal networks from your home,
net communities for social interaction from
home, increased interaction with the surrounding
environment through monitoring)
Home entertainment solutions emphasizing
physical exercise may gain momentum.
“Functional Games” boom may emerge soon.
Smart home solutions – monitoring and automation
enable new energy and resource man-
agement solutions. The solutions may bring
the information visible and easily accessible
(consumers have a strong control over the
management and see effects of their actions)
and/or intelligent agents take care of optimization.
Home is only one module of the living environment.
Decisions and changes in spatial planning
as a whole will be a major issue.
2. Mobility
Generally the participants shared a view that the
mobility of people will decrease in the future. The
main driver for this argument is the increased price
of energy and costs of mobility. The ICT solutions
also enable the communication and completion of
different functions through other means than by
face-to-face meetings. However, it was also
stressed that there is great uncertainty of the connection
between ICT and mobility. The research
results are in contradiction whether ICT and increased
use media technologies are going to increase
or decrease mobility. Mobility is also one of
the key themes for aging society. Some of the activities
and functions can be covered by ICT solutions
but not all. The capability of the aging population
to move themselves is one the key issues.
General issues discussed were the following.
Changing time use patterns and the ways how
people will organize their work and leisure
time will affect a lot this issue. Division of activities
to “staying in on place” and “being on
the move” will become on one hand more important
and on the other hand this division will
get blurred. Net presence will become a normal
way of interaction.
If people move around less, the “village” societies
will get stronger. Net will provide an important
“window to outside world” and will be
very important part of normal life. There will
be more net communities having an important
role.
No-car-societies will emerge. Mobility theme
is strongly linked with smart living concept
and spatial urban planning.
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