As part of the city's 300th anniversary celebrations, UTSA's Urban Future Lab is looking into the future, to try to determine the way people in the San Antonio area will be living in the later part of the 21st century and beyond, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
UTSA Architecture Professor Antonio Petrov, who heads the Urban Future Lab, told a conference that movies like 'Blade Runner 2019' are all wrong. He doesn't foresee towering spires and impersonal disconnected 'Jetsons' style living spaces. In face, he says the opposite is true.
"The city of the future will lean into, at least in its social and cultural framework, more like the city of the past," Petrov said.
The reason is simple. Petrov and other future planners say urban sprawl, continuing to transport people alone in their cars from more and more scattered subdivisions, simply is not sustainable.
"We are a city that has a tremendous amount of vacancies within the urban core, yet we continue building outside of Loop 1604," He said. "This is not sustainable."
Petrov agrees with urban futurist Richard Florida, who told a conference here last month that the American city of the future will look at lot more like the booming areas around the Pearl and Southtown than like either the hellscapes of 'Blade Runner' or the sprawling neighborhoods of Stone Oak.
He says the Urban Future Lab envisions more densely packed housing, more 'mixed use' developments' and more of a sense of 'community' in future neighborhoods.
Petrov has already placed his stamp on that 'retro' look at the future, through his 'High Line' concept for a 'Breckenridge Park Skyride' style method of transportation from the downtown and the Pearl to San Antonio International Airport. Models of Petrov's proposed 'High Line' are on display at UTSA's Institute of Texan Cultures.
Petrov says the world will see a major change in the value of natural resources in the coming decades. He says water will be for the second half of the 21st Century what oil has been for the past half century, the resource which leads nations into war, and the resource possession of leads to riches and prosperity.
As part of next year's Tricentennial, Petrov says the Urban Future Lab plans an exhibition to explore the lifestyles of the city's future.
"Put your feet into the shoes of somebody living in 2090, 2120," he said.